A Friend of mine claims that Johnny Cash was the first “westerner” to know of Stalin’s death. He says Cash used to work as a codebreaker in the US Army and was the one who decoded the Russian message. Is there any truth to
this whatsoever or is he just making stuff up ?
Can anybody cast any light on this ?
Thanks
Thanks,
It appears that I’m terrible at web searches!
No problem!
Next time, try that second link, google.com - it has a tendency to produce great search results.
Welcome aboard the Straight Dope, and enjoy the ride 
More accurately, it appears that Cash claims this to be true. The link provides no verification other than his word. But I am sure we can trust him.
John
What a crock!
The link coldie provides has Cash saying only that he was an Air Force “radio operator” and intercepted “Russian Morse code.”
The assertion that Cash was a “codebreaker” has got to be rediculous. While he could have received the letters that Russian operators transmitted, it is doubtful that he had a knowledge of Cyrillic that would enable him to do much more than understand a few words, and certainly none that were in code.
He probably received the death announcement at the same time as a few dozen/hundred other radio operators.
Cash once claimed he was one-quarter Cherokee, but admitted that it was made-up. From here