Carlos Santana suffered heat exhaustion during a Michigan concert ...

(CNN) Legendary musician Carlos Santana suffered a medical emergency Tuesday night during a performance in Michigan, according to his management team.

Santana was "over-taken by heat exhaustion and dehydration," according to a statement by his management team posted on his official Facebook page. He was performing at Pine Knob Music Theatre, an outdoor amphitheater in Clarkston, which is about 40 miles outside of Detroit.

Temperatures in Clarkston reached up to 90 degrees Tuesday, nearly 10 degrees above average, according to CNN meteorologist Robert Shackelford.

"He had just started a song that was about joy and love," concertgoer Alisa Zee told CNN. "He called for healing for the world. It was during that song that he collapsed."

In videos recorded by fans, the 74-year-old musician sits on the corner of the stage and stops playing the guitar.

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Rolling Stones review: Incendiary concert in Austin to close big tour

If this was the last time we see the Rolling Stones in Austin, it was a hell of a way to go.

The legendary British rockers played the final stadium-sized show of a 13-date U.S. fall tour at Circuit of the Americas on Saturday night, energizing a huge crowd with a two-hour set of 18 songs drawn largely from the band’s career-defining first decade.

Dressed in spectacularly colorful attire, core members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood consistently dazzled the crowd with struts, solos, smiles and the sheer confidence that comes from rocking like twentysomethings when you’re seventy-something.

In the end, it all comes down to how good the songs are, and the Stones have few peers in that regard. Thirteen of the 18 tunes in the set were recorded in the 1960s, and all of them clearly have stood the test of time. From the immediately invigorating opener “Street Fighting Man” (1968) to the perfect encore-closer “Satisfaction” (1965), the Stones reminded us why they’re still widely regarded as the world’s greatest rock & roll band.

More from the tour:Rolling Stones tour production director discusses stage setup

Four huge vertical jumbotrons dominated the large but mostly simple stage set, beaming crystal-clear high-definition video of the performance to the far reaches of the venue’s back lawn. Even if you were closer to the stage and could see the band reasonably well, it was hard not to get transfixed by the video presentation, in part because it was so well-executed.

The sound, too, was dialed in with remarkable clarity. Rarely if ever did the 11-piece ensemble sound muddled, not an easy feat for such a large band in a sprawling venue. Speaking to the American-Statesman last month, production director Dale Skjerseth said the show was designed to emphasize “the importance of the sound,” and what we heard verified that he was good for his word.

A few surprises and memorable moments

• Not only did fans select the title track to the Stones’ 1969 album “Let It Bleed” as the show’s audience request number in online voting, but Richards used one of his two lead-vocal spotlights to play another track from that album, the country-blues acoustic tune “You Got the Silver.” In all, the set included more than half of “Let It Bleed,” counting three staples that got played at every show this fall: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” “Midnight Rambler” and “Gimme Shelter.”

• Austin got just 18 songs, whereas other stops on this fall’s tour got 19, with the exception of Dallas earlier this month. (Was there a one-song Texas tax?) What got cut was a slot early in the set that in other cities had frequently gone to “Let’s Spend the Night Together” (occasionally “Rocks Off” or “Get Off of My Cloud”).

• A minute before the Stones took the stage at 9 p.m., the jumbotrons lit up with a one-minute photo and video collage memorializing drummer Charlie Watts, who died in August at age 80 just a few weeks before the tour began. Jagger gave a brief but eloquent speech about Watts a few songs in, dedicating the show to him and sparking chants from the crowd of “Charlie! Charlie!”

• The new “Living in a Ghost Town,” released during the pandemic and introduced by Jagger as “our lockdown song,” was one of just two selections taken from the 1980s onward (the 1981 smash “Start Me Up” was the other). Only “Tumbling Dice,” “Miss You” and “It’s Only Rock & Roll (But I Like It)” came from the 1970s. The rest was one giant Stones Sixties fest, and gloriously so.

• “We like Austin so much that we’re thinking about moving here after the tour,” Jagger announced midway through the set. Take that with the intended grain of salt; after name-dropping Elon Musk and referencing vodka brands Deep Eddy and Tito’s, plus a story about getting drunk at Scholz Garten, he concluded with the disclaimer: “Of course, none of this is true, as you well know.”

A 'dazzling' show

At 78, Jagger remains one of the best frontmen in popular music ever. He paced back and forth across the full length of the nearly football-field-sized stage often, also using an extended runway that jutted out into the standing-room section of the audience. His vocal control and energy level remain remarkably strong. Richards and Wood are similarly lively; Wood was on fire with several guitar leads, while Richards at times grinned broadly when he served up an especially tasty riff.

Before the show:See where Mick Jagger's popped up around Austin

New drummer Steve Jordan filled in admirably for Watts, playing with precision throughout and bringing thunderous power when called for (especially on “Satisfaction”). Backup singer Sasha Allen got her well-deserved spotlight just prior to “Satisfaction” in the two-song encore, dueting with Jagger on the dramatic “it’s just a shot away” and “it’s just a kiss away” key lines of “Gimme Shelter” as they walked to the far end of the runway together.

Behind them, keyboardist and musical director Chuck Leavell (who also played the crucial cowbell part in “Honky Tonk Women”) led the rest of the band: bassist Darryl Jones, backing vocalist/percussionist Bernard Fowler, keyboardist Matt Clifford, and saxophonists Karl Denson and Tim Ries. Throughout the night, the supporting musicians helped make the Stones sound as good as they did.

Following Richards’ mid-set mic-turn with “Connection” and “You Got the Silver,” the band grooved into the home stretch with extended arrangements of 1978’s “Miss You” and 1969’s “Midnight Rambler,” each of which ran beyond 10 minutes. The deeply bluesy vibe of the latter, delivered mostly as a stripped-down six-piece with bass, drums and keys backing the three principles, reminded that for all their greatest-rock-band rep, they’re still one of the best blues bands on the planet, too.

The show’s most dazzling moment was the next-to-last song of the main set, “Sympathy for the Devil.” It kicked off with sparkler-type fireworks spewing from the top of the stage, followed by a full-on pyrotechnic blast into the sky at the first chorus. The video screens were awash in glowing red-and-yellow imagery, a stark contrast to the black-and-white footage used on the preceding “Paint It Black” (in keeping with its key lyric, “no colors anymore, I want them to turn black”).

Strong opening act

Ghost Hounds, a Pittsburgh band that has opened about half the shows on this fall’s tour, took the stage at 7:15 p.m. for an entertaining, high-energy 45-minute set of rootsy American music that meshed well with the Stones’ vibe. Frontman Tré Nation is a consummate professional, a strong singer with a congenial attitude and an engaging rapport with his eight bandmates.

Concertgoers faced setbacks

As memorable as the Stones’ performance was, fairly significant issues with traffic and crowd-flow at the venue led to frustrating experiences for many concertgoers. The small roads that approach the venue often get clogged with major jams when Circuit of the Americas presents such Super Stage shows that are far larger than the usual concerts in the property’s Germania Insurance Amphitheater.

Other concert coverage:Review of Billy Joel's October concert at Circuit of the Americas

Many fans took to Twitter with stories of ditching their cars on the side of the road and walking the rest of the way. Musician Miles Zuniga of platinum-selling Austin band Fastball was among them, posting: “I’m never going back to COTA ever! Worst concert experience ever. Rolling Stones were good but it took us 3 hours to go 14 miles and we only made the show because we paid some dude $40 to park in his yard.”

Inside the venue, some fans with general-admission lawn seats had problems just getting to their designated area because of foot-traffic bottlenecks at one of the entrance gates. Furthermore, setup of food and beverage booths in the lawn area seemed badly designed: There were lots of cocktail booths with almost no line but only one area with food booths, leading to ridiculously long lines that also contributed to the blockage of an entry point.

Setlist

1. Street Fighting Man

2. It’s Only Rock & Roll (But I Like It)

3. 19th Nervous Breakdown

4. Tumbling Dice

5. Let It Bleed

6. You Can’t Always Get What You Want

7. Living in a Ghost Town

8. Start Me Up

9. Honky Tonk Women

10. Connection

11. You Got the Silver

12. Miss You

13. Midnight Rambler

14. Paint It Black

15. Sympathy for the Devil

16. Jumpin’ Jack Flash

Encore:

17. Gimme Shelter

18. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

COVID-19 is robbing musicians of their final chapter – and fans of ...

COVID-19 and the passage of time have jeopardized the ability to see our favorite veteran stars.

Multi-million dollar sales of back catalogs speak to how iconic musicians are reassessing legacies.

Even if the pandemic eases, fans may be concert-shy: Only 13% feel comfortable seeing a live-music show in the next month.

When the great R&B singer Ronnie Spector died on Jan. 12, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland enacted its ritual. The building’s flag got lowered, Spector's music was played all day, and her photos and artifacts took center stage.

CEO Greg Harris is tired of it: “We’ve lowered our flag too many times over the last two years,” he says.

Naomi Judd memorial: Wynonna, Ashley celebrate mom at Ryman ...

Family, friends and fans of Naomi Judd gathered Sunday evening at Ryman Auditorium on Sunday evening for a public memorial for the country music superstar,

Judd, 76, died on April 30, just a day before The Judds -- the iconic duo comprised of her and daughter Wynonna -- was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Her family has since said she took her own life after a struggle with mental illness.

A star-studded list of artists and celebrities -- including Bono, Morgan Freeman, Bette Midler, Reba McEntire, Brad Paisley and Oprah Winfrey offered thoughts and tributes via songs from the Judds' legendary catalog.

"It's so weird, yet so natural, to be in front of (the fans), our chosen family for 38 years," Wynonna Judd said near the end of the 75-minute, CMT-aired memorial event.

"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine," she said, quoting a gospel hymn.

Then, in a moment that highlighted the maintenance of the Judds' legacy in the aftermath of her mother's death, Wynonna said that she would be going on the 11-date national tour that she and her mother had previously announced.

