Cash Archives Come to Belmont
A collection of documents, songs, letters, poems and notes from country music legend Johnny Cash now has a home at Belmont University.
Cash’s children gave Belmont his personal archives in July. Since then, the process of digitizing some of the archives and offering classes related to them has begun.
“We are thrilled that our father’s archive has found a home at Belmont University,” said the Cash family in a press release. “An enormous body of his work, including unpublished writings, will now be available for scholars and students to more intimately connect with the foundational elements of his artistry for years to come.”
The archives, valued at $8.6 million, show the human side of Cash, going beyond who he was as an artist.
“It’s less about Johnny’s career,” said Phil Shay, the senior director of development for the Curb College. “It’s more about the person of Johnny Cash.”
The acquisition of the archives also involved fundraising, with donations from Scott and Sandy Borchetta, Mike and Linda Curb and the Harper House Music Foundation to help with preservation, stewardship and educational opportunities, Shay said in an email.
The archives are connected with the Johnny Cash Learning Center, an “academic and cultural hub” with archival research space, exhibits and “immersive educational programming,” according to the press release. The Learning Center will be housed in the Curb College’s new building on Music Row, which is scheduled to open in 2028.
While the archives are currently not available for public view, Shay said that the Music Row building for the learning center is “intended to create community,” with a combination of digital materials and appointment-based access for physical materials available.
“There will be a front-facing side of it,” he said.
Some parts of the archives will remain private, as they contain personal information about people who are still alive, Shay said
The archives also mean that ideas for classes about Cash have been introduced. Topics for potential classes include music business, songwriting, social justice, music, literature and film, recording techniques, social and political themes in music and humanity as they relate to Cash.
One class about Cash is currently being taught at Belmont: a two-semester Honors Project class called “The American Record: Johnny Cash and the Archives.”
Taught by Mary Ellen Pethel, who is also the director of the Learning Center, the class has focused on public history research and has not delved too deep into Cash or the archives yet, said Anna Leuning, a student taking the course.
“We hopefully will be diving into it soon,” Leuning said, also saying that she finds Cash to be “a really interesting American public figure.”
Another student in the class, Eva Stone, echoed that sentiment.
“He has a lot of mystique to him,” Stone said. “He’s a very interesting character.”
Their many uses aside, Shay, Stone and Leuning all agreed that Belmont is an appropriate home for the archives, a conclusion the Cash children also came to.
“I think they were all like, ‘we couldn’t imagine this not being at Belmont,’” Shay said. “It felt like a perfect fit.”
Written by Rachel Suggs
Comments