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## The Ryman and the Road
The Johnny Cash Show was recorded at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, a venue that had been a central institution of country music since the Grand Ole Opry moved into it in 1943. The Ryman’s history was partly religious: it was originally built in 1892 as a tabernacle for the evangelist Sam Jones, funded by a riverboat captain named Thomas Ryman who had been converted at one of Jones’s revivals. Its physical design — the pews, the stained glass windows, the gallery — retained the character of a religious space even as it became a secular entertainment venue.
Cash’s connection to the Ryman was both professional and personal. He had performed on the Grand Ole Opry stage many times. His religious convictions, however strained by the drug years, had never fully left him, and the Ryman’s character as a space of spiritual history gave the television show a visual context that suited his work. The choice to record there was partly practical — it was available, it was in Nashville, it had the technical infrastructure needed — and partly meaningful, in the way that Cash’s choices frequently were.
The road organization that Cash maintained through the late 1960s and early 1970s was substantial. The core band, the opening acts (June Carter and the Carter Family, the Statler Brothers), the road management operation that Grant ran — this was a large touring enterprise that required the kind of commercial success the Folsom album provided. The triple-platinum sales, the television show, the San Quentin album, the Grammy awards — all of these translated into the financial foundation that kept the organization viable.