"The show must go on, as hard as it may be," she said.

After that, amid a Ryman Auditorium stage awash in blue floodlights and filled with 2,500 giant pink roses, Wynonna Judd called upon the spirit of the Pentecostal church – and a Pentecostal choir that filled the spaces between rows of pews in country music's "Mother Church" – to inspire a solemn, soulful performance of The Judds' 1990-released hit single "Love Can Build A Bridge."

Naomi Judd never met a stranger, her husband, Larry Strickland, said while flanked by Ashley and Wynonna Judd, onstage. Their stories of two things, "their passions and their dogs," inspired her greatly, he continued. As well, her daughter, Ashley, added, in opening remarks, that her mother was an "everywoman, but totally extraordinary" who lived a life that was a "spectacular technicolor dream," and that she "left country music better than she found it."

More:Country star Naomi Judd took own life, daughter Ashley says in emotional interview

The dichotomies apparent in Naomi Judd's life were as present as the songs she wrote and sang. Oscar and Emmy-nominated actress Salma Hayek remarked, via pre-taped comments, that she was awed by Judd's presence because she "felt like she was meeting Scarlett O'Hara." She called the country music superstar a "force of nature" with a "hypnotic, disarming sweetness."

Also, via video comments, Oprah Winfrey said Judd taught her a lesson about the power of country music: "Country music is all about real people and real stories." The icon added, "Naomi Judd (achieved) a rooted connection to all of us, and left a 'heart print' on our hearts."

As far as performances were concerned, gospel trio The Gaithers' offering of "How Beautiful Heaven Must Be" reached a crescendo with a final acapella flourish that yielded a loud ovation. Ashley McBryde was overwhelmed by the moment's emotion but completed her version of the 1984 Judds single "Love Is Alive."

Event host Robin Roberts fed to a video presentation that stated that Naomi Judd's greatest gift was "enhancing and bolstering other people's best talents and gifts." As the Sunday evening event showcased, those talents often were Wynonna Judd's lead vocals.

Wynonna had moments during her performances of "River of Time" and a show-stopping performance of Bette Midler's "The Rose" (alongside Brandi Carlile) where the strain of two emotionally trying weeks showed. During solid performances, she paused, and turned to the crowd as if asking those in attendance to help power her through the lyrics.

"We can pretend to care, but we cannot pretend to show up," Ashley Judd offered in the show's opening remarks, thanking both the live capacity crowd and those who had sent along well wishes, cards and letters to the family in the past two weeks. She followed with a statement that reflected so much of the triumph and tragedy of her mother's life.

"Our circumstances do not have the power to create our identity."

Naomi Judd Memorial Performance List

Final Four 2017 Sunday recap: Macklemore, Aerosmith rock at ...

The Republic | azcentral.com

The Final Four is on in Arizona. The March Madness Music Festival met capacity less than an hour after its doors opened Sunday, and the lucky 20,000 who got in saw a legendary Aerosmith performance.

Scroll down for a recap of Sunday’s Final Four fan events, including celebrity sightings and the Final Four Dribble that had more than 3,000 kids bouncing basketballs in downtown Phoenix streets.

RELATED: View our recaps of Friday’s events and Saturday’s festivities, or follow our live coverage Monday of all things Final Four in Glendale and Phoenix.

10 p.m. Aerosmith bring down the house

Aerosmith brought the free March Madness Music Festival in downtown Phoenix to a raucous climax Sunday with a hit-filled set that put the focus squarely on their comeback years.

This was Aerosmith's first live appearance of 2017 and there's talk of them retiring after one last major tour. Steven Tyler's vocals were near-perfect, hitting notes that should be near-impossible considering he's 69.

There were parts of the performance that were loose enough that someone who lives in the Auto-Tuned world of modern pop might have labeled it sloppy or under-rehearsed, but it felt like rock 'n' roll.

A highlight of the night was when they brought Macklemore back on stage for a loose and lively "Walk This Way."

REVIEW:Aerosmith rocks March Madness Music Festival, bringing Macklemore back for 'Walk This Way'

8:30 p.m. Aerosmith rock out

Legendary rock band Aerosmith took the stage to a massive crowd of cheering fans of all ages Sunday night.

They also shared video of the beginning of their performance on Facebook Live so that fans around the world could see the show.

8 p.m. Aaron Rodgers appears at Majerle's

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers appeared at Majerle's Sports Grill in downtown Phoenix Sunday night.

TMZ reported that Rodgers was seen Saturday night in a nightclub rapping along to Tupac's "Hit 'Em Up."

7:50 p.m. Waiting for Aerosmith

The at-capacity crowd of about 20,000 waited for Aerosmith to take the stage at the March Madness Music Festival, and in the meantime Aerosmith's official social media accounts posted teasers.

Charles Barkley also helped entertain the crowd by getting on stage to sing karaoke, including "I Will Survive."

7 p.m.: Snapchat Spectacles vending machines still here

Snapchat placed at least two of its bright yellow vending machines in downtown Phoenix for people to buy its newest product: Spectacles sunglasses that shoot video clips.

The $129 shades, which shoot 10-second clips that wirelessly transfer to the Snapchat photo/video sharing app, went on sale last fall and initially were only available from vending machines that would pop up in cities for a short times, usually just one day.

Anyone can buy them at spectacles.com, but there still is an allure to hunting down a machine — called a Snapbot — and buying them in-person.

The official Spectacles account posted photos of the machines Saturday and Sunday, but did not name where they were. One buyer figured out that a machine was near the Phoenix Convention Center.

Can you figure out where the other vending machine is in the Phoenix area?

6:35 p.m. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis start the party

Rapper Macklemore took the March Madness Music Festival stage around 6:40 p.m. Sunday, starting with his hit "Ten Thousand Hours."

The at-capacity crowd in the park was jumping up and down so hard to his set, you could feel the ground moving under your feet. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' performance was complete with choreography and a heavier focus on the visual presentation of the music, featuring a lot of videos.

His set reached its crowd-pleasing peak when he followed the screening of his video for "And We Danced" by appearing on stage in the goofy wig and cape ensemble from the video before hosting an audience dance-off on the set-closing "Dance Off."

And then he somehow took it up a notch with an encore of "Downtown," joined by Eric Nally, a glorious five-train pileup of an entertainment spectacle.

REVIEW:Aerosmith rocks March Madness Music Festival, bringing Macklemore back for 'Walk This Way'

6:30 p.m. Final Four closes doors for the night

Right before Macklemore and Ryan Lewis took the stage, Final Four officials tweeted the Music Festival hit capacity and the doors would not be reopening for the rest of the evening.

Watch the festival live at ncaa.com/marchmadness/musicfest/live.

6 p.m.: Police letting few into music festival

Police allowed groups of about 50 people into the March Madness Music Festival every 15 minutes or so, giving hope to those still waiting in the massive lines that formed at entrances. There also was at least one entrance where police gave priority to people with children or pregnant women.

People in the back third of the line said they had waited just 15 minutes, while people in the front liked waited for an hour or more. Meanwhile, Blink 182 rocked inside, and one fan posted that he saw Charles Barkley in a VIP area of the festival.

5:15 p.m.: Hopefuls wait to get in to festival

Sammi Digan and Maria Lafferty, both 21, were among the hundreds of people waiting in line in hopes of getting into the March Madness Music Festival, which reached capacity at 3:45 p.m. Sunday.

"It's kind of mixed reviews, depending on the people," Lafferty said. "We've already heard our fair share of curse words and people stomping away from the police for rejecting them, and we've heard our fair share of like, 'maybe we should go somewhere else.'

"We're kind of still hoping we're going to get in, though, so here's to hoping, you know?" she said. "If not, hey, we'll just go to a bar."

4:30 p.m.: Music fest at capacity

The Phoenix Police Department tweeted at 3:46 p.m. that the March Madness Music Festival had reached capacity and they were closing the doors.

"They are still going to let in everyone who is currently in line. They will re-evaluate later to determine if they will re-open the gates or not," Phoenix Police spokesman Alan Pfohl said at 4:33 p.m.

Many people were furious that the festival filled up so early, yelling as they stormed away from the park. Others stayed in line, hopeful that that would still be able to get in later.

4 p.m. Actor Josh Peck is here!

Actor Josh Peck of Nickelodeon's "Drake & Josh" fame visited downtown Phoenix Saturday and Sunday for the Final Four festivities.

Peck, who currently voices Casey Jones in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," posted a video of himself Saturday shooting a basketball in the Final Four Fan Fest.

Sunday afternoon he posted and later deleted a photo of him and a friend posing in front of the "sorry" sign outside FOUND:RE Phoenix hotel, which is steps away from the March Madness Music Festival.

3:30 p.m. Arizona pride at Fan Fest

Many Arizonans at the Final Four Fan Fest said they take pride in having the Final Four in the Valley.

Kyle Hobbs, 23, said it makes sense this location was chosen. It's big and spread out without too much traffic.

"It's just a great city," he said. Attendees from other states are able to see another side of Arizona beyond the fact that it's a hot desert.

"The best thing about Phoenix is there really is so much stuff here," local Troy Hutchinson said. "You really have to have a good plan if you do come to visit."

Hobbs added that this isn't just for visitors: Locals also get a unique opportunity to experience large-scale events and meet star athletes. He and his 16-year-old brother Zach were standing in line to meet Arizona Cardinals player Tyrann Mathieu.

"I think it's a great turnout for the fans, gives them something to look forward to," Hobbs said.

3 p.m.: Doors open for the music fest

There were long lines to get into the free March Madness Music Festival before it opened at 3 p.m. Many people wore shirts displaying their favorite act of the night.

They're smart to get a head start – officials closed the festival's gates by 7:30 p.m. Saturday because it had reached capacity, rumored to be about 20,000, though officials were unable to confirm the number.

