Reid Cummins’ guitar changed country music forever

Story by Gordon Cotton

If you’ve heard of Johnny Cash, it was possibly because of a Vicksburg resident. In fact, had it not been for the late Reid Cummins and his guitar, it’s a probability that no one outside Cash’s Arkansas home would have ever heard of him. It was on Cummins’ guitar that Cash learned to play.

The story begins when Cummins was a student at Tulane University and had a frat brother who had a guitar; his playing was influenced by the style of famed folk musician Burl Ives. Cummins learned to play on his friend’s guitar.

A year or so later—in the early 1950s—Cummins saw a guitar in a Little Rock, Ark., pawn shop. It was pretty garish, decorated with rhinestones and an oyster-shell inlay.

When he enlisted in the Air Force soon after, his mother had a gift for him: It was the guitar.

The guitar traveled with Cummins from base to base. It was the only guitar in his outfit and word spread. Several of the guys wanted to play it.

“We called it the traveling guitar,” Cummins said in a 1971 interview, “because we passed it around from man to man, from shift to shift. John Cash borrowed it, and a guy from Louisiana taught him to play it. Soon, some of the men bought their own instruments and did a lot of picking, eventually forming a small band when we were stationed in Lansberg, Bavaria.”

They called themselves The Lansberg Barbarians, and during one of the sessions, Cash recorded them, each man giving his name, and hometown or state.

In 1954, Reid Cummins came home from the Air Force and settled in Vicksburg, where he was employed at Waterways Experiment Station. He and Cash corresponded occasionally, usually at Christmas, and once, Cummins went to Clarksdale to a Cash concert. Cash had just recorded “Hey, Porter,” and he gave Cummins a copy with the notation, “If it sells you can say you knew me when…”

Cummins told his friends and fellow workers about his past friendship with Cash, and about the guitar, but most just poked fun at him, for they all knew what a joker he was.

Reid Cummins in 1971. Image captured from “This is Your Life: Johnny Cash.”

One day in 1971, when he was out of the office, Cummins got a call from Ralph Edwards, host of the popular TV show, “This Is Your Life.” Edwards was planning a tribute to Cash, and he wanted Cummins on the show. When Cummins returned to work and was told about Edwards’s call, Cummins thought his friends were teasing him, that they were pulling his leg.

But Edwards called again, starting the conversation with the fact that Cummins and Cash had been in the service together, and then he mentioned other names and places that made Cummins realize, “he was for real.”

The crew researching and planning the show had heard the tape Cash had made (his sister had saved it), and from it, they got Cummins name. The ABC producers were amazed and delighted to find that Cummins still had the guitar. Cummins and others who would be on the show were flown to Memphis for taping and then to Nashville, where Cash was recording his weekly TV show. At the conclusion of the program, Cash’s wife, June, interrupted him to introduce a special guest: Ralph Edwards.

“This Is Your Life, Johnny Cash” was under way.

“It was a total surprise to John,” Cummins said. “He was absolutely wiped out.”

A number of people appeared on the show including one of Cash’s high-school teachers and even a Georgia sheriff who had once arrested Cash when he was high on pep pills, and who had asked Cash, “How can you let a thing as little as that ruin your life?”

Cummins and some other members of The Lansberg Barbarians walked onto the stage, music from that early tape blaring and Reid Cummins carrying that guitar Cash had learned to play.

Following the show, the group met together for several hours. Cummins met Mother Maybell Carter, Cash’s mother-in-law, and June Carter Cash, his wife, described by Cummins as “the most charming person I’ve met in a long time—not a thing like the girl we’ve seen on TV advertising flour.”

Before Cummins returned to Vicksburg, Cash walked over to him and asked: “Reid, is that really the old guitar I learned to play?”

Picking it up, Cash strummed a few chords, and then, looking at it, he answered his own question.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll never forget those beer stains on the face.”

This story is by Gordon Cotton. Cotton is the curator emeritus at the Old Court House Museum. He’s the author of several books and a renowned historian.