Guess the voice runs in the family…
In the world of country music, there’s a few artists that are inextricably tied to the sound of their voice.
Willie Nelson immediately comes to mind and in modern times Chris Stapleton probably has the most universally recognized vocals, but without a doubt there’s few people on earth that won’t recognize a Johnny Cash song when it starts playing, even if they’ve never heard it before.
The deep baritone and near speaking style of singing is synonymous with the Man In Black, but it appears that voice wasn’t unique only to him.
We previously saw a viral video of a kid named Andrew Hensley who certainly sounded a bit like Johnny Cash, especially since he was only around 15 or so when he recorded it, but there’s another artist with a voice that sounds even more like Johnny, and they just so happen to be related.
Thomas Gabriel is Johnny Cash’s eldest grandson, born to Kathy Cash who was one of four daughters he had with his first wife Vivian Liberto Cash.
Gabriel got an early interest in music but also began following the tragic part of the family’s history by getting into drugs and alcohol at a very young age. Johnny tried to steer him away from music as a career and he became a police officer for 8 years before he was forced out of the job because of his substance abuse issues. His life spiraled from there and he wound up spending a few years in prison for various crimes.
But he was able to get his life back together with the help of family, friends, and rehab and eventually began pursuing music full time, releasing his first independent album in 2018 titled Long Way Home.
While a quality artist in his own right, being the grandson of Johnny Cash is inescapable, which lead to him doing a series of acoustic performances titled Live at Cash Cabin, which were released a few months ago.
In this series, he performed a number of his favorite of Johnny’s songs, and while they are all good and his vocals are very remnant of Johnny, none of them were as nearly identical as his performance of “Folsom Prison Blues”.
If you close your eyes and someone plays this for you, you’d think Johnny rose from the dead or that it was a newly found recording from just before his death in 2003. Give it a listen for yourself and tell me the spirit of Johnny isn’t alive and well in Thomas Gabriel.