Famed concert lighting designer and director Cosmo Wilson posted a photo of a bunch of inflatable pool floats near the band gear, so it's likely than giant swans, pizza slices and donuts will appear in the crowd during one of the shows Sunday.

2 p.m.: Fan recreates Christian Laettner's famous shot

Christian Laettner, who many regard as one of the greatest NCAA players ever, recreated his most famous basketball moment with fans at the Fan Fest in Phoenix Sunday afternoon: He threw the full-court inbound pass so attendees could attempt his winning shot from the 1992 East Regional Finals.

Most fans missed. A few made it. Finally, at 2 p.m. on the dot, the emcee pumped up Shirley Peng to take the final shot. She made it.

"It was amazing," she said.

Peng was with her husband, Seth Fager, who shot and missed right before her. He said he saw the highlight as a kid but wasn't watching the actual game.

"It was cool," he said. "It was definitely something I'll cherish forever."

Peng said she's not among the crowd that still hates Laettner. He is so widely disliked that ESPN even produced a "30 for 30" titled "I Hate Christian Laettner."

"I think he's a great basketball player," she said with a laugh.

1 p.m.: Fans line up to meet Steve Nash

Hundreds of people stood in line for hours in the Final Four Fan Fest in downtown Phoenix Sunday afternoon to meet former Phoenix Suns player and eight-time NBA All-Star Steve Nash.

Organizers had to cut off the line before Nash even arrived. Some at the front of the line said they waited for three hours to meet the legend.

Joshua Haslip, 14, said his favorite Nash memory was when Nash fractured his nose on court in 2010 and just popped it back into place himself.

Tyler Lamoreaux, 13, said he doesn't really remember watching Nash play but brought a photo of himself when he was 2, wearing a Nash jersey, to be signed.

Noon: Dikembe Mutombo meets fans

Four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award winner and eight-time All-Star Dikembe Mutombo appeared at the Fan Fest at noon Sunday. He posted a photo with former San Antonio Spurs player David Robinson and ESPN broadcaster Dick Vitale, who he towered over. Mutombo is 7' 2".

11 a.m.: Ready, set, dribble!

Young basketball fans were able to bounce into action Sunday morning by participating in the Final Four Dribble in downtown Phoenix.

Armed with special NCAA Final Four-themed basketballs, about 3,000 children maneuvered through the heart of Fan Fest, showcasing their ball handling skills.

For the older kids, it was taking their talents from off the court and onto the streets. But for the youngsters in the pack, who were accompanied by their parents, it was more about joining in on the fun and trying their hardest to dribble in a straight line.

With their oversized dribble shirts hanging to their knees, they attempted to control the unwieldy balls that were nearly half their size.

"She's been practicing," Blanca Ardon said, watching as her daughter, Mia, 9, raced in front of her.

"Mom, look!" the girl shouted proudly.

Catching up to her older brothers, Mia shared that she loved to play basketball and was enjoying her time out with the other children.

Blanca, from Phoenix, said she was happy when she heard about the event because it was a great way for her kids to get involved with Final Four and to stay active.

Just up ahead Maya Gutierrez, 9, and her brother, Esteban, 10, bounced their balls toward the final destination: Fan Fest inside the Phoenix Convention Center.

"They play soccer, but this might have sparked something," said their father, Andy Gutierrez. "It's been a great event ... all of the Fan Fest activities for the Final Four. We came out for the Super Bowl activities a few years ago but this might be better."

With a bit more skill and grace, a basketball team from the West Valley Warriors sports club were up near the front as they approached the doors to Fan Fest.

"We're hoping to see one of the college players," said Nyuol Makuei, 15.

"Yeah, that'd be cool!" said teammate Stacy Goree.

According to Reginald Tahy, a Fan Fest supporter who was helping guide the crowd as they funneled near the doors, the Final Four Dribble was one of the most anticipated events for the organizers as they got to see the children participate and interact with the activities.

"It's running smoothly ... it all is," Tahy said. "Everything so far this weekend has gone off without a hitch."

MORE: Map of the downtown Phoenix events

TV schedule for Monday

Semifinal winners, 6:19 p.m., Channel 5 (Play-by-play: Jim Nantz. Analysts: Bill Raftery, Grant Hill. Reporter: Tracy Wolfson)

Compiled by Arizona Republic reporter Kaila White from reports by Republic reporters Yihyun Jeong, Logan Newman and Alexis Berdine.

Johnny Cash: Farewell to the Man in Black, 16 years later

Peter Cooper

The Tennessean

Editor's note: Sixteen years ago on Sept. 12, 2003, the world lost a musical legend when Johnny Cash passed away in Nashville. Below is the obituary we ran the day after the Man in Black died.

Somehow, Johnny Cash is dead.

Battling ill health for years and without his longtime companion since wife June Carter Cash's death in May, Mr. Cash's frailties of body and heart made him seem no less indomitable. Fans and fellow musicians likened him to a force of nature: an iconic, elemental figure, more granite and fire than flesh and blood. He had cheated death enough that it seemed death would never catch onto the ruse.

But yesterday morning around 2 a.m., Mr. Cash passed away at Baptist Hospital, succumbing to respiratory failure brought on by complications from diabetes. He was 71 years old, and his life altered the course of American popular music.

In Hendersonville, he was a neighbor. For Nashville, he was an ambassador, an agitator, a kingpin and a musical conscience. To the world, he was a political activist, a genre-blending innovator and the embodiment of well-aged cool.

Most memorably, he was a singer of songs.

In death's wake came words, all day long, and none would suffice. Singers and pickers, fans and barflies, and journalists and the president of the United States tried to say something to convey the breadth and magnitude of Mr. Cash's life and career. All failed, though not for lack of good intentions.

Chapter 1: A hardscrabble youth

Kingsland, Ark., is a tiny little town now chiefly known as "Birthplace of Johnny Cash." When Mr. Cash was born there - on Feb. 26, 1932 - no one called him "Johnny." To his parents, and on his birth certificate, he was J.R. Cash, as no one could agree on a name at first.

In 1935 father Ray Cash moved his family to a five-room house near Dyess, Ark., to take part in a rehabilitation project run by the Roosevelt administration.

"Actually, it was a socialistic setup with a co-op store and a co-op cotton gin, the intention being that the farmers would share any profits from the gin and the store," Mr. Cash wrote in his first autobiography, Man In Black.

The share-cropping family sang country songs while picking cotton, and work in the fields was not halted even by death. Mr. Cash's older brother, Jack, was killed in a table-saw accident in 1944, an event that haunted Mr. Cash. But the next day, the family was back chopping cotton. Mother Carrie Cash fell to her knees in the field that morning, as her son related in a second autobiography, Cash: The Autobiography.

"Lest you get too romantic an impression of the good, natural, hard-working, character-building country life back then, back there, remember that picture of Carrie Cash down in the mud between the cotton rows on any mother's worst day," he wrote.

Carrie Cash saw musical promise in J.R., the fourth of five children. She saved enough money for the teen to take a few singing lessons.

Though J.R. loved the gospel music he heard at the Pentecostal Church of God in Dyess, he was most smitten with the Grand Ole Opry and the country music he heard on the radio.

A brief encounter with Charlie Louvin of the Louvin Brothers before a concert in Dyess further enraptured the teen: "I didn't even feel the gravel on my bare feet that night when I walked the two-and-a-half miles home in the dark, singing all the songs I'd heard from the stage at the school auditorium," he wrote in Man In Black.

Chapter 2: From service to Sun

Though it was music that thrilled Mr. Cash, it seemed incapable of removing him from Arkansas. Upon graduation from Dyess High School in 1950, he moved to Michigan, intending to work in an automobile plant. Making car hoods on an assembly line didn't suit him much better than cotton farming, so he joined the Air Force. The military refused to accept "J.R." as a first name, and he became "John R. Cash."

During basic training in Texas, he met a high school senior named Vivian Liberto. His assignment to a base in Landsberg, Germany (he was a radio intercept operator charged with cracking Russian code transmissions) did not deter their burgeoning romance. While in the service, he began strumming a guitar, composing music and verse and playing in a country band.

His time in the Air Force was of great musical significance, as it was there that he learned some guitar chords and saw a film called Inside Folsom Prison that spurred his now-famous song, Folsom Prison Blues. In the service, he also was struck by an intriguing drawling sound that occurred when his reel-to-reel tape machine was improperly loaded. An attempt to replicate that sound, coupled with his feelings of fidelity toward Vivian Liberto, was the genesis of another classic song, I Walk The Line.

Upon his 1954 discharge, Mr. Cash moved to Memphis, married Liberto, worked as a door-to-door appliance salesman, enrolled at the Keegan School of Broadcasting and put together an upstart country group to help him become a gospel singer. He set his sights on Sun Records, a Memphis operation that was seeing success with a new artist named Elvis Presley.

"Sun Records was between my house and the broadcasting school," Mr. Cash told journalist Peter Guralnick. Mr. Cash visited the studio often, hoping for an audition with Sun owner/producer Sam Phillips.

After being repeatedly told that Phillips was unavailable, Mr. Cash happened once to be sitting outside Sun as Phillips came to work. He forced his way into an audition, and Phillips was duly impressed.

"I don't feel like anyone discovered me because I had to fight so hard to get heard," Mr. Cash told Guralnick.

A rock 'n' roll pioneer whose records with Elvis Presley were making pop inroads, Phillips had no use for a gospel artist. He asked Mr. Cash to write or find some secular material. The hopeful artist went back to the studio with his Tennessee Two (guitarist Luther Perkins and bass man Marshall Grant) with homesick train song Hey Porter! and Folsom Prison Blues, a song that borrowed liberally from Gordon Jenkins' Crescent City Blues recording.

Not yet convinced that the man he called Johnny Cash had composed a hit, Phillips charged Mr. Cash to write "an uptempo weeper love song," and he filled the order with Cry! Cry! Cry!, which would be paired with Hey Porter! as Mr. Cash's first single.

