Rosanne Cash

Induction Year: 2015

Birth Name: Rosanne Cash

Birth Date: 05-24-1955

Place of Birth: Memphis, Tennessee

The songwriting of Rosanne Cash was strikingly individualistic and poetic when contrasted with her country hit making peers of the 1980s. She then became a leading figure in the burgeoning Americana music movement of the new millennium.

She was born in Memphis in 1955. Her father, Johnny Cash, released his first single later that year and emerged as a country star in 1956. The family moved to California in 1958.

Rosanne Cash and her three younger sisters were raised in Ventura, largely by their mother, Vivian Liberto Cash. By the 1960s, Johnny Cash was on the road constantly as he rose to superstardom. Johnny and Vivian divorced in late 1967.

Following her graduation from high school in 1973, Rosanne sought closer contact with her father. She spent three years on the road with his show as a wardrobe assistant and backing vocalist.

In 1976, Rosanne moved to London and briefly worked for CBS Records there. She then enrolled in Vanderbilt University in Nashville and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Hollywood. In 1978, Rosanne began recording tapes of songs she had written. The German record label Ariola approached her about making an album, so she moved overseas to record in Munich. The resulting LP was never issued in the U.S.

After returning to America, she married singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell in 1979. He later became a Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee of 2003. With Crowell as her producer, she issued Right or Wrong as her first U.S. LP in 1979.

In 1981, the couple moved from Los Angeles to Nashville, and she released Seven Year Ache as her star-making collection. The album earned a Gold Record and was hailed as a cornerstone of the “young country” movement. Its self-penned title song was the first of her 11 No. 1 country hits.

Somewhere in the Stars (1982) contained more hits. Her deeply personal collection Rhythm & Romance was issued in 1985. Her song “Hold On” won BMI’s country Song of the Year honor. When she’d lost at the 1983 Grammy Awards, she turned to Crowell and said, “I’ve got my new dress, I’ve got my new shoes tonight: I don’t know why they don’t want me.” That line became the basis for the LP’s Cash-Crowell composition “I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me,” the song that won her a 1985 Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. She has earned more than 10 other Grammy nominations.

Her 1987 LP King’s Record Shop, which drew more heavily on roots and country music than the previous record, yielded four number one singles. In 1990, the brooding song cycle Interiors became her first totally self-composed and self-produced collection. Hailed as her masterwork by critics, it was rejected by country radio.

She and Crowell divorced in 1992. Rosanne moved to New York, married producer/songwriter/guitarist Jon Leventhal, became a published author and embarked on a series of albums that were embraced by the emerging Americana genre. These include The Wheel (1993), 10 Song Demo (1996), Rules of Travel (2003), Black Cadillac (2006), The List (2009) and The River & The Thread (2014).

Rosanne was nominated as the Americana Music Association’s Artist of the Year in 2006, and “Black Cadillac” was an AMA Song of the Year contender. In 2010, The List was named the AMA’s Album of the Year. In 2012 Rosanne received the AFTRA Lifetime Achievement award for Sound Recordings. She completed a residency at the Library of Congress in December 2013. She received the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award in the Performing Arts in 2014. That same year she was honored with multiple nominations from the AMA for Artist of the Year, Album of the Year (for The River & The Thread) and Song of the Year (for “A Feather’s Not a Bird”). Those same recordings also earned her three 2014 Grammy Awards for Best Americana Album, Best American Roots Song and Best American Roots Performance. In 2015, Rosanne was chosen as both an Artist In Residence at the Country Music Hall of Fame and as a Perspective Series artist at Carnegie Hall.

Rosanne is also an author whose four books include the best-selling memoir Composed, which the Chicago Tribune called “one of the best accounts of an American life you’ll likely ever read.” Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, the Oxford-American, the Nation and many more print and online publications.

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Song Catalog

"A Feather’s Not A Bird"

(written with John Leventhal)

2015 Grammy Award for Best American Roots Song; 2014 Americana Music Award for Best American Roots Song

Rosanne Cash 2014
 

"Black Cadillac"

Rosanne Cash 2006

"Blue Moon With Heartache"

Rosanne Cash1982 #1 country
 

"God Is In The Roses"

Rosanne Cash 2006
 

"Halfway House"

Rosanne Cash 1985

"Hold On"

1987 BMI Country Song of the Year

Rosanne Cash1986 #5 country
 

"House On The Lake"

(written with John Leventhal)

Rosanne Cash 2006

"I Don't Know Why You Don't Want Me"

(written with Rodney Crowell)

Rosanne Cash1985 #1 country
 

"If It Weren't For Him"

(written with Vince Gill)

Vince Gill1985 #10 country
 

"If You Change Your Mind"

(written with Hank DeVito)

Rosanne Cash1988 #1 country
 

"I’ll Change For You"

Rosanne Cash w/ Steve Earle 2003
 

"Looking For You"

(written with Rodney Crowell)

Rodney Crowell1987 #59 country
Rosanne Cash 1993
 

"Modern Blue"

(written with John Leventhal)

Rosanne Cash 2014
 

"My Old Man"

Rosanne Cash 1985
 

"Never Alone"

(written with Vince Gill)

Vince Gill1989 #22 country
Rosanne Cash 2006
 

"Night School"

(written with John Leventhal)

Rosanne Cash 2014
 

"On The Surface"

(written with Jimmy Tittle)

Rosanne Cash1991 #69 country
 

"Rules Of Travel"

(written with John Leventhal)

Rosanne Cash 2003
 

"Second To No One"

Rosanne Cash1986 #5 country
 

"September When It Comes"

(written with John Leventhal)

Rosanne Cash w/ Johnny Cash 2003

"Seven Year Ache"

Rosanne Cash1981 #1 country
Trisha Yearwood w/ Rosanne Cash 2001
 

"Tell Heaven"

(written with John Leventhal)

Rosanne Cash 2014
 

"The Good Intent"

(written with John Leventhal)

Rosanne Cash 2006
 

"The Wheel"

Rosanne Cash1993 #45 adult contemporary
 

"The World Unseen"

Rosanne Cash 2006
 

"This World"

(written with Gary William Friedman, Herb Shapiro)

The Staple Singers 1979
 

"Western Wall"

Linda Ronstadt & Emmylou Harris 1999
Rosanne Cash 2003
 

"What We Really Want"

Rosanne Cash1990 #39 country
 

"When The Master Calls The Roll"

(written with John Leventhal)

Rosanne Cash 2014
 

"World Of Strange Design"

(written with John Leventhal)

Rosanne Cash 2014

Other Media

Rosanne Cash

Induction Year: 2015