On the Tennessee River just north of Chattanooga, there is a system of subterranean tunnels and caves, some of which stretch all the way under the mountains as far as Alabama. It was here that Andrew Jackson's army slaughtered the Nickajack. It was here that, during the Civil War, soldiers from both sides took refuge and carved their names in the rock.
It was here that in 1967 Johnny Cash lay down to die.
Nickajack Cave was still accessible in those days. It was a frightening and dangerous place piled high with bones - both Nickajack and those of more recent explorers who had gone in with flashlights and had never come out. The Man in Black wanted to join them. The cave was perfect for his desperate purpose as he crawled for hours, further and further, until his torch finally expired. In total darkness and lost somewhere deep under the mountain, Johnny Cash began a long wait for death.
Cash was in a bad way in 1967 and he tells it straight in his book Cash: The Autobiography: "I was nothing but leather and bone; there was nothing in my blood but amphetamines; there was nothing in my heart but loneliness; there was nothing between me and my God but distance." As he saw it, he had drifted from every stabilising force in his life and the only option open to him was to "let God take me from this earth and put me wherever He puts people like me."
But as all music fans know, Johnny Cash did not die in Nickajack Cave in 1967. He may well have willed his own death but he soon realised that it wasn't really his call. "I thought I'd left Him," he says, "but He hadn't left me. I felt something very powerful start to happen to me, a sensation of utter peace, clarity and sobriety." And so The Man in Black began to follow the only breath of wind in Nickajack Cave. He began to crawl through the bones and the darkness and finally made it out into the Tennessee sunshine. His mother and the woman who was later to become his wife, June Carter, were inexplicably waiting for him and Cash committed himself to getting off the pills. For him, the experience had been a clear revelation of the will of God. "He is now my Counsellor," he says, "my Rock of Ages to stand upon."
Johnny Cash tells stories like this one with unblinking conviction. He is matter of fact about just about everything - even such dramatic moments as his underground encounters with God himself. "He didn't speak to me," Cash insists, "He never has, and I'll be surprised if He ever does." Whether it be death, drugs, God or Roy Orbison, Cash talks a mixture of earthly experience and heavenly aspiration. He is part ordinary man and part wise man, part student and part theologian, part blunt speaker and part poet.
And this is precisely what makes him such good company as you read his book or listen to his songs. These are these qualities that have made him such a towering presence in American music.
John R. Cash was born in Arkansas on February 26th 1932. He was one of seven children who grew up on a cotton "colony" - one of the Federal government's co-operatives set up as part of the New Deal. Farmers like Cash senior who had been wiped out during the Depression, were simply relocated to new land bought by government. The Cash family found itself in Dyess, Mississippi County, Number 266, Road Three. "I started out in the fields as a water boy. By the time I was eight I was dragging a cotton sack. We didn't carry those nice baskets you see in the movies; we used heavy canvas sacks with tar-covered bottoms, 6 feet long if you were one of the younger children, 6 feet for the big kids and grown ups . . . Going at it really hard for 10 hours or so, I could pick about 300 lbs; most days it was more like 200."
In the early 1950s Cash joined the airforce and was stationed in Germany. His military speciality was working out what one Russian was signalling to another in Morse code and Cash was called in for the trickiest jobs. And while he famously copied the first news of Stalin's death, he was also listening out for the sounds of home, and every Saturday night he listened to the Grand Ole Opry live from Nashville. As soon as he got back he formed a group called the Tennessee Two and later the Tennessee Three. They signed to Sun Records and, in 1956, recorded a hit song called I Walk the Line.
And so Cash became part of that Memphis scene which included Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins - their legendary jam in Sun Studios becoming known as The Million Dollar Quartet recordings. Much of the material they sang on that day was gospel music and that is where Cash's heart lay. Sam Phillips thought otherwise and in 1959, Cash signed to Columbia and began to record more folk based material: songs about heroes, Native Americans, outlaws and the ordinary American. His deep voice with its distinctive waver set against simple arrangements made Cash a rather unique figure. His image of the tough Man in Black was working well too, and Folsom Prison Blues sealed it with the line: "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die." This tragic portrayal of a condemned man was the obvious hit of his 1968 concert at Folsom Prison itself.
The broader appeal of Cash was recognised in 1969 when he reached a new audience through his appearance on Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline album and also that year he scored his first major, if perhaps unlikely hit, with A Boy Named Sue. In the 1970s Cash took to performing with what might best be referred to as a troupe. Apart from The Tennessee Three with W.S. Holland on drums, Cash was joined by Carl Perkins and various members of the Carter Family (he had married June Carter in 1968). The result was a virtual American music revue, from old time Gospel to the famous oomchicka rhythms of the Tennessee Three to Cash's more mainstream favourites.
Cash did not sell many records in the 1980s and eventually grew tired hearing about demographics and watching marketing men waving pie charts at him. His response was to make his last record for CBS an "intentionally atrocious" song called Chicken in Black. In the mid-1990s Cash was back, however, and made what many people regard as his best records ever. The producer Rick Rubin wanted Cash for American Recordings - a label better known for rap and metal. He wanted to hear Johnny Cash in the raw, singing whatever Johnny Cash wanted to sing, and this was exactly what Cash himself had been wanting to do all his life. The two subsequent albums American Recordings and Unchained brought Cash a whole new audience and a final confirmation of his greatness.
And so, many years on, the Cash myth is still a powerful one. Everybody knows about that crazy Johnny Cash who took a lot of pills and wrecked hotels and automobiles, but there is much more to the Cash mythology than just the hard-living musician cliche. Like John Wayne, he has blurred the lines so much as to become some bizarre representation of mythical America itself. "Sometimes I might have gone too far," he says, "not such an uncommon trait in a person on amphetamines. I'd put on my cowboy clothes - real ones, antiques - and go out in the desert or an abandoned ranch somewhere, trying to feel how they felt back then, be how they were. I wore authentic Western clothes on the road and in concert too. Sometimes I even strapped on my gun before I walked in through the backstage door. It would be loaded, naturally."
But there are absolute realities there too. Johnny Cash is that actual poor cotton farmer who became friendly with a string of presidents. He was that actual travelling musician who ate up the freeways of America in a bus called Unit One with a Navajo dream catcher and a St Bridget's cross to ward off disaster. He is that actual God-fearing giant of a man who bears the marks of years of bad living. He is, in fact, a monumental version of America on legs - now in his late 60s, what Elvis Presley might have been.
Recent reports have it that Johnny Cash is not in great health - a situation he anticipated with his customary wisdom and humour: "When death starts beating the door down," he says, "you need to be reaching for your shotgun, and when you know he might be in your part of town, which is true for anyone my age, you should be taking care of business. Quit gazing out the window at the lake and start telling your stories."
Those stories, like the music, are priceless.
Cash: The Autobiography is published by Harper Collins at £20 in UK