Released in 1955, Cry! Cry! Cry! was a pop and country hit that ultimately peaked at No. 14 on Billboard's country music charts.

"Musicians scoffed, but Cash and the Tennessee Two possessed the quality that had been lacking in country music since Hank Williams died: originality," wrote Colin Escott and Martin Hawkins in Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll.

Mr. Cash was among a group of Sun rockabillies including Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, but he and his Tennessee Two had a propulsive yet distinctly Southern "boom-chicka-boom" sound that set them apart. Mr. Cash sometimes compensated for the lack of a drummer by threading wax paper through guitar strings, and Luther Perkins' spare electric lead guitar work was as crudely appropriate as a dirty joke at an all-night poker session.

"Marshall Grant was mostly right when in later years he said that we didn't work to get that boom-chicka-boom sound ... it's all we could play," Cash wrote. "But it served us well, and it was ours."

In January 1956, Mr. Cash followed the tradition of Elvis Presley and Hank Williams and joined the Louisiana Hayride radio show. Six months later, he was given a slot on the Grand Ole Opry. Opry star Carl Smith introduced Mr. Cash by calling him "the brightest rising star in the country music of America." That December, Mr. Cash again made headlines when he and Presley were photographed with Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins during a Sun session. That photograph is said to have captured "The Million Dollar Quartet."

Mr. Cash's sound garnered No. 1 hits I Walk The Line and There You Go, as well as now-classics Home of The Blues and Big River.

"I taught the weeping willow how to cry/ And I showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky," Mr. Cash sang on Big River. A young man named Robert Zimmerman heard that song on the radio. Years later, when he was known as Bob Dylan, the man told writer Nicholas Dawidoff that the lines of Big River struck him as "just words that turned into bone."

Mr. Cash worked an exhausting touring schedule and began taking amphetamines to help him cope, starting a habit that would cause problems throughout much of his life. The pills did not rob him of his ability to connect with audiences, including those of the captive variety: On New Year's Day 1959, Mr. Cash's travels took him to San Quentin prison, where he played a concert for the inmates. Eleven years later, the performer would record a live album at San Quentin, but this initial appearance was notable in that one of the prisoners was future country legend Merle Haggard.

"Prison is a good place to find out the truth, because them convicts won't lie," Haggard said. "They ain't got no reason to give you any clout that you don't deserve. And we saw the truth that day."

Unhappy with several matters, including Phillips' refusal to let him record a gospel album, Mr. Cash left Sun in 1958, moving his family (which by then included two daughters) to California. Phillips was angered, charging that the young singer had secretly signed a deal with Columbia Records while still under contract to Sun. The two later reconciled, and Mr. Cash was an honorary pallbearer at Phillips' funeral in July.

While his decades on Columbia would see Mr. Cash rise to greater wealth and fame, many Cash-watchers consider the finest of the Sun recordings to be the apex of his career. On Get Rhythm, Train of Love, Home of the Blues, I Walk The Line, Big River and others, Phillips' recording techniques present Mr. Cash's voice as an unprettied wonder, and Phillips' interest in producing something singular and identifiable helped Mr. Cash to find his own way as an artist.

"When it dawned on me that I didn't sound like anybody else naturally, I let it come naturally," Mr. Cash told journalist Bill Flanagan in 1998. "Of course, that was the secret of my success. It ain't no secret: Be yourself."

Chapter 3: To the Top

A July 1958 session in Nashville with producer Don Law marked Cash's ascendance to the major label ranks, as he began work on songs that would comprise his Columbia debut album, The Fabulous Johnny Cash. A western song from that album, Don't Take Your Guns To Town, topped the country charts for six weeks in 1959, and Mr. Cash entered a new decade as a well-established artist in his prime.

"The 1960s were probably my most productive time, creatively speaking," he wrote in Cash. "Often I wasn't in my best voice, because the amphetamines dried my throat and reduced me, at times, to croaks and whispers, but that wasn't the story all the time, and my energy and output were high."

Mr. Cash's drug use escalated. He destroyed hotel rooms, canceled shows, started fires, wrecked cars, was busted for illegal acquisition of pills, bashed out the Grand Ole Opry footlights and alienated himself from his wife and four daughters.

"I'd begin to feel good after two or three days without drugs," he wrote. "Then, though, I'd get home, usually on a Monday, and I'd find the stress of my marriage so hard that I'd drive to that druggist, get two or three hundred pills, head out into the desert in my camper, and stay out there, high, for as long as I could."

On Feb. 11, 1962, June Carter joined the Johnny Cash road show. She was a daughter of acoustic guitar great Mother Maybelle Carter and member of the Carter clan, a group known as "The First Family of Country Music." For some time Mr. Cash had been enthralled by her beauty, humor and talent, and she quickly recognized both Mr. Cash's magnetism and apparent need for a caretaker.

In addition to flushing pills and soothing nerves, she wrote Mr. Cash a song that described anxious feelings about their escalating relationship. It would become one of his best-known hits: Penned by Carter and Merle Kilgore, Ring of Fire hit No. 1 in 1963.

"A song like that goes on forever," Mr. Cash told The Tennessean in 2002.

While much of musical Nashville ignored the burgeoning folk movement, Mr. Cash embraced some of the folk artists and ideologies. He appeared at the New York Folk Festival in 1965, recorded a duet with Carter on Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe in 1964, recorded a concept album about Native American life called Bitter Tears and publicly supported the civil rights movement.

"When I was young, I saw my dad speaking out against the Vietnam War, speaking out against the Ku Klux Klan, and that's where my social activism is rooted," daughter Rosanne Cash told The Tennessean. "He never bent. He never even almost bent."

A thoughtful voice of inclusion and a conduit for crosspollination between folk and country artists, in the mid-1960s Mr. Cash also could be an angry and violent man prone to benders and outbursts.

"The mixture of amphetamines and alcohol was a maddening poison," he wrote in Man In Black. "My wife and children feared the strange man I had become."

In early 1967 he and Vivian divorced, amid much pill-fueled debauchery, but by late 1967, Mr. Cash committed himself to getting off drugs, though his Jan. 13, 1968, show at Folsom Prison was proof that he was still quite in touch with his dark side.

At Folsom he delighted prisoners, cursing and joking and singing about egg-sucking dogs and the Cocaine Blues with a carnality and wildness that was at once thrilling, entertaining and empathetic. The show's recording, released as Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, now is considered one of the most significant albums in country music history.

For Mr. Cash, 1968 offered moments both wonderful and tragic. He proposed to June Carter onstage Feb. 1, and married her a month later. He set about making up concert dates he'd missed when he was too strung out, and he released two chart-topping hits. But in August 1968, longtime bandmate and "boom-chicka-boom" innovator Luther Perkins died in a house fire. Guitarist Bob Wooten soon joined the band, becoming a part of a group that featured Marshall Grant, drummer W.S. "Fluke" Holland and original Sun rockabilly Carl Perkins.

The change in marital status and lifestyle coincided with an increased attention to spiritual matters, and Mr. Cash often spoke to audiences and interviewers about his Christian beliefs. He would later write a book about the Apostle Paul called Man In White.

By the late 1960s Mr. Cash was touring with an ensemble that included Perkins, members of the Carter Family and vocal group The Statler Brothers. Such a bevy of talent ensured audiences variety, and Mr. and Mrs. Cash kept just such a scene going at home by inviting musicians over to share stories and swap songs.

Mr. Cash maintained friendships with artists beyond the country world, and he and banjo innovator Earl Scruggs were two of the few prominent Nashville artists to mingle with politically left-leaning folk and pop musicians during this contentious time of civil rights unrest and war in Vietnam.

One friend of Mr. Cash's was Bob Dylan: They had kept up a correspondence since the early 1960s. Mr. Cash sang with Dylan on Girl From the North Country, the kickoff track to Dylan's 1969 Nashville Skyline album. Mr. Cash also contributed Grammy-winning liner notes to that album.

A difficult Far East tour in 1969 found Mr. Cash sometimes playing more than 10 shows a day for military troops in locales including Saigon, Vietnam. The stress of that tour wore on Mr. Cash and he went back to pill-popping.

"My liberation from drug addiction wasn't permanent," he would later write. "Though I never regressed to spending years at a time on amphetamines, I've used mood-altering drugs for periods of varying length at various times since 1967: amphetamines, sleeping pills and prescription painkillers."

In February 1969 Mr. Cash again made an album at a penitentiary. This time it was San Quentin, where he had previously visited three times. He had written a song called San Quentin for the occasion.

"San Quentin, may you rot and burn in hell," he sang, and inmates shouted a dangerous-sounding mix of appreciation and unleashed anguish. Mr. Cash would often later remark that the scene was barely controlled, and that if he had shouted, "Break!," the prisoners would have rioted.

Both San Quentin and Folsom Prison Blues were written in a first-person narrative that led many listeners to assume Mr. Cash himself had been to prison. He had not, though he spent a little time in jail on minor charges.

A Boy Named Sue, a Shel Silverstein-penned song recorded that night, was the biggest hit from the At San Quentin album. It was a five-week No. 1 country hit and it won the Country Music Association's single of the year prize.

June 1969 brought At San Quentin's release, and it marked the beginning of ABC-TV's The Johnny Cash Show. Mr. Cash recorded most of the show's 56 episodes at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, and he insisted that guest performers would include then-controversial artists including Dylan, Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. The atypical blend of country, rock, folk and jazz was intended to spotlight conjunctions, not collisions, and the program helped broaden Mr. Cash's fame among those who hadn't listened to country music.

Mr. Cash would sell more than 6 million records in 1969, making it the most successful year of his career. Vietnam was raging, Richard Nixon was president and Johnny Cash, a 37-year-old native of Kingsland, Ark., was bigger than The Beatles.

Chapter 4: A Fall

By the turn of the decade, Mr. Cash's music had become a meeting ground for formerly disconnected camps.

