Ring of Fire

The spark, some sources say, was a single underlined line in an Elizabethan poetry book owned by June Carter's uncle, A. P. Carter, comparing love to a burning ring of fire. June took the image to Merle Kilgore, and the two shaped it into a song about falling in love as a long, scorching descent that never quite resolves. Her sister Anita recorded it first, as "(Love's) Ring of Fire", on the album Folk Songs Old and New. Johnny Cash, June's future husband, heard Anita's version and said he had dreamed the song with Mexican horns. By his account he told her he would give her a few more months, and if the record did not take off, he would cut it the way he felt it. It did not become a major hit for Anita, so Cash recorded it with mariachi-style trumpets, a real departure from his spare boom-chicka sound, with Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters singing harmony. It sat at number one on the country chart for seven weeks. The credit has not gone unquestioned. In her 2007 autobiography, Cash's first wife Vivian claimed Johnny wrote it himself and gave June half the credit. Rosanne Cash has said the song is about the transformative power of love, and that is what it means to the Cash children. Whoever held the pen, those horns turned a country lament into one of the most recognisable records in American music, inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.