Johnny Cash's sideman Marshall Grant dies

JONESBORO, Ark.?? A longtime member of country music superstar Johnny Cash's original band, the Tennessee Two, has died in a Jonesboro hospital.

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Memorial Park Funeral Home and Cemetery in Memphis, Tenn., said Marshall Grant, 83, died Sunday. A spokeswoman at St. Bernard's Regional Medical Center in Jonesboro did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment and a cause of death was not immediately available.

Funeral services are pending.

Grant, who lived in Hernando, Miss., had been in Jonesboro for the Johnny Cash Festival that featured stars such as George Jones, Kris Kristofferson and Cash's son and daughter, Roseanne Cash and John Carter Cash.

The festival, held Thursday, was a fundraiser to help restore Johnny Cash's boyhood home near Dyess in northeast Arkansas. Cash was born in Kingsland in south-central Arkansas.

Grant and Luther Perkins were auto mechanics who also played guitar when they were introduced to Johnny Cash, who died in 2003, by Cash's brother, Roy, a fellow mechanic, in Memphis in 1954.

Grant played bass guitar as part of Cash's band from 1954-80.

Grant then managed the Statler Brothers until their retirement in 2002 and later wrote the autobiography "I Was There When It Happened."

Grant remained active in recent years by raising quarter horses, restoring old cars and spending time with his grandchildren at his home near Hernando, Miss.

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Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44062204/ns/today-entertainment/

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