"I wondered how it was possible for a man to maintain constituencies in the widely separated countries of Bob Dylan and Billy Graham," wrote journalist Dorothy Gallagher, who profiled Mr. Cash during this period.

Mr. Cash's biggest 1970 hits were an indication of his expansive musical vision. He and Mrs. Cash made it to No. 2 on the Billboard country chart with folkie Tim Hardin's If I Were A Carpenter (for which the Cashes won a Grammy), and Mr. Cash scored a No. 3 hit with What Is Truth.

"This whole world's waking to a brand new day, and I solemnly swear it's gonna be their way," sang Mr. Cash. "Can you blame the voice of youth for asking, 'What is truth?' "

He released two No. 1 hits in 1970: One was a version of Kris Kristofferon's Sunday Morning Coming Down, an empathetic portrait of an addict. The other smash, which peaked in early 1971, was the folksy love song Flesh And Blood.

On March 3, 1970, Mrs. Cash gave birth to a boy, John Carter Cash. Six weeks later, Mr. Cash performed at the White House in front of President Nixon. While a Nixon aide told Mr. Cash that the president would like to hear him sing two right-wing country numbers - Guy Drake's Welfare Cadillac and Merle Haggard's Okie From Muskogee - the singer opted to sing gospel songs and some of his own material.

March 1971 also marked the final taping of The Johnny Cash Show, which was canceled amid growing dissension between the star and ABC. Mr. Cash fought for more creative control and the network grew tired of fighting about a show that was not drawing enough viewers.

His Man In Black single, which found Mr. Cash claiming that he would wear his signature black stage outfits as a somber nod to the needy, hungry, imprisoned, addicted and enlisted, also charted top 5.

By the end of 1971, he and Mrs. Cash had traveled to Tel Aviv, Israel, to film The Gospel Road, a movie about the life of Jesus Christ.

Mr. Cash was now a filmmaker, a father, a husband, a songwriter, a touring attraction, a celebrity and many other things. His recording career was stretched thin by his other interests, and he would not notch another No. 1 hit until 1976.

As Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and others turned heads and ears with a vigorous sound that signaled the onset of so-called Outlaw Movement, Mr. Cash made a series of middle-of-the-road albums that seldom rated mention alongside '50s and '60s triumphs.

Though not at his artistic peak, Mr. Cash was still Nashville's greatest superstar, an auditorium-packing concert draw, a sure-bet Country Music Hall of Famer (he would become the youngest-ever inductee in 1980) and a celebrity whose views on social issues were widely sought. The 1975 autobiography Man In Black detailed a rise to fame, numerous falls to drugs and an eventual acceptance of sobriety, marriage and godliness. The book furthered his already substantial fame.

"Since the late '60s, Cash's records have been rather strange - more the recorded evidence of a great artist floundering in confusion than the masterful products of Cash's own unique mold," wrote Country Music magazine's Patrick Carr.

1976's One Piece At A Time was a welcome return to a stripped-down sound reminiscent of Mr. Cash's 1950s work. The song became Mr. Cash's final No. 1 country hit as a solo artist. After that, the only time Mr. Cash's voice appeared on a top-charting country radio single was in 1985, as a member of supergroup The Highwaymen, with Jennings, Nelson and Kris Kristofferson.

Drugs maintained a pull on Mr. Cash. One early-1980s downturn occurred after one of his own ostriches attacked him. The Cashes kept an exotic animal park near their Old Hickory Lake home. Mr. Cash suffered five broken ribs, painkillers were prescribed and the cycle of addiction began again.

Mr. Cash would later surmise that some level of self-loathing was involved in all of the substance abuse. Even as fans and fellow musicians celebrated his accomplishments, even with unending devotion from his wife, he was unable to make peace with himself. In 1984, he entered the Betty Ford Center and was treated for addiction to morphine.

The lowest point in Mr. Cash's career may have come that same year when he failed to make the country Top 40 with an ill-conceived novelty song called Chicken in Black. In later interviews, he would call it "an embarrassment."

Columbia Records did not promote Mr. Cash's 1980s material with much fervor, though the company was quite good at selling the smart and sultry, cutting-edge recordings of his singing, songwriting daughter, Rosanne. Mr. Cash was proud and supportive, though he could not have failed to notice that not only was he no longer bigger than The Beatles, but he also was not even the top-charting Cash.

Columbia Records released Mr. Cash from his contract in 1986, creating an uproar among Cash devotees such as young gun Dwight Yoakam. It seemed logical enough to Mr. Cash, who had been unhappy with Columbia's lack of promotion since his 1977 concept album, The Rambler. He also knew that he'd done some damage to his commercial viability with material like Chicken in Black.

Mr. Cash secured a deal with Mercury/Polygram and recorded some excellent material (Beans For Breakfast, Last of the Drifters and a version of Guy Clark's Let Him Roll), but with the dawn of the 1990s, he was considering an exodus from recording.

"Saying goodbye to that game and just working the road, playing with my friends and family for people who really wanted to hear us, seemed very much like the thing to do," he wrote in Cash.

Chapter 5: Rising Again

In 1992, Mr. Cash was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an honor that reminded many of his spare rockabilly work on Sun Records with independent-minded producer Sam Phillips.

A year later, another independent-minded maverick - long-haired Rick Rubin, known for his work with rap and hard rock acts - would sign Mr. Cash to a record deal with American Recordings, setting into motion a rise back to contemporary viability.

Here was the so-simple-it's-brilliant idea, as supported by the man who had produced the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy: Record Johnny Cash unadorned, strumming an acoustic guitar with his thumb and singing.

Even before the world at large was able to hear the solo/acoustic album called American Recordings, Mr. Cash's credibility was rising. The association with Rubin quickly hoisted the Man in Black from creative quicksand, and his reinvigorated spirit caught on with young hipsters.

The Viper Room on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles provided a still talked-about "coming back out" party. There, Mr. Cash sang for a crowd packed with rock singers and movie stars.

"It was really a magical event," Rubin told writer Nick Tosches. "It's odd to be in a place like the Viper Room, which is kind of a small but loud nightclub, and have it be so quiet. It's nothing that you could imagine happening, that kind of silence and awe in an audience in that particular kind of place."

Noticing the age disparity between performer and audience at a 1994 Austin concert, Mr. Cash told the crowd, "I hope you enjoy the show, grandchildren."

In April 1994, American Recordings was released. Two recordings from the Viper Room show were included. Response was nearly universally positive, with Time magazine's review proclaiming: "He has reasserted himself as one of the greats of popular music."

Mr. Cash also was pleased, saying, "I think I'm more proud of it than anything I've ever done in my life. This is me. Whatever I've got to offer as an artist, it's here."

While American Recordings did not sell in astounding numbers, it did reawaken an interest in Mr. Cash's music and expand his audience. American Recordings made it to No. 23 on the country charts, making it the highest-charting of Mr. Cash's solo albums.

The album won a Grammy award for best contemporary folk album, and spawned a video for Delia's Gone that was played on MTV. After years of creative and commercial decline, Mr. Cash was cool again. Even as country radio ignored the revitalization, Mr. Cash regained a foothold in the rock 'n' roll world. He appeared on a show celebrating the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, recorded Willie Nelson's Time of the Preacher with a backing band that included members of Nirvana and Alice in Chains, and played a House of Blues set in Los Angeles with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Petty and the Heartbreakers also were featured prominently on Mr. Cash's second Rubin-produced album, Unchained, released in November 1996. This album abandoned the all-acoustic approach, even using distorted, post-punk electric guitars for a cover of alternative rock band Soundgarden's Rusty Cage. But Rubin and Mr. Cash also included rockabilly songs, gospel material and a bracing take on Petty's ballad Southern Accents. Unchained garnered another round of positive reviews.

Mr. Cash was honored Dec. 8, as President Clinton and others applauded him upon receiving a Kennedy Center award. Vice President Al Gore had recommended Mr. Cash, assessing that Mr. Cash's music examined "the entire range of existence, failure and recovery, entrapment and escape, weakness and strength, loss and redemption, life and death."

Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, Robert Duvall and others joined Rosanne Cash in the televised Kennedy Center tribute, and Mr. Cash wiped tears during his daughter's performance. In Cash, he wrote that the attention was flattering but that there was a flip side.

"The day after the Kennedy Center show, I came further down to earth when my daughters got together with me and voiced some very deep feelings they'd had for a very long time - told me things, that is, about the lives of girls whose daddy abandoned them for a drug," he wrote. "That was very hard."

Mr. Cash was quite correctly viewed in the public as a crusader for righteous things: for tolerance, spirituality and good music. But Rosanne's song My Old Man artfully rectified the heroic myth with the virtuous, honorable but blemished man:

"He believes what he says he believes," she sang. "But that don't make him a saint."

Chapter 6: "Sober, honest, defiant"

Less than a year after the Kennedy Center Honors, Mr. Cash leaned over during a concert in Flint, Mich., and nearly fell. He told the audience he was suffering from Parkinson's disease, at first drawing a laugh from a crowd that thought he was joking.

"It ain't funny," he said, according to a review in The Flint Journal. "It's all right. I refuse to give it some ground in my life."

The diagnosis of Parkinson's, which causes slowed movement, rigidity and tremors, forced Mr. Cash to cancel concerts and book promotions through 1997.

By Nov. 5, the Parkinson's diagnosis had been slightly altered. Manager Lou Robin announced that Baptist Hospital tests revealed Mr. Cash had a Parkinson's-related illness called Shy-Drager syndrome. While at Baptist that month, he became gravely ill with double pneumonia. Fans and friends worried as Mr. Cash lay unconscious, breathing with the help of a ventilator.

But once again, he proved himself a survivor. Some had observed his reckless lifestyle in the 1960s and supposed he would drink and drug himself to death. Some watched his slow recovery from a late 1980s heart surgery and thought him not long for the world. And many thought the rare, ugly-sounding Shy-Drager syndrome would do him in. All were wrong.

