Nashville Musicians Pay Tribute to Johnny Cash
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Nashville has lost a man many consider the greatest figure in country music with the passing of Johnny Cash, but his music is living on. A day after his death, musicians are paying and playing personal tributes. CNN's Ed Lavandera reports from the music city.</s>ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Broadway Street in Nashville, inside the stage, Johnny Cash's ghost floats in the lyrical air.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're playing a Johnny Cash song right now.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, here we go, folks. It's one of Johnny's biggest hits, written by June Carter and Merle Kilborough wrote this.</s>LAVANDERA: Gary Gibson learned to play the guitar on Johnny Cash songs. His father worked on a railroad. The music resonated with his blue collar background. Over time, the man in black reached mythic status for him.</s>GARY GIBSON, MUSICIAN: There's only a few people that have both of it, that can do the music and also has the image and the persona about him.</s>LAVANDERA: Gibson is like a lot of musicians earning their stripes in Nashville's clubs and streets, musicians like Dion Scott striving to find their voice. He moved to Nashville from Alaska to chase a country music dream. He knows only a few performers ever find that unique voice. Cash found his and struck gold.</s>DION SCOTT, MUSICIAN: He had kind of a loose style, kind of an unpolished style. And I think a lot of musicians really related to that, because it's more similar to what they're doing probably.</s>LAVANDERA: On Broadway Street, the music will continue filling the dance halls, but the death of a musical icon does have a way of dampening Nashville's musical spirits.</s>BREN RONEN, MUSICIAN: People can come down here, and we still play Johnny Cash and other people. And I mean, we're losing. We're losing all of our icons. And you know, there's another gone.</s>LAVANDERA: Johnny Cash once wrote, "I wonder if I ever really did leave, how many would there be to grieve, how they'd react to the word?" There's a simple answer, Mr. Cash, they sing your songs. Ed Lavandera, CNN, Nashville.