Rosanne Cash on the gift her father, Johnny Cash, gave her

In 1973, when Rosanne Cash was 18 years old and on the road with her father Johnny Cash, she didn't know the songs he assumed were part of her birthright. He mentioned a song; she didn't know it. He mentioned another; she didn't know that one either. Alarmed that his daughter was ignorant of what he considered her own musical genealogy, he spent the rest of the afternoon writing out a list. At the top of the page he wrote: "100 Essential Country Songs." Across the top of the page, he told her, "This is your education."

The list as inheritance

Rosanne Cash grew up in Southern California steeped in pop and rock—she was president of her Beatles fan club at eleven—and had not done a serious immersion in country music. The list her father gave her was more comprehensive than the title suggested. Cash now calls it "100 Essential American Songs," because it covered early folk songs, protest songs, Delta blues, Southern gospel, Appalachian music, and everything that fed into modern country. She describes his overview as that of a musicologist, but formed by instinct and "the rhythm in his own blood."