The Grammy Awards of February 1998 found Mr. Cash once again victorious. Despite country radio's refusal to play material from Unchained, the album won a Grammy for best country album.

Even as he reeled from illness, Mr. Cash's pugnacious spirit made waves along Music Row, as he sanctioned an advertisement in Billboard magazine that March. "American Recordings and Johnny Cash would like to acknowledge the Nashville music industry and country radio for your support," read the text, while the page's dominant image was Jim Marshall's 1969 San Quentin photograph, with Mr. Cash raising his right hand's middle finger.

As spring rolled around, Mr. Cash began reappearing. He sang two songs at a private gathering in April, but waited until June for his return to a public stage. As Kristofferson performed Sunday Morning Coming Down during a Ryman Auditorium show, Mr. Cash walked out to join him. Kristofferson cried at the sight and sound of his old friend.

A televised tribute concert in 1999 at Manhattan's Hammerstein Ballroom gave Mr. Cash a chance to once again sing and play his own songs. Musicians including Emmylou Harris, Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow and Wyclef Jean performed Mr. Cash's material and lavished praise on the icon, then 67 years old, but Mr. Cash's appearance was the night's undisputed highlight.

"If he felt the effects of his lingering disease, he didn't show it," Jay Orr wrote in The Tennessean. "Looking robust, his guitar slung behind him or held at a jaunty angle, Cash ambled confidently to the mike, began stroking his guitar strings up on the neck and launched into Folsom Prison Blues, with all the tics, head gestures and enthusiastic growls that characterized the performances of his prime."

Through much of 1999 and 2000, Mr. Cash was quietly compiling material for a third Rubin-produced album, this one to be titled American III: Solitary Man.

"I was very ill at the time," he later told The Tennessean. "I went into the studio on and off for a solid year, and I was never pleased with any of my performances. But then I started getting better late last year, like November, and I started working really hard on this record."

In that October 2000 interview, Mr. Cash said that his health was improving and that the diagnosis of Shy-Drager had been erroneous.

"My doctor told me in November that if I'd had it, I'd be dead by now,'' he said. "She said, 'You're getting better, so you don't have Shy Drager's. And you don't have Parkinson's."

Instead doctors told Mr. Cash he had autonomic neuropathy, a group of symptoms caused by nerve damage. It is at times associated with diabetes, though Mr. Cash sometimes denied in interviews that he had diabetes.

Friend and fellow country legend Merle Haggard appeared on American III, singing a duet with Mr. Cash. Haggard told The Tennessean, "Johnny Cash and I are as close as two men can be," but he worried about Mr. Cash's condition:

"He's able to laugh and sing and joke, but he's in a lot of pain," Haggard said. "He lives in pain and chooses between pain and pain pills. The only way he can enjoy life is to put up with the pain and not have any pills, so that's what he does."

American III was released Oct. 22, 2000, and it was the first recorded evidence that Mr. Cash's voice had changed significantly. His characteristic boom had been replaced with a raspier, more fragile instrument. If anything, tracks such as One and Field of Diamonds and were more tender and poignant than Mr. Cash could have previously summoned.

The Solitary Man track from American III earned Mr. Cash his 10th Grammy award, this one for best male country vocal performance, on Feb. 21, 2001. That day, Mr. Cash was released from the hospital after another bout with pneumonia. Trips to the hospital, usually for pneumonia or bronchitis, were becoming routine.

While others noted Mr. Cash's 70th birthday in 2002 by singing his old songs (two tribute albums were released that year), the Man in Black chose to forge ahead with new recordings. He went back to work with Rubin, preparing for the album that would become American IV: The Man Comes Around.

While the American albums were filled with worthwhile material, one thing Mr. Cash had not done in a long time was to pen a song that stood on equal footing with classics such as Big River or Flesh and Blood. He rectified that with his new album's title song, as listeners would find upon the album's Nov. 5, 2002, release.

"I worked harder and longer on that song than on anything I've ever written," Mr. Cash told The Tennessean.

Though the title song's apocalyptic vision was a highlight of American IV: The Man Comes Around, it was a cover version of rocker Trent Reznor's Hurt that spurred the album to a place among the top five country albums on the Billboard chart. Mr. Cash said he recorded Hurt because it was "the best anti-drug song I'd ever heard."

"The needle tears a hole," wrote Reznor. "The old familiar sting/ Tried to kill it all away/ But I remember everything."

Director Mark Romanek worked on the award-winning video, combining clips of Mr. Cash as a young man with footage that depicted the aged superstar, and including shots of the closed-down, flood-damaged House of Cash museum in Hendersonville.

"The place was in such a state of dereliction," Romanek told MTV. "That's when I got the idea that we could be extremely candid about the state of Johnny's health: as candid as Johnny has always been in his songs."

As video channels put Hurt into rotation, American IV sold more than 200,000 copies. His new version of Sun recording Give My Love to Rose won Mr. Cash his 11th Grammy: this one for best male country vocal.

Mr. Cash's influence on non-Nashville, non-country artists was underscored during a Ryman concert by British rock band Coldplay earlier this year.

"So many of our heroes have played here," said Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin. "From Johnny Cash, all the way through to Johnny Cash, including Johnny Cash."

On May 15, 2003, Mr. Cash was faced with the loss of his wife, June Carter Cash.

"My dad has lost his greatest companion, his musical partner, his soul mate," said Rosanne Cash at the funeral. Mr. Cash sat in the front pew and was lifted to his feet at service's end. He leaned over his wife's casket, then was helped back to his chair and wheeled out of the church.

But in the following weeks, Mr. Cash returned to recording and addressed concerns about his health with stubborn wit, saying, "I plan to outlive all my children. I'm not going anywhere."

In June, Mr. Cash appeared in Maces Springs, Va., at the venue known as the Carter Family Fold. He was hoarse and weak, but he sang several songs and spoke to the crowd:

"I don't know hardly what to say tonight about being up here without her. The pain is so severe there is no way of describing it."

Music was Mr. Cash's primary balm in attempting to quell that pain. He was often at his studio, working on tracks for an American V album with musicians including Marty Stuart and Jack Clement. Hospitalized at Baptist for the past three weeks with a stomach ailment, he was released Tuesday amid plans to fly to California next week for more recording dates. Late Thursday, he was rushed back to Baptist.

Where Are Your Mountains?

In the coming days, artists of all stripes will lavish words of praise upon Mr. Cash.

He will be remembered as a fallible man who sought honor and peace.

He will be remembered as a force of music and of personality.

He will be remembered by some as the greatest of all country music artists, and by others as the tall, wild howler who gave Hank Williams a run for his money.

Questions, too, will remain. What was the source of his inner turmoil, or of his expansive yet singular musical vision?

How could an artist who should by 1994 have been well past his prime find within himself an explosion of creativity?

How could a man constantly surrounded by friends and family embody such loneliness?

And, as Mr. Cash once wrote of his friend Bob Dylan, "So where are your mountains to match some men?"

Taylor Hawkins: What we know about the death of Foo Fighters ...

(CNN) The death of Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins shook the music world this weekend, with fans and musicians everywhere reeling from the news of his passing at age 50.

The circumstances of Hawkins' death remain largely unclear, but here's what we know so far.

He had a 25-year career with Foo Fighters

Hawkins was playing drums for Alanis Morissette before joining Foo Fighters in 1997 -- three years after the group's founding by frontman Dave Grohl -- in time to join the band's tour after the release of "The Colour and the Shape," per the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

"At first, it took me a while to find my place, it really did," Hawkins told CNN's Anderson Cooper in a 2014 interview for "60 Minutes," referencing Grohl's history as the drummer for the legendary grunge band Nirvana, which abruptly ceased with the death of Kurt Cobain in April 1994 . "But (Grohl) never made it hard."

"When you have a drummer like Taylor Hawkins in your band, I don't necessarily miss being the drummer -- because I have the greatest drummer in the world," Grohl said, calling Hawkins "a much more technically minded drummer than I am."

Foo Fighters wasn't Hawkins' only project. He had released solo material under his own name and with Taylor Hawkins & the Coattail Riders, in which Hawkins sang lead and played drums. The band released three albums, most recently 2019's "Get the Money."

Last year, Hawkins teamed up with Dave Navarro and Chris Haney of Jane's Addiction to form supergroup NHC (Navarro, Hawkins, Chaney). They released their debut EP "Intakes & Outtakes" in February.

Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins of Foo Fighters perform during Day 3 of Lollapalooza Chile 2022 at Parque Bicentenario Cerrillos in Santiago.

He died while on tour in South America

There's still a lot we don't know about how Hawkins died, but news of his passing broke Friday just as Foo Fighters was set to perform in Bogotá, Colombia, at the Festival Estéreo Picnic.

"The Foo Fighters family is devastated by the tragic and untimely loss of our beloved Taylor Hawkins. His musical spirit and infectious laughter will live on with all of us forever," the band said on Twitter. "Our hearts go out to his wife, children and family, and we ask that their privacy be treated with the utmost respect in this unimaginably difficult time."

Emergency responders received a report Friday evening about a patient with chest pain at a hotel north of the city, according to a statement from Bogotá's secretary of health. An ambulance was sent to the scene. A private health provider had already been providing treatment, but efforts to resuscitate to Hawkins were unsuccessful, the statement said.

Romeo Reyes, a concertgoer who traveled to Bogotá from El Salvador, told CNN the performance was canceled as fans gathered around 11 p.m. "About 10 minutes later, the news broke that Taylor had died," Reyes said.

"We were all sad," Reyes said.

The band's performance in Colombia was supposed to be followed by another on Sunday in São Paulo, Brazil.

Fans react after learning of the death of Foo Fighters' drummer Taylor Hawkins, at the Festival Estéreo Picnic in Bogotá.

