Did Johnny Cash perform in Palmer?

To the editor:

I have stumbled upon a Palmer history mystery that I don’t have enough information to solve. I’m asking for the readers help. On a Palmer history website a local woman recently posted that she had attended a Johnny Cash concert in the Central School gym some time in the late 1950’s. I had never heard that. I contacted some of the “old-timers” in town and none remember the show. However, Johnny Cash, who was a nobody in 1959, played three shows in Fairbanks in the first week of June of that year. It’s therefore possible that some kind of last minute show was thrown together in Palmer. Perhaps the band had an overnight in Anchorage on the way back to Seattle. Does anyone have any information to add, or any ideas of where I might look. It’s not a big deal one way or the other, but it is an interesting historical tidbit for the town. Thanks.

— Anthony Pippel,

Ashland, Oregon