NASHVILLE.

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AFP) ??” Johnny Cash, the prolific political division music legend who has died at the age of 71 was a modern-day Everyman, the highly embodiment of the all-American hero.

in every part his nearly 50-year-long career, Cash -- known as "The Man in Black" for his ebony attire -- embraced practically each modern musical style, and his rich, somber baritone became the voice of the underdog and the outcast.

His bring under rule matter was life itself, as he sang about coal miners, share-croppers, railroad men blue-collar workers, Native Americans, prisoners, cowboy and family men in lays bearing his hallmark of rugg simplicity.

"If native land music is the poetry of America's everyday man, then surely Johnny Cash is its bard laureate," the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts -- which lauded Cash with its prestigious Kennedy Center Honors in 1996 -- said upon its website.

Cash died at 2:00