Without hesitation, he replied, "Johnny Cash."

The group, which consisted of a wide range of ages and ethnicities, seemed to agree.

That a room made up of people, not just from Honea Path and Simpsonville, but from India, Pakistan, Chile and Japan would give a nod to the man in black was inspiring.

People like their heroes flawed and full of battle scars, and the tale of the farm boy from Cleveland County, Ark., offers up enough folklore to make Paul Bunyan and John Henry consider dropping their axes and hammers to pick up the guitar and hit some honky-tonks.

While Cash's true life story is a classic tale of hard fought salvation, it has only added to his mythology that his songs are loaded with enough love and pain, death and sorrow, God and redemption that many blur the lines between the songs and the man.

Old school fans were bought and sold on Cash long before he built a "psyhcobilly Cadillac one piece at a time" or "he took a shot of cocaine and shot his woman down."

But how do you market a country legend when country music radio stations had long turned their back on their fans with music that would make Jim Reeves or Marty Robbins roll over in their grave?

Anyone pick up a Garth Brooks album lately? Enter Rick Rubin.

If Rick Rubin can take three Jewish kids from New York and single handedly make rap safe for white kids circa 1985, surely he can turn an aged and weathered man of God, weaned on murder and gloom into an icon for the Hot Topic set. And so it was.

Rubin would partner with Cash for the string of "American Recordings" that would round out Cash's life, and forever change the legend of the man in black. Rubin's sparse, scaled-back production allowed Cash to sing his own emotionally raw material along with some choice covers in a front porch, warts and all manner that showcased Cash's often weak and decidedly aged voice.

Each album strengthened Cash's popularity among the devoted and furthered his popularity among a new and younger fan base.

Four albums in, the material, like the man himself, was starting to grow weak.

While "American IV, The Man Comes Around" was filled with a handful of missteps, it did contain "Hurt," a Trent Reznor cover that would forever galvanize Cash with a new legion of young fans and help foster his legend.

Perhaps most telling of Cash's new fan base of trucker hat wearing, Clearasil devotees was a shout out that he received from Justin Timberlake at the 2003 VMA's, which had many Cash devotees begging for the *NSYNCer to have a fateful meeting in Reno with the gun wielding madman from "Folsom Prison Blues."