With hotel rooms booked, stages prepped and legions of Johnny Cash fans coming into town, the Pardon Johnny Cash Flower Pickin’ Festival will be under way starting this afternoon. The festival, created to pardon Cash for a 1965 arrest in Starkville, has grown beyond a fun idea into a very legitimate festival for Cash fans.
“Elvis fans have Graceland and Tupelo to visit. We’re going to give Starkville to Johnny Cash fans,” festival executive director Robbie Ward said.
The festival gained momentum after Ward started venturing the proposition of obtaining a pardon for the late singer for his May 11, 1965 arrest for public drunkenness in Starkville. According to local stories and accounts from Cash band members, the Man in Black was arrested for picking flowers in a front yard along what is now Miss. Highway 182 near Rick’s Café.
“John said he was going to a grocery store to get some cigarettes. He just wound up drifting around and wound up in this lady’s yard picking flowers,” said Marshall Grant, Cash’s bass player throughout his career.
The arrest came at a time in Cash’s life when he was struggling with an addiction to amphetamines.
“He loved those damn little pills – he lived for them. They did something for him. I don’t know what it did to him but he loved them,” Grant said.
From the arrest came the song Cash later penned “Starkville City Jail” as an ode to his run-in with Starkville law enforcement and night in the city lock-up. The song was premiered to an audience of convicts at Cash’s concert at San Quentin prison in California and was recorded on the same live album.
The story of Cash’s arrest has been an often-swapped story among students and a piece of local folklore until Ward decided to help pen another chapter in Cash’s legacy.
The idea behind the festival is not a celebration of Cash’s arrest but is more symbolic of the redemption that his life represented and that he often spoke of.
“This is not a festival to celebrate mistakes in life, but learning from them. Johnny Cash’s life represents the very ideal of redemption to so many people,” Ward said.
The scheduled events of the festival are indicative of the redemption theme. Socials and concerts are scheduled for tonight and Saturday along with a church service and gospel singing on Sunday.
The festival wouldn’t have much credence without any Cash family support, so the events are chock full of Cash’s family and friends. Former son-in-law and Mississippi native Marty Stuart is the concert headliner Saturday night along with Cash’s sister Joanne leading the Sunday morning gospel singing.
The festival has the endorsement of the Johnny Cash estate and JohnnyCash.com along with Cash family and friends.
“I think it’s a good thing what they’re doing down there,” Grant said.
Projections for attendance at the festival are estimated at about 20,000 people.
“An audience of 20 to 50 thousand people would not shock me,” Ward said. “This is a festival to pay tribute to Johnny Cash and be part of another chapter in his story. People have contacted me from Europe, South Korea, Canada and Australia. We’re organizing a festival that all Johnny Cash fans can take ownership of.”
The plans are for the festival to be a yearly occurrence, featuring musicians that played with Cash. If predictions are correct, the festival could become a Starkville tradition.
“It would be great if as a first-time festival attendance exceeded 20 to 25 thousand people. With only 10,000 attendees, that would be about a $1.3 million economic impact for Starkville,” said Arma Salazaar of the Greater Starkville Development Partnership.