Marathon Pundit: Roseanne Cash to headline Starkville, Mississippi's Johnny Cash Flower Pickin' Festival

If you've listened to Johnny Cash's Live at San Quentin album--and if you haven't you should--one of the memorable moments is when Cash extemporaneously segues into the song "Starkville City Jail."

Here's the story behind the song, courtesy of Marlo Carter Fitzpatrick's excellent Mississippi Off The Beaten Path:

In the mid-1960s, Johnny Cash performed a concert at Mississippi State University (in Starkville). Afterward, he went back to his motel and had a few drinks, then decided to go out for smokes.

Maybe it was the few drinks (My note--or the amphetamines he was hooked on at the time) or the intricacies of locating smokes in an unfamiliar town, but Cash wound up parked in a local family's flower bed. On any other night the family might have been flattered by the country star's unexpected detour, but their daughter planned to use the ill-fated flowers in her upcoming wedding and was most distraught to find them flattened.

Cash spend the remainder of his visit to Starkville in the city jail. But far from being humbled by the experience, Cash capitalized on this run-in with the local law, penning a tune called "Starkville City Jail." Cash soon returned to Starkville to sign copies of his new album, bringing with him gifts for the entire Starkville police force.

The incident is still a gift for Starkville. Although Cash's musical version has The Man in Black getting busted for picking flowers--it's the song more people remember--and that is why the city is hosting its second annual Johnny Cash Starkville Flower Pickin' Festival from October 17-19.

Headlining the event is Cash's daughter, a major musical force in her own right, Roseanne Cash.

Every town has something unique about that will interest others. Starkville has Johnny Cash and those mutilated flowers.

Related post:

My Mississippi Manifest Destiny: Johnny Cash's boyhood home

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