TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER The Bookworm Sez Advertisement

If you're a music lover, you've probably spent lots of time playing the musical version of Fantasy Football.

Which artist would you team up with which other artist? Jagger and Jewel? Urban with Usher? How about The King with the King of Country?

If you'd been at the right place at the right time in the mid-1950s, you might've seen Sun Records' two biggest performing artists on the same stage, trading jokes and goofing on each other. That's just one of the gems you'll find in "Johnny Cash: The Biography," by Michael Streissguth.

J.R. Cash showed up during a warm Arkansas winter on the cusp of the Depression, the fourth child of his parents, both sharecroppers. Ray, J.R's father, wanted his third son to be Junior, but the boy's mother wanted him to be called "John"; the initials were a concession to both their desires.

From the time J.R. could remember, the family moved from shack to hovel to shanty, surviving on his father's odd jobs and the benevolence of his uncle, who was said to have been a cruel man.

In Dyess, Ark., a post-Depression "colony" created as relief for out-of-work farmers, the teenage Cash found a friend who taught him to strum a guitar. Following in the footsteps of his beloved older brother, Jack, who had what today would be called a garage band, J.R. sought out opportunities to sing in front of an audience.

Following a stint in the Air Force, where Cash became a highly-trained radioman, he arrived in Memphis where he teamed up with Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant, two auto mechanics who happened to play guitars. With instruments that cost less than the price of a good stereo today, the three began to play and write music.

Because Elvis Presley had so much success with Sun Records, John Cash (he had changed his name upon enlistment in the Air Force) approached Sam Phillips, founder of the record company, and asked for a chance to audition. Not only did Phillips sign John Cash and the Tennessee Two, but he also introduced the trio to a major radio announcer whose endorsement would mean almost certain stardom.

The rest, as they say, is country music history.

While "Johnny Cash: The Biography" won't have much new for die-hard fans or those who've lobbied to have Johnny Cash's likeness etched on Mt. Rushmore, there are a few gems and family interviews that will entertain casual listeners and old-time fans.

Author Michael Streissguth writes about Cash's early life, his battle with demons and drugs, his Christianity and his compassion, the loss of his first wife, his temporary estrangement from his eldest daughter, and the tempestuous relationship he had with his "baby," June Carter Cash, who died just months before Cash himself passed away of peritonitis in September 2003.

If you love country music and you grew up on "Folsom Prison Blues," "Hey Porter" or "Ring of Fire," then walk the line and get this book. You'll want to read "Johnny Cash: The Biography" carefully, one piece at a time.

"Johnny Cash: The Biography," by Michael Steissguth, DaCapo Press, $26, 334 pages, includes notes, bibliography and index.