What a preliminary report by Colombia's AG says

The cause of death was not disclosed in a preliminary "forensic medical study" released Saturday by Colombia's Attorney General's Office , which said a urine toxicology test found 10 substances, including THC, tricyclic antidepressants, benzodiazepines and opioids.

"The National Institute of Forensic Medicine continues the medical studies to achieve total clarification of the events that led to the death of Taylor Hawkins," the report said, and the attorney general's office will continue to investigate his cause of death in a "timely manner."

How he's being remembered by legendary colleagues

Funeral plans for Hawkins have not been released, but fans and colleagues the world over have been paying tribute to Hawkins in the days since his death -- including rock and roll legends like Roger Taylor, the drummer of Queen who Hawkins said had inspired him to get behind the drum set.

"He was a kind brilliant man and an inspirational mentor to my son Rufus and the best friend one could ever have," the Queen drummer wrote Saturday on Instagram, saying Hawkins' death was like "losing a younger favourite brother."

In his own tribute, Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page recalled playing with Foo Fighters in 2008 at Wembley Stadium, saying, "It was so good to play with him. I really admired him and he was a brilliant musician: his technique, his energy and spirited enthusiasm."

... and his fans

There are also tributes from everyday folks, fans who were touched by Hawkins and his music, like Franco Tolone, who tweeted footage of Hawkins singing Queen's "Somebody to Love" at his last performance on March 20 at Lollapalooza Argentina.

"Who would have thought that we were witnessing the last performance of Taylor Hawkins in his life ... A shock," Tolone wrote. "Goodbye, beast of music."

Another fan is 9-year-old Emma Sofia, who met Hawkins just days before his death after she set up her drums outside the band's hotel in Paraguay.

"We will remember him for his charisma and the beautiful gesture he had with Emma," the family wrote on her Instagram. "Taylor gave us something to believe in. He was, is and always will be an inspiration."

Jill Biden promotes vaccines in Nashville, but few get the jab at pop ...

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the name of the legendary musician referenced in statements by Brad Paisley. It was Charley Pride.

As first lady Jill Biden arrived in Nashville Tuesday on her latest stop in a vaccine advocacy tour, she was welcomed by state politicians, city officials, a country music superstar and a boisterous crowd of vaccinated fans. But the event was missing what it needed most – people getting vaccinated.

It appeared that only a few dozen vaccine recipients trickled through the pop-up vaccination clinic at the Ole Smoky Distillery south of Lower Broadway on Tuesday afternoon, and when Biden arrived at the event, only about 10 were there to greet her. Biden shook hands and thanked the small group, then leaned in close to comfort a teen at the moment she got her shot.

In some ways, the lack of recipients at the Tuesday event illustrates the exact problem the first lady hopes to solve. Vaccinations are stalling across the country, and the pace in Tennessee is among the slowest. Only 41% of Tennesseans have received at least one dose of a vaccine so far, the sixth-lowest percentage of all U.S. states, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.

“This state still has a little bit of a way to go,” Biden said Tuesday, speaking to a crowd of supporters that gathered to welcome her at the distillery. “Only three in 10 Tennesseans are vaccinated.”

The crowd booed.

“Well, you are booing yourselves.” Biden said, drawing laughs.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee:Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has no plans to offer incentives for receiving COVID-19 vaccine

Biden administration's July 4 vaccination goal:Biden administration admits it won't reach July 4 vaccination goal; CDC studies explain vaccination slowdown: Latest COVID-19 updates

Tennessee is now reporting only 50,000 people getting their first dose of a vaccine per week – down 75% from a peak pace in early April. State leaders have done little to slow the descent. Gov. Bill Lee touts vaccination as a personal choice and has rejected calls for incentives that have proven effective in other states. Last week, some conservative state lawmakers proposed dissolving the Tennessee Department of Health merely because it encouraged teenagers to be vaccinated.

During brief statements on Tuesday, Biden said she could not comprehend the swirling distrust and misinformation about vaccines. She repeatedly told the crowd the vaccines are safe, effective and free. They cheered in response, showing these were not the people who still needed to be convinced.

“You know what the vaccines mean for your family and your friends and your neighbors,” Biden said. “You know they are saving lives. You know the vaccines are the only way to get back to the open mics and the music festivals and the concerts that make this town so very special.”

Biden’s advocacy tour is part of the White House’s uphill battle against widespread vaccine mistrust that is deeply entangled in America’s political divide. Public polling and real-world data show Republicans are far less likely to be vaccinated, and many in these conservative circles cling to a partisan myth that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.

Faced with this opposition, the Biden administration conceded Tuesday it is almost certain to fall short of a goal of administering at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to 70% of all Americans by July 4. Vaccinations lag the most in deep red states in the South and the West, including in Tennessee.

Before traveling to Tennessee, the first lady attended a similar vaccination event in Jackson, Mississippi – one of the few states with vaccination rates even lower than Tennessee. She then flew to the Nashville airport where she was met by Mayor John Cooper and his brother, U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, before traveling to a pop-up vaccination clinic at the Ole Smokey Distillery. The event, organized by Kroger Health and the nonprofit Made to Save, offered doses of Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

Once at the distillery, Biden was met by country music superstar Brad Paisley, who has advocated for vaccination and denounced the politicization of the pandemic. Paisley toured the pop-up clinic at Biden’s side, then played a few songs and invoked the memory of Charley Pride, a legendary musician who died from the coronavirus last year.

Brad Paisley:'There's no leap of faith': Why Brad Paisley is going to bat for COVID-19 vaccines

“If I had a time machine, I would go back to November, I would give him that vaccine, and he would be here,” Paisley said.

“Of course, we can’t do that,” he added. “All we have is the future. Let’s save whoever is next.”

Tennessean reporter Adam Friedman contributed to this story.

Brett Kelman is the health care reporter for The Tennessean. He can be reached at 615-259-8287 or at brett.kelman@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @brettkelman.

The Rolling Stones pay tribute to Charlie Watts on 'first-ever tour ...

Jim Salter

The Associated Press

ST. LOUIS — The Rolling Stones are touring again, this time without their heartbeat, or at least their backbeat.

The legendary rockers launched their pandemic-delayed "No Filter" tour Sunday at the Dome at America's Center in St. Louis without their drummer of nearly six decades. It was clear from the outset just how much the band members — and the fans — missed Charlie Watts, who died last month at age 80.

Except for a private show in Massachusetts last week, the St. Louis concert was their first since Watts' death.

The show opened with an empty stage and only a drumbeat, with photos of Watts flashing on the video board. After the second song, a rousing rendition of "It's Only Rock 'N' Roll (But I Like It)," Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood came to the front of the stage. Jagger and Richards clasped hands as they thanked fans for the outpouring of support and love for Watts.

Jagger acknowledged it was emotional seeing the photos of Watts.

"This is our first-ever tour we've ever done without him," Jagger said. "We'll miss Charlie so much, on and off the stage."

Charlie Watts was magic on the drums. These 5 Rolling Stones songs prove it.

Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts dies at 80: Playing the drums was all he ever wanted

The band then dedicated "Tumbling Dice" to Watts.

The tour had been scheduled for 2020 before the coronavirus virtually shut down the touring industry. Signs of the pandemic were everywhere at the show in Missouri, a state hit hard by the virus's delta variant.

The tens of thousands of fans wore masks as required by St. Louis' anti-virus protocol. The Stones themselves appeared in a public service announcement urging anyone with symptoms to stay home. A vaccination site was set up at the dome, with plans for similar sites at each tour stop.

The concert itself featured the same driving beat personified by Watts, thanks to his replacement, Steve Jordan. The drummer may be new to fans but he's hardly new to the Stones — Jordan has performed for years with Richards' side project, X-Pensive Winos, along with many other leading acts.

Still, die-hard fans couldn't help but miss Watts, widely considered one of rock's greatest drummers, even though his real love was jazz. He joined Jagger and Richards in the Rolling Stones in 1963. Wood joined in 1975.

Charlie Watts' best quotes on Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and the Rolling Stones: 'I don’t actually like touring'

For Laura Jezewski, 62, of Omaha, Nebraska, seeing the Stones without Watts was bittersweet.

"It's really sad," she said. "He's the first of the old Stones to pass away."

The show featured the band's long litany of hits. Jagger hardly looked like a 78-year-old man, strutting around the stage like a man half — or one-third of his age; a constant whirl of motion. His vocals, and the guitar work of Wood and Richards, sounded as good as ever.

After St. Louis, the tour will include stops in Charlotte, North Carolina; Pittsburgh; Nashville, Tennessee; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Tampa, Florida; Dallas; Atlanta; Detroit; and ending in Austin, Texas, on Nov. 20. The band also added new dates in Los Angeles on Oct. 14 and Oct. 17, and a concert in Las Vegas on Nov. 6.

Jezewski and her 60-year-old husband, Brad, brought their 30-year-old daughter, Sarah, to St. Louis for the concert. It was Sarah's first chance to see the Rolling Stones. Her mom and dad have seen them in various places — Ames, Iowa; Boulder, Colorado; Denver; even Wichita, Kansas — dating back to the 1970s.

With the surviving band members well into their 70s, the Jezewskis didn't want to miss this chance.

"If it is their last time — we're here," Brad Jezewski said. "And if there's another tour, we'll be there, too."

'One of the greatest': Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, more mourn Rolling Stones' Charlie Watts

The history behind Khalid's 2017 rise to fame

In spring 2016, few El Pasoans knew a 17-year-old teenager by the name of Khalid Donnel Robinson.

Fast-forward to the final days of 2017, and the whole country, and a lot of people worldwide, have heard of the singer-songwriter, now simply known as Khalid.

But in those dwindling days of his senior year at Americas High, Khalid merely wanted to have a new song up on his Soundcloud page before prom. Soundcloud is a social media website and app used by artists and fans to share music.

The song he came up with was "Location," and it was co-written by himself and a handful of producers and musicians in El Paso and Atlanta.

