This month Stuart Ryan checks out the simple but poweful ‘pick and strum’ style of the original outlaw country star, the fabled Man In Black.

Johnny Cash playing his legendary black Martin D-35JC

Think of country music and it’s hard not to conjure up an image of the legendary ‘Man In Black’, original outlaw country legend Johnny Cash. His warm bassbaritone voice and relaxed yet tight strumming patterns are immediately recognisable and laid the foundations for country rhythm guitar in the decades that followed. His mournful songs of heartache, struggle and trouble put him alongside Hank Williams on the pedestal of country fame.

Growing up in Arkansas in the 1930s Cash started his working life in cotton fields at the age of five and would have learned the tradition of the ‘work song’ from an early age singing along with his family and fellow workers. Guitar lessons came courtesy of his mother and a friend and by age 12 he was already writing songs.