Johnny Cash: The Life (73 page)

Johnny Cash’s music was featured on more than one hundred albums—spread (primarily) across four record labels—and recycled on hundreds of compilations around the world during his near-fifty-year career, so it can be daunting to decide just where to start exploring his music. This guide is designed to assist in that search—both for those interested in his entire body of work and for those wishing to focus on a particular period. Several of the albums are now out of print, but all can still be found in new or guaranteed used editions.

The Legend
(Hip-0).
Though disappointingly thin on the Columbia Records period, this twenty-one-song retrospective includes such essential tracks as “Hey, Porter” and “I Walk the Line” from the Sun Records days and the breakthrough U2 collaboration (“The Wanderer”). It ends with selections from the Rick Rubin productions, including the seminal “Hurt” and “The Man Comes Around.”

The emphasis at Sun was on singles rather than albums, which make Cash’s “best of” compilations on Sun more important than the original Sun albums. Those singles represent some of his most dynamic works. The best combine a dazzling burst of artistic awakening, reflecting both a rich sense of imagery and deeply authentic vocals.

Johnny Cash: The Sun Years
(Sun/Rhino).
If you aren’t familiar with the Sun recordings, this eighteen-song overview is a good starting point. It contains the original version of “Folsom Prison Blues” as well as such other essential tracks as “Big River” and “Give My Love to Rose.”

Johnny Cash: The Complete Sun Recordings, 1955–1958
(Time Life).
If you are drawn to the Sun period, this three-disc box set gives you everything Cash recorded with Sam Phillips and Jack Clement in the 1950s as well as a few demos and a forty-page booklet. New copies of the album can be pricey, but used copies often go for little more than the single-disc Rhino package.

This is where Cash’s creative vision was honed. One reason he left Sun was for the artistic control that Columbia promised, and that freedom was a missed blessing. Without a strong guiding hand in the production booth during his early years at Columbia, Cash stumbled a lot as he tried to plot his musical course. He was at his weakest when he was aiming for a hit, at his strongest when following his creative instincts and imagination in a series of concept albums that were more ambitious and purposeful than anything else country music had seen.

Johnny Cash: The Complete Columbia Album Collection
(Columbia Legacy).
The sixty-three-disc box includes everything (for good and bad) that Cash released on Columbia Records during his lifetime, including the Highwaymen albums. Warning: The CDs vary greatly in quality, with the best being those released in the 1960s and early 1970s. The set devotes two discs to various singles that didn’t originally appear on albums as well as guest appearances on albums from other artists (among them Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson). Finally, there’s one disc devoted to highlights from the Sun era.

Johnny Cash the Legend
(Columbia Legacy).
Released in a limited twenty-thousand-copy edition in 2005, this lavishly designed package features 104 songs—the vast majority from the Columbia years—on four discs. It also includes a bonus CD that includes Cash’s first radio show on KWEM in Memphis in 1955 and a bonus DVD taken from a CBS television special in 1980.

Johnny Cash: Love God Murder
(Columbia Legacy, American Recordings).
Don’t turn here if you’re looking for the hits. It is, instead, a personal look by Cash at three dominant themes in his music. Liner notes by June Carter Cash, Bono, and Quentin Tarantino.

The best of the individual albums.
Look, where possible, for deluxe or anniversary editions of the albums because they’ll usually contain bonus features; the Folsom and San Quentin collections are prime examples.

Ride This Train.
The first, great concept album—Cash’s first step toward an examination of America’s roots and character (1960).

Blood, Sweat and Tears.
An engaging mix of folk and country (1963).

Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian.
Reflections on the struggle of Native Americans (1964).

Johnny Cash Sings the Ballads of the True West.
Two-disc expansion of the theme outlined in
Ride This Train
(1965).

Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison.
Breathtaking display of artistry and dynamics (1968).

The Holy Land.
Fiercely independent statement of faith (1969).

Johnny Cash at San Quentin.
Striking examples of rage and rebellion (1969).

Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.
Winning mix of themes and musical styles. One of Cash’s most consistent and intimate non-concept recordings (1970).

Gospel Road.
Ride This Train
meets
The Holy Land.
Highlight: “He Turned the Water into Wine” (1973).

Johnny 99.
Bold attempt to reestablish his relevance in pop culture. Built around Bruce Springsteen’s title tune and “Highway Patrolman” (1983).

This was a bleak period. After being dropped by Columbia Records, Cash signed with Mercury in 1986 and went into the studio with little confidence or game plan. The first album—
Johnny Cash Is Coming to Town
—had flickers of promise, notably “The Night Hank Williams Came to Town” and “W. Lee O’Daniel and the Light Crust Dough Boys” (neither of which he wrote), but not enough to recapture the attention of country music DJs or fans. When the album flopped, Cash’s confidence sank further—and the subsequent Mercury releases showed it. No Mercury album is essential listening.

The albums with producer Rick Rubin not only made Cash relevant again, but also cemented his musical legacy. Start with the acoustic
American Recordings,
the first of the albums, and
American IV: The Man Comes Around,
which contains “Hurt” and the epic title track. I would then quickly proceed to all the other albums, which document the Rubin-Cash relationship and give you a sense of an artist coming to grips with his mortality:
Unchained,
American III: Solitary Man
,
American V: A Hundred Highways
,
American VI: Ain’t No Grave
,
and the splendid five-disc
Unearthed.

