Uncommon 10.75 x 13.25 Billboard magazine advertisement photo from March 12, 1998, signed and inscribed in black felt tip, “To Jim Silvers, My friend, Johnny Cash,” adding below, “(Don’t take it personally).” Mounted to a piece of foamcore. In fine condition. Accompanied by a letter of provenance from the original recipient, in part: “Sometime in the late ‘90s I made an album of Johnny’s songs where sales benefited Vanderbilt Medical Research Center for the disease they were treating him for. When the Billboard ad came out I asked Lou Robin to have Johnny sign it for me as he was on his way to Nashville at the time.” The original photo of Cash flipping the bird was taken during a concert at San Quentin prison on February 24, 1969; the infamous pose was the result of photographer Jim Marshall asking Cash to do a shot for the warden. In spite of its now iconic status, the photo was not widely known to the public at the time, not until producer Rick Rubin—incensed at the lack of publicity Nashville radio stations gave Cash’s Grammy-winning record Unchained—spent $20,000 of his own money to advertise in Billboard magazine as a show of gratitude for the Nashville music industry’s airwave support. Pre-certified REAL.
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