June Carter Cash Trivia
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47 free June Carter Cash trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This June Carter Cash trivia quiz covers the whole of a sixty-year career: growing up in Maces Spring, Virginia as Mother Maybelle's daughter, the Carter Sisters on Richmond radio and the Grand Ole Opry, the 'Aunt Polly' comedy routine, acting lessons with Lee Strasberg, and the songs everyone knows — 'Ring of Fire', which she co-wrote, and 'Jackson', the duet that won her first Grammy with Johnny Cash. There are questions on her three husbands and three children (Carlene Carter, Rosie Nix Adams and John Carter Cash), the on-stage proposal in London, Ontario, her three solo albums, her late-life Grammys for Press On and Wildwood Flower, the video for 'Hurt', Reese Witherspoon's Oscar-winning portrayal in Walk the Line, and her posthumous induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2025. If you want more on the man in black himself, BrainPickle also has a Johnny Cash quiz. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and each question carries a citation to the page it came from. No lyrics are quoted.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which state was June Carter born, at Maces Spring, in 1929?
Virginia
Virginia. Two months after June died in 2003, Johnny Cash gave his last public performance in her home valley, at the Carter Family Fold on the old family homestead.
Q 02Which first name did June Carter Cash set aside to go by her middle name?
Valerie
Valerie. She was Valerie June Carter at birth and plain June Carter on stage, adding Cash only in 1968, five years after 'Ring of Fire' had made her name as a songwriter.
Q 03In which city did the original Carter Family first record for Ralph Peer in August 1927?
Bristol, Tennessee
Bristol, Tennessee. Jimmie Rodgers turned up to audition in the same fortnight, and the sessions that launched both acts are now called the 'Big Bang' of country music.
Q 04June Carter's family opened shows in the mid-1950s for which rising star?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley. The Carters opened for him just as he was breaking nationally, and June went back out on his tours between her acting classes in New York.
Q 05Which instrument did June play in the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle?
Autoharp
Autoharp. June said hers was the weakest voice in a family of harmony singers, so she strummed along, covered her bad notes with jokes and became the act's comedian.
Q 06What was the name of June Carter's signature comic character in the family act?
Aunt Polly
Aunt Polly. June sang comic numbers in a broad hillbilly accent and broke into a clattering dance, and the routine became the highlight of the family's road shows.
Q 07Which future Nashville guitar star played lead for the Carter Sisters and joined the Grand Ole Opry with them in 1950?
Chet Atkins
Chet Atkins. Hired in Knoxville as the sisters' lead guitarist, he stayed on after the move, took charge of RCA's Nashville studios and shaped the smooth Nashville Sound.
Q 08At ten, June began singing with her family on XERA, a 'border radio' station that beamed its signal from which country?
Mexico
Mexico. XERA served Del Rio, Texas, but its transmitter stood just across the border to escape US regulations, so the Carters could be heard across the United States and into Canada.
Q 09Which famous film director saw June perform at the Grand Ole Opry and urged her to study acting?
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan. June took his advice and moved to New York with her baby daughter, travelling back to Nashville every weekend to keep her place on the Opry.
Q 10June studied acting in New York with Sanford Meisner and which famous Method teacher?
Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg. The training won June television parts, but in the early 1960s she set acting aside to join Johnny Cash's road show.
Q 11In which Robert Duvall film did June play 'Momma' Dewey?
The Apostle
The Apostle. Studios turned the script down, so Duvall paid the $5 million budget himself and cast June as his preacher's devout mother.
Q 12On which 1990s TV drama did June play Sister Ruth, wife of Johnny Cash's character Kid Cole?
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman brought the Cashes close to its director James Keach, then married to star Jane Seymour, and Johnny later asked him to film his life story, which became Walk the Line.
Q 13'Ring of Fire' was co-written by June Carter and which songwriter?
Merle Kilgore
Q 21What was the title of June and Johnny's first co-billed album of duets, released in 1967?
Carryin' On
Carryin' On. Cash proposed to June on stage early the following year, and they married seven months after the album came out.