With most recording artists, any exploration of their music can be easily satisfied by sticking to the original releases, but they are just the starting point with Cash. There is an endless amount of information and pleasure to be gained by looking at the back pages of Cash’s work—and various record companies have produced collections that allow us to virtually step inside the recording studio and witness his creative growth.

Johnny Cash: The Man in Black,
1954–1958 (Bear Family).
This German label is testimony to one man’s vision and passion: Richard Weize, who started Bear Family Records in the mid-1970s to salute his favorite artists—not just with traditional “best of” packages, but with lavish box sets, often containing five to ten discs, as well as richly illustrated oversized booklets or sometimes hardback books. This five-disc set takes us through the Sun years and into the first few Columbia sessions. We hear, for instance, Cash’s first try at “Folsom Prison Blues” during a session on March 22, 1955, then we hear him record “Folsom Prison Blues” again four months later, this time nailing it. Excellent liner notes by Sun historian and author Colin Escott detail each session, including which musicians sat in.

Johnny Cash: The Man in Black, 1959–62
(Bear Family).
The journey continues, offering a fascinating account of Cash’s sometimes clumsy attempt to define his artistic course.

Johnny Cash: The Man in Black, 1963–69
Plus (Bear Family).
The beat goes on, though the six-disc set, for contractual reasons, doesn’t include the Folsom concert or the Dylan-Cash recording session of February 18, 1969.

Johnny Cash: Come Along and Ride This Train
(Bear Family).
The focus in this four-disc collection is on Cash, the auteur, by offering the early concept albums, including
Ride This Train
and
Blood, Sweat and Tears.

Johnny Cash: The Outtakes
(Bear Family).
This three-disc package takes us into some of the key Sun Records sessions more deeply than the other sets listed. We hear not just one version of “Folsom Prison Blues” from March 1955 but four. To illustrate Weize’s desire for completeness, we also hear eleven takes—including three false starts— on the relatively unimportant “Don’t Make Me Go.” Not for everyone, but I found it a delight.

Johnny Cash: Personal File
(Columbia Legacy).
Especially interesting for those who enjoyed Cash’s first acoustic album with Rick Rubin, the songs on this two-disc package were recorded by Cash, accompanied only by his own acoustic guitar, mostly in 1973. You won’t find hits, but it offers a revealing look at Cash’s private musical exploration at the time—a heavy emphasis on gospel.

Johnny Cash: Bootleg II, From Memphis to Hollywood
(Columbia Legacy).
The treat here is the tape of Cash’s first radio show from 1955—which aired just before Sun released “Hey, Porter” (the same show featured on the
Johnny Cash the Legend
package). It also includes some early demos and various selections from the 1960s, including Cash’s failed attempt to come up with a title song for the James Bond film
Thunderball.

Johnny Cash: Bootleg III, Live around the World
(Columbia Legacy).
The concert high points: the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, Vietnam in 1969, and the White House in 1970.

Johnny Cash: Bootleg IV, The Soul of Truth
(Columbia Legacy).
This two-disc document takes us beyond the celebrated
Gospel Road
and
Holy Land
albums to provide a deeper look at Cash’s gospel leanings. The music, from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, includes several tracks that were previously unreleased.

The Dylan-Cash Sessions.
This album has been released under various titles in bootleg form, but never officially by Columbia. It’s delightful hearing Cash and Dylan have so much fun as they trade lead vocals on songs associated with both artists and such wild cards as tunes written or recorded by Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jimmie Rodgers.

These albums contain key versions of songs that became identified with Cash as well as some recordings that helped shape his musical tastes.

Deep Roots of Johnny Cash
(Bear Family).
The selections range from Merle Travis’s “Dark as a Dungeon” and Tex Ritter’s “Sam Hall” to Bing Crosby’s “Galway Bay” and Jimmie Rodgers’s “The One Rose.”

Johnny Cash: Roots and Branches
(Hip-O Chronicles).
An essential collection because it contains Gordon Jenkins’s original recording of “Crescent City Blues,” the song that inspired “Folsom Prison Blues.” Other musts: Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “Strange Things Happening Every Day,” Anita Carter’s “(Love’s) Ring of Fire,” and Peter LaFarge’s “Ballad of Ira Hayes.”

Johnny Cash at Town Hall Party
(Bear Family).
Cash and the Tennessee Two do guest sets in the late 1950s during two episodes of Town Hall Party, a weekly TV show broadcast live from a Los Angeles–area ballroom. Songs include “I Walk the Line,” “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town,” and “Folsom Prison Blues”—topped off by a zany impersonation of Elvis Presley.

Five Minutes to Live
(Bear Family’s And More Bears subsidiary).
This “crime thriller” was supposed to be Cash’s step into a film career, but it’s fascinating only in the sense of showing how far wrong something can go.

Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music
(can be found from various companies).
This documentary by Robert Elfstrom was put together in the months after the Folsom Prison concert in 1968, just as Cash was beginning to taste the superstardom ahead.

The Gospel Road
(20th Century–Fox).
Cash co-wrote, starred in, and financed this ambitious movie as personal testimony to his Christian faith.

The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show, 1969–1971
(CMV Columbia Legacy).
Contains sixty-six performances from the flawed but also uniquely inspiring ABC series that helped define Cash’s superstar image and showcased some of the era’s top country and rock talent. Among the guests: Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Merle Haggard, and Derek and the Dominos.

Hurt
(American Recordings/Lost Highway).
The classic music video directed by Mark Romanek.

R.H.