A LOOK BACK:Khalid releases new video for 'Shot Down'

Khalid debuts title track off 'American Teen'

The song would launch Khalid from an unknown military kid who moved to El Paso shortly before his senior year in high school, to a nationally known, acclaimed R&B and pop sensation with an MTV Award for Best New Artist and, count 'em, five Grammy Award nominations.

This is a look back at Khalid's time in El Paso, and his meteoric rise to fame, as told in various interviews with a few key players in the El Paso Times and other media outlets and through social media.

The players

Khalid: The singer's debut single "Location" peaked at No. 8 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, No. 2 on the Hot R&B Songs chart and No. 16 on its Hot 100 singles chart; the song has sold the equivalent of 3 million copies nationally, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Khalid's debut album, "American Teen," peaked at No. 4 on Billboard's albums chart and No. 1 on its R&B albums chart. He is nominated for five Grammy Awards including Best New Artist, Best R&B Song for "Location" and best Urban Contemporary Album. The 60th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony will be held Jan. 28 at Madison Square Garden in New York. Khalid spoke to the El Paso Times in a phone interview prior to his concert at Tricky Falls in February.

MORE:Khalid finds his 'Location' in El Paso

Tunji Balogun, vice president of A&R, RCA Records: Balogun is a record company executive who has worked with a number of acclaimed hip-hop and R&B artists, including Bryson Tiller, SZA, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem and 50 Cent. Balogun discovered Khalid through Soundcloud. He spoke to the El Paso Times in a phone interview in January.

Kylie Jenner: Reality TV and social media star.

Kristopher Rivera, former El Paso Times reporter: Rivera attended a sold-out concert in Washington, D.C., during Khalid's first tour. This story contains excerpts from Rivera's review for the Times' entertainment blog, The Beat.

Dave Rocco, global head of artist marketing for Spotify: In March, Spotify sponsored a special surprise concert for Khalid's "biggest fans" at Americas High.

Patricia Cuevas, principal at Americas High: Cuevas called Khalid one of "her chiples," or spoiled students, while he was enrolled at Americas High.

Khalid's family moves to El Paso, summer 2015

Khalid: I didn’t feel like I had a home until I moved to El Paso. The love and the friendships I made were influential. El Paso is where I started. I don’t feel like I’d be making the music I’m making now if I hadn’t gone there. Everyone showed a lot of support at my high school. That’s what crafted my interest in recording. I always wanted to do music, record, but I never had the confidence to do it.

Record labels take notice, April 2016

Balogun: I think the first song I heard was "Stuck On U." A friend of mine sent it to me. I was struck by how mature the lyrics were. (Khalid) was only 17 at the time. He became an artist I was watching. I got more and more impressed with each release. He put up a Frank Ocean cover (“Lost”), then two more songs, “Coaster” and “Would You.” They kept getting better. I first reached out to him in April (2016).

READ: Khalid album signing Friday at FYE

Recording 'Location,' spring 2016

Khalid: It was my first time recording in Atlanta. I started the chorus in Atlanta. I was around different producers like Syk Sense (who produced the original beat for “Location”). I was inspired by the culture there and I was trying to find a sound. I went through a long studio session and I almost quit. Syk came to me and asked if I wanted to continue, and I was like, “Hell, yeah.” I took the chorus back to El Paso and recorded (the verses) at Beacon Hill (Recording Studios). I had friends, my mom, all these people around. And I wrote it all there. I took bits and pieces from drafts on Twitter and I put it in a song.

Khalid uploads 'Location' to his Soundcloud page, spring 2016

Khalid: I pushed to release “Location.” Senior prom was right around the corner. I was like, “Damn, I need to get a song out." ... I put it on Soundcloud like, “Let’s see what this does.”

READ:Khalid signs 'American Teen' CDs for El Paso fans

Balogun: When he put out “Location,” it was like, “Oh, my god. This kid knows how to make a hit, in addition to being a talented vocalist and being ahead of his age." With “Location,” the stars aligned.

Kylie Jenner posts 'Location' on Snapchat, May 27, 2016

@TheGreatKhalid on Twitter, May 27: I can’t believe Kylie Jenner is listening to my song ‘Location’ on her Snapchat story.

Khalid graduates from Americas High, where he was elected Prom King and Most Likely to Go Platinum:

@TheGreatKhalid on Twitter, May 28: I woke up from my high school graduation and @KylieJenner is listening to my song "Location" for the 2nd day in a row.

Khalid readies debut album, 'American Teen,' August-December 2016

Balogun: He had already built his own community around himself. ... We can see that there’s no reason to delay in putting out music, especially in 2017. He’s a millennial. He’s 18 years old. Kids his age don’t need (outside) validation to love an artist. They’ve bought in. He makes music very quickly and we had enough music to go ahead and make a (full-length) project. I felt it was important for him to take advantage of what he was writing about, which was his high school experience, being young, disillusioned and trying to find love. In reality, (the reason RCA put out his album so quickly) was him. He’s just that good. Why would we wait?

MORE:'American Teen' by El Paso's Khalid No. 9 in US

Khalid embarks on first national tour, January-February 2017

Khalid: We sold out New York City, Los Angeles. A lot of shows are already sold out. It gives me the confidence and a sense of excitement for the next tour.

Balogun: We were nervous at first to put him out on the road, but he’s stepped up to the challenge. He’s never done a lot of shows, maybe three or four before we signed him. But he grew up doing plays and choir. He’s been singing and performing all his short life. He really wanted this. He stepped up and really delivered. I can see the growth. He’s making it his own, like he did with songwriting and recording. He’s a natural.

Rivera: The night of Jan. 21, in the Adams Morgan strip (in Washington, D.C.), Khalid played to a sold-out crowd in a small intimate basement at Songbyrd. About a hundred fans lined up, while some scavenged for an extra ticket. ... At the end of the night, Khalid had a line of fans waiting to meet him. While meeting fans, Khalid was ecstatic to hear a song playing at the club by another upcoming El Paso artist, Evander Griiim.

Khalid performs at a sold-out Tricky Falls in Downtown, Feb. 4

Khalid: It’s really special. I’ve gotten a lot of requests to do it at a bigger venue. I want my first El Paso show to be super personal — as personal as you can get with 1,000-plus people. I feel like it’s going to be a growing experience for me. People are asking for a bigger venue, but I want it to be a growing experience for me. This is where I started and imagine what I’m going to do later on. At the same time, it’s for fans who were able to buy tickets early and supported me early. People bought tickets after the first tweet. It feels good when people genuinely support you; it’s very special. A lot of people might be upset (I didn’t perform at a bigger venue), but it’s not going to be my only El Paso show.

'American Teen' released, March 3

@TheGreatKhalid on Twitter, Jan. 31: March 3. My debut album. The day my life changes forever.

Balogun: He wrote every song on this album and came up with all the concepts; he’s an original. He’s a once-every-20-years kind of artist; I really believe that. I’ve worked with a lot of artists, but no one this talented at 18 years old. His limit is whatever his dreams are. … I believe we have all the ingredients for a legendary artist.”

Khalid performs 'Location' on 'The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,' March 15

@TheGreatKhalid on Twitter, March 8: Guess who's performing on Jimmy Fallon next week!? I can't believe it. I'm so excited.

READ:Khalid to be musical guest on 'Fallon'

@TheGreatKhalid on Twitter, March 15: Damn. I really performed on @Fallon Tonight. I can't believe it. It's only just the beginning.

Khalid performs a surprise concert at Americas High, March 24

Khalid: It's surreal. It's a moment of humility for me. I get to go back to my roots and look at a field that I saw in high school, walk around the halls. It keeps me level-headed.

Rocco: Khalid’s deep connection to El Paso made it the perfect place to celebrate the release of his debut album, "American Teen," with his family, friends, fans and city that inspired him.

READ:Khalid surprises fans at Americas High School

Cuevas: He has this larger than life personality — always singing, dancing, singing. To see him grow up the way he has, I can't think of anyone more deserving. He's still humble and he still has his love for the 915, as he says on "American Teen."

Location is certified platinum by the RIAA, May 22

@TheGreatKhalid on Twitter: My first single Location went platinum, I can't believe it! Dreams are becoming a reality.

Khalid wins MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist, Aug. 27

Khalid: “I’ve got to thank the city of El Paso for standing behind me. This isn’t just for me — this is for the city,”

MORE:Khalid named Best New Artist at MTV Video Music Awards

@TheGreatKhalid on Twitter: Holy (expletive) I can't believe that I won! Thank you so much everyone for going so hard for me! This is the start of something great!

Khalid announces that 'American Teen' has been certified platinum, Oct. 24

MORE:Khalid's debut album and latest single go platinum; singer to tour next spring

@TheGreatKhalid on Twitter: Earlier this year, I told myself that March 3rd was going to be the day to change my life. 7 months later, American Teen is Platinum. ... Thank you guys so much for everything man, this is so hard to process (because) none of this feels real! I'm so happy (right now)! Love you guys!

Khalid is nominated for five Grammy Awards, Nov. 28

READ:Khalid named one of the most influential teens in 2017

@TheGreatKhalid on Twitter: Woke up to find out that I’m nominated for 5 Grammys. I’m in shock. I’m so thankful man this is unbelievable.

Khalid is interviewed by the New York Times about his Grammy nominations, Nov. 28

Khalid: I woke up at like 5:30 in the morning in L.A. It was one of those anxious moments, like Christmas, where you wait to go see what’s under the tree. I was very excited, but it doesn’t feel all too real right now. Not long after seeing the nominations, I got a phone call from my mom congratulating me — that was very special. She was screaming on the phone, telling me how proud of me she was and how all my work paid off. And (saying) that she has to go find a dress for the award show.

MORE:Khalid earns five Grammy nominations

Dave Acosta may be reached at 546-6138; dacosta@elpasotimes.com; @Chuy_Vuitton on Twitter.