Through The   Eyes Of A Fan 

Tributes To Johnny Cash
At The White House

Johnny Cash 
Visits The White House 

  From Folsom Prison to the White House, few entertainers have run the gamut like Johnny Cash. This American icon and country music legend is the subject of a retrospective exhibition in honor of his 70^th birthday.  

During his nearly fifty years in the music industry Cash has performed for five U.S. Presidents, traveled to Vietnam to entertain the troops, and recorded over 100 albums including his historic live concert recordings at Folsom and San Quentin prisons.

Beginning Saturday, Oct. 8 at  10:00 AM PST , the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, the featured Exhibit will be "Johnny Cash: A 70th Birthday Retrospective." The exhibit will chronicle Johnny's career from the very beginning through present. An extensive collection of memorabilia, including stage used costumes, guitars, gold records, handwritten lyrics, concert poster and much more will be on display. Johnny himself has sent his Kennedy Center Honors Medallion and his National Medal of Arts for display. The Library is located in   Yorba  Linda  ,  CA  . For full details, visit www.nixonlibrary.org and click on Johnny's photo once there. This is something Johnny Cash fans CAN'T miss!!  

Before the President met Elvis, he met Johnny Cash.

Both visited the White House at the President's invitation, but Mr. Cash did so both as a performer, at a concert for the Nixons and their guests in April 1970, and an advocate of prison reform during an Oval Office meeting in July 1972. Mr. Cash, an Air Force veteran, also went to South Vietnam to perform for our troops.

President Nixon had a special affinity for the American heartland, and Mr. Cash's is quintessential heartland music - indeed one of the driving forces behind the roots revival in popular music during the 1990s. The two come together again this Saturday, when the Nixon Library unveils its latest special exhibition, "Johnny Cash: A 70^th Birthday Tribute." It features videotaped performances ranging from the 1950s to the 1990s, guitars, clothing, handwritten lyrics, and rarely seen personal items running the gamut from Mr. Cash's early days in Kingsland, Arkansas to the present.

The driving force behind the exhibit is a neighbor of the Nixon Library in Corona, California, Bill Miller, who became both a Nixon and Cash fan in 1968, a pivotal year for politics and music alike.

Bill was eight when he first started campaigning door-to-door for RN in his hometown of Eagle Mountain, California. As a result of the protests against the Vietnam War, he said, RN was his man. 

As for the Man in Black, the defining moment for Bill Miller was when a classmate brought "Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison" to school one day. As Mr. Miller remembers it, "I'll never forget the feeling I had when in his booming baritone he proclaimed, `Hello, I'm Johnny Cash' to the deafening cheers of the inmates."

Mr. Miller started collecting Cash albums and memorabilia and yearned to hear him perform. But the success of "A Boy Named Sue" and a weekly television show meant that Mr. Cash was playing bigger markets than Eagle Mountain. 

Finally, in the early 1970s he and his father got tickets to a Denver show. Their seats were far from the stage, but they worked their way down front for a snapshot. The song was "Orange Blossom Special," in which Mr. Cash played two harmonicas. When he was done, he looked right at Bill Miller and tossed him one.

Lingering in a hallway after the show, Mr. Miller met June Carter Cash and then Johnny. In the years that followed Mr. Miller went on to success in business and politics, including three terms as a council member. But to Mr. Cash and his entourage, he would always be Little Billy Miller. Mr. Cash warmly acknowledges the friendship in his 1997 autobiography.

The bond between this legendary performer - himself a collector of Americana autographs - and his #1 fan helped Bill Miller build an extraordinary collection. We guarantee that guitar aficionados will swoon at the sight of the Guild that Mr. Cash used during virtually every stage performance and studio session for a decade. There are unconfirmed reports that a top Nixon Library official actually played three chords on this historic instrument during one of Mr. Miller's visits and when curator Olivia Anastasia is, who assembled the show together with designer Erik Christman and curatorial aide Eleanor Schott, was out of the room.

Mr. Miller approached the Library in early 2002 and asked if we would be willing to mount an exhibit based on his collection. "When you consider that President Nixon had a huge influence on my decision to enter politics and that he was a huge Johnny Cash fan and admirer," he said, "there's no better place as far as I'm concerned."

For that moment of inspiration, the Nixon Library and its visitors are proud to join Johnny Cash in saying thanks to Little Billy Miller

President Gerald Ford 
President Ronald Regan 
President Richard Nixon 
President Garage Bush #1

 Highlights of this exhibit include personal memorabilia, guitars, costumes, awards, and photos. 

Exhibit Ran From October 19^th thru December 31^st  2002

     The Johnny Cash Exhibit 2002,  Was Shown By His Wonderful Friend, Bill Miller

Bill Miller With Johnny Cash 
Bill Miller, Administrator Of The Official Johnny Cash Web-Site  

Revised: September 03, 2007

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