I never much cared for Johnny Cash as a performer. [heresy] As I felt about Dylan [/heresy], his works were best covered by other, more gifted singers. The simplistic boom-chikka-boom beat, the gravelly voice, the sparse electric guitar. Way below my level as an enthusiastic rock guitarist.
By the time I began listening to country music with some level of seriousness, Cash was ending or had moved completely past the prime works that defined his legend. For many years I asked what he had done for me lately to earn such acclaim within the country music community. This, after all, was a genre known for one- or two-hit wonders from the early years who continued performing weekly on the Opry long past their capacity to do anything but relive past glory.
As I began playing country music professionally, certain misconceptions cleared. I began to appreciate Cash's unique qualities as more than marketing hype. The man had substance, had depth.
You couldn't be a Johnny Cash today, even if you tried. There is no room at the inn for an ugly, tortured singer who mushes lyrics and speaks his mind. As with most other genres, modern country is more about The Look than the guts. What Cash had couldn't be manufactured, freeze-dried, and applied to all the other wannabes attempting to pass marketing savvy off as musical talent.
There is no greater measure of how much country music has changed than the realization that Johnny Cash couldn't exist in today's Nashville, save as a legend.
It's a sure bet that in 20 years, someone will still be singing Cash's "I Still Miss Someone". It's a substantially riskier proposition to say the same thing about Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue".
Today, the first day of post-Cash modern country music, it's all too apparent how big his shoes really were. And they'll be empty for a very long time.
4:44:30 PM 
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