‘Kidnapped’ by Johnny Cash (Outtakes Opinion)

With the recent release of “Walk the Line,” the movie about Johnny Cash, we couldn’t help remembering some of our favorite stories about the Arkansas native and country music legend.

One of them was from Hoyt Purvis, a professor of journalism at the University of Arkansas.

While a high school student in Jonesboro in the spring of 1958, Purvis and another student decided to ask Cash to perform at the Jonesboro Community Center.

They drove five miles to Bono, where Cash was playing a gig.

After the show, Cash invited the boys into his black Cadillac to discuss the matter. The next thing Purvis knew, the driver started the car and drove down the road. Nobody said anything about where they were going. The driver stopped at a liquor store and came back with provisions.

The car then went over the Mississippi River bridge to Memphis and stopped downtown. Cash said, “Where do you boys want to get out?”

“We said, ‘Right here,'” Purvis remembers.

The driver put Purvis and the other student out in Memphis, two hours from home. They called a friend from Jonesboro to come get them.

Cash never got around to playing the Jonesboro gig. The boys had to settle for Roy Orbison instead.