Johnny Cash

This career-spanning collection reimagines 12 classic Johnny Cash performances via new symphonic arrangements recorded at the fabled Abbey Road Studio 2 with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Performances range from archetypal Cash classics like “Man In Black” and “Ring Of Fire” to essential musical collaborations including “Girl From The North Country” (Bob Dylan with Johnny Cash), “The Loving Gift” (with June Carter Cash) and “Highwayman” (with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash).

12 straight-shootin' classics from the most adventuresome man in country music. This compilation picks up the songs after he left Columbia in 1986 and signed with Mercury.

It's a statement of Johnny Cash's longevity that the eight albums collected here – each one a concept collection devoted to American historical themes – were considered worthy and viable commercial releases back when, and that most were very successful. This four-CD set assembles Ride This Train, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Bitter Tears, Ballads of the True West, Mean as Hell! (Johnny Cash Sings Ballads from the True West), America: A 200 Year Salute in Story and Song, From Sea to Shining Sea, and The Rambler, all in one place. They fit together as a body of work, and he put a lot of heart into all of these songs individually…

Originally included as part of the exhaustive Unearthed box set of Johnny Cash's American Records recordings, My Mother's Hymn Book is exactly what it claims to be – songs directly out of Cash's mother's old hymnal. Featuring Cash alone playing an acoustic guitar, this is a stark, beautiful, and simple album. In the liner notes, Cash calls this his favorite record he's ever made and it's clear that learning these songs as a child is what inspired his love of music. In that sense, despite no original material, these are some of the most personal songs Cash ever recorded; he even includes song-by-song commentaries that help illuminate what each track meant to him. For Merle Travis' "I Am a Pilgrim" Cash writes, "It's one of those old country gospel classics that my mother sang, that I knew I would record it someday." Of course, Cash recorded gospel songs before this album, as in 1959 with Hymns by Johnny Cash and again in 1962 with Hymns From the Heart and he usually included one gospel track per album.

There are only so many artists whose recording careers were expansive enough that you could collect 100 songs on five discs and not run out of worthwhile material, but Johnny Cash was just that kind of musician, a man who turned out memorable music at a remarkable pace during his glory days in the '50s, '60s, and '70s. 100 Hits Legends: Johnny Cash is, as the title suggests, a box set that includes 100 tunes from Cash's nearly 60 years of record-making, and remarkably enough, the bulk of this material was recorded during Cash's relatively brief tenure with Sun Records, his first label that put his music on wax from 1954 to 1958…

Johnny Cash was one of the most imposing and influential figures in post-World War II country music. With his deep, resonant baritone and spare percussive guitar, he had a basic, distinctive sound. Cash didn't sound like Nashville, nor did he sound like honky tonk or rock & roll. He created his own subgenre, falling halfway between the blunt emotional honesty of folk, the rebelliousness of rock & roll, and the world-weariness of country. Cash's career coincided with the birth of rock & roll, and his rebellious attitude and simple, direct musical attack shared a lot of similarities with rock. However, there was a deep sense of history – as he would later illustrate with his series of historical albums – that kept him forever tied with country. And he was one of country music's biggest stars of the '50s and '60s, scoring well over 100 hit singles…

Assembling a comprehensive multi-disc Johnny Cash collection is a difficult task for a variety of reasons, not the least of it being the sheer number of records Cash put out in the '60s and '70s. Counting duets, he had over 130 charting singles, which is far too much for the average box set, plus those singles don't necessarily tell the full story of Cash the recording artist, since he was a prolific album artist, as well. Then, there's the sheer variety of what he recorded – rockabilly, folk tunes, tales of gunslingers and Indians, scores of novelty numbers, gospel, Americana kitsch, train songs, pop, and straight-ahead country, he tried it all, giving it all his own unique stamp, distinguished by his booming voice and the distinctive two-step muted rhythm picked out by his guitarist, Luther Perkins.