The Western Music Association presented Professor Don Cusic with the “Bill Wiley Award” for his “outstanding contribution to Western Music and the Western Music Association” at their Awards banquet in Albuquerque, New Mexico on November 20, 2004. The award is named after the founder of the Western Music Association.
Cusic is the editor of their quarterly publication, “The Western Way.”
In addition to receiving this award, the highest honor for someone in the organization, Cusic presented the “Songwriter of the Year” award and received the “Entertainer of the Year” award for Riders in the Sky, who were unable to attend. Cusic is the biographer of Riders in the Sky; his book is titled The Cowboy Way: The Amazing True Adventures of Riders in the Sky (University Press of Kentucky).
Professor Don Cusic’s fourteenth book, Johnny Cash: The Songs, has just been published by Thunder’s Mouth Press, a division of Avalon.
This is the first book of Johnny Cash’s lyrics and features songs that Cash and wrote and recorded as well as one un-recorded song, which Cash wrote especially for Cowboy Jack Clement.
This collection of Cash’s lyrics joins collections of the lyrics of Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson, also compiled by Cusic.