Q 22June was a regular on The Johnny Cash Show, which ABC taped in which Nashville landmark?
Ryman Auditorium
Ryman Auditorium. The old tabernacle was then the home of the Grand Ole Opry, and it was backstage there in 1956 that Johnny had first met June.
Q 23What was the title of June's first solo album, released in 1975?
Appalachian Pride
Merle Kilgore. He was best man when June married Johnny Cash, and in 2004 he was happy to license the song for a hemorrhoid-cream advert until her family refused.
Q 14Which relative of June's recorded 'Ring of Fire' before Johnny Cash did?
Her sister Anita
Her sister Anita. June offered her the song for a solo album, but that version was little heard, and Johnny Cash's remake months later topped the country chart for seven weeks.
Q 15Johnny Cash said a dream told him to add which sound to 'Ring of Fire'?
Mariachi horns
Mariachi horns. Trumpets were a sharp break from Cash's spare, rhythm-driven sound, yet the arrangement became the song's signature and carried it to number one on the country chart.
Q 16Who claimed Cash gave June half the 'Ring of Fire' credit because 'she needs the money'?
Vivian Liberto, his first wife
Vivian Liberto, his first wife. In a memoir published after her death she wrote that Cash told her he had written the song on a fishing trip, while June always described writing it herself.
Q 17June's first notable studio duet with Johnny Cash, in 1964, was on which Bob Dylan song?
It Ain't Me Babe
It Ain't Me Babe. Cash and Dylan were open admirers of each other's work, and with Dylan's blessing the duet carried his kiss-off song into the country top five.
Q 18Jerry Leiber, co-writer of 'Hound Dog', helped write which June and Johnny duet under his wife's name?
Jackson
Jackson. Billy Edd Wheeler drew its sparring couple from the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and Leiber told him to scrap his opening verses and start with the last one.
Q 19June and Johnny won their first Grammy one day before which event in 1968?
Their wedding
Their wedding. June had insisted Cash give up pills before she would marry him; he got clean, and the Grammy for their duet came the day before the ceremony.
Q 20June and Johnny won a second duet Grammy in 1971 for their version of which Tim Hardin song?
If I Were a Carpenter
If I Were a Carpenter. Tim Hardin wrote it as one man's plea to a lady, but the Cashes traded its lines as a back-and-forth between husband and wife, and that carried the song onto the pop chart too.
Appalachian Pride. Johnny produced it, but June then put his career first and did not release another solo album for 24 years.
Q 24June won a posthumous Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance for which Carter Family standard?
Keep on the Sunny Side
Keep on the Sunny Side. Her mother's trio recorded their signature song the year before June was born, and she chose it to open the last album she made.
Q 25Who produced June's final album, Wildwood Flower?
Her son John Carter Cash
Her son John Carter Cash. He had also produced her comeback album Press On, and he later wrote the memoir of his mother that became the television film Ring of Fire.
Q 26One of June's last appearances was a silent role in the video for which 2003 Johnny Cash single?
Hurt
Hurt. The video was shot in the lakeside house the Cashes had shared since 1968, and four years later it burned down while being renovated for a new owner, Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees.
Q 27June's first husband, whom she married in 1952, was which country singer?
Carl Smith
Carl Smith. He was one of the biggest country hitmakers of the 1950s, yet he later gave up touring and recording altogether to breed horses on his Tennessee farm.
Q 28June's daughter from her first marriage became a country star under what name?
Carlene Carter
Carlene Carter. She took her mother's maiden name on stage, married the English rocker Nick Lowe, and in the 1980s joined June and her aunts in a revived Carter Family.
Q 29June and Johnny Cash often appeared on stage with which evangelist, a close family friend?
Billy Graham
Billy Graham. The Cashes sang at his crusades for many years, and in 1974 his organisation's film company took over the distribution of their film about the life of Jesus.
Q 30Where did Johnny Cash propose to June, on stage, in 1968?
London, Ontario
London, Ontario's London Gardens arena was where Cash stopped the show on February 22, 1968 to propose; June accepted in front of the crowd and they married days later.