At the end of the day, we all just want a love like Johnny and June… Although June Carter is best known today as Johnny Cash’s wife, she was a trailblazer in country music for many years before becoming Mrs. Cash. She was part The Carter Family, a legendary group founded by husband and wife A. P. and Sara Carter, along with Maybelle Carter (Sara’s sister-in-law). The group expanded to include a number of other family members during their career that spanned from 1927 to 1956, including June Carter, who joined as a child in 1939 to sing harmony, alongside her sisters Helen and Anita. Truly, the timeline of The Carter Family would be a blog in itself but it’s well worth the time to read through because they are universally recognized as one of the most influential acts in country music history. After her time with The Carter Family, June went out on her own as a solo artist and racked up an impressive 5 Grammy’s for her original music and was instrumental in writing songs for other artists, though one of those songs is by far the most popular that she penned. She first met Johnny Cash at the Grand Ole Opry in 1956, and though they were both married to others at the time, the feelings that welled up inside each of them did nothing but grow in the years that followed. I’m sure it didn’t help the situation (or maybe it did help?) that Johnny went out on tour with The Carter Family while he was still married to his first wife, Vivian Liberto, and also that he was completely strung out on booze and pills for much of the time, which eventually led Vivian to leave him in 1966. That opened the door for Johnny and June to finally get together, after she had divorced fellow country singer Carl Smith, then married and subsequently divorced police officer Edwin Nix. Fun fact, Nix was the police officer on scene the night Johnny was banned from the Opry for smashing out stage lights before taking June’s car and driving heavily intoxicated into a light pole… You have to think he was pretty upset learning that June left him to shack up with someone who he had to believe was a scoundrel. But while she was still married to Nix, in 1960, June realized the burning feelings she had for Johnny and she turned them into a song that pretty much every person on Earth knows. Or at least most people say she was the brain behind the song… “Ring Of Fire” appeared on Cash’s 1963 compilation album Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash, though June’s sister Anita previously recorded and released it as “(Love’s) Ring of Fire”. June Carter and Merle Kilgore were credited with writing it and June spoke of how the track came to be in the documentary The Winding Stream: “I realized that oh my Lord, I think I’m falling in love with Johnny Cash, and this is the most painful thing I’ve ever gone through in my life. It is like I’m in a ring of fire, and I’m never coming out. I’m going down, down to the bottom of this thing. It’s going to kill me, because I would never have the nerve to tell him, nor do I want to tell him, nor do I want anybody to even know I’ve got these feelings.” There’s certainly something to be said about the emotional infidelity of writing a love song for someone else while you’re married, there’s no denying that. But come on now… Johnny and June were destined to be together. The official Johnny Cash Facebook page posted a throwback to “Ring Of Fire” just a few weeks ago, showing a clip of both June and Johnny singing the song while noting in the caption that June Carter did in fact write the song. Now, you might be wondering why I’m continuing to give examples that June Carter wrote the song. It’s officially credited as such and there’s no shortage of citations, plus June herself said she wrote it, so who’s denying the story? Well, Johnny Cash’s first wife tells a much different story on how June came to receive a writing credit for “Ring Of Fire” … In her memoir, I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny, which is an undeniably great title for such a work, she claims that June wasn’t involved in the song at all and it was an act of charity from Johnny that gave her the credit: “One day in early 1963, while gardening in the yard, Johnny told me about a song he had just written with Merle Kilgore and Curly [Lewis] while out fishing on Lake Casitas. ‘I’m gonna give June half credit on a song I just wrote,’ Johnny said. ‘It’s called “Ring of Fire.”‘ ‘Why?’ I asked, wiping dirt from my hands. The mere mention of her name annoyed me. I was sick of hearing about her. ‘She needs the money,’ he said, avoiding my stare. ‘And I feel sorry for her.’ … To this day, it confounds me to hear the elaborate details June told of writing that song for Johnny. She didn’t write that song any more than I did. The truth is, Johnny wrote that song, while pilled up and drunk, about a certain private female body part. All those years of her claiming she wrote it herself, and she probably never knew what the song was really about.” And speaking of body parts, fun fact: Pfizer wanted to use it for a Preparation H commercial back in the early 2000s. Mel Kilgore thought it was funny, but the Cash family quickly shut it down. On one hand, there’s probably no person who knows more of Johnny Cash’s hidden secrets than his first wife… but on the other hand, she can’t really be held up as a credible source where June Carter is involved because she clearly didn’t like her and knew that she was going to spell trouble for her in the not too distant future… So did June Carter write “Ring Of Fire”? I believe she did, but given everyone involved has now passed away, the truth will forever remain shrouded in a cloud of mystery. This post contains links from our Affiliate Partners program. If you use these links to make a purchase, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.The post June Carter Wrote “Ring Of Fire” About Johnny Cash… Or Did She? first appeared on Whiskey Riff.