Johnny Cash will soon share a prestigious honor with Abraham Lincoln, Malcolm X, and Dr. Seuss: He’s getting his own stamp. The NME reports (via Beyond the Perf) that the U.S. Postal Service will honor the Man in Black with commemorative postage.
The lickable tribute (pictured above) is designed to resemble a 45 rpm record sleeve and features a photograph of Cash taken by Frank Baez for 1963’s Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash. It will be the first in a new “Music Icons” stamp series. Two more artists — who have yet to be revealed — will receive the same exclusive accolade later this year.
“We get about 40,000 suggestions for stamp ideas each year, but only about 20 topics make the cut,” USPS representative Mark Saunders told Today. “These suggestions are reviewed by the Postmaster General’s Citizens’ Stamp Advisory whose role is to narrow down that 40,000 to roughly 20 and then provide their recommendations to the Postmaster General for final approval.”
A release date for the late country legend‘s stamp has not yet been announced. Many other musicians have already appeared on postage stamps, including Nat King Cole, Patsy Cline, Buddy Holly, and Elvis Presley.
Also in the works: a Nashville museum dedicated to the “Folsom Prison Blues” outlaw. The museum, sanctioned by Cash’s family, was thought up by the singer’s biographer and archivist Bill Miller, the Los Angeles Times reported back in October. Miller will invest $7 million in the museum’s completion and donate several items from his personal collection of Cash memorabilia, including the singer’s 12th grade report card and hand-written lyrics for “My Lord Has Gone,” which Cash wrote shortly before his death in 2003. An opening date for the museum has not yet been determined.
