For decades, the only way to enjoy Johnny Cash live in your home was on his two arguably finest albums, both recorded at penitentiaries; At Folsom Prison and At San Quentin. Since they are established classics, the argument can be made there really wasn’t a need for more. That has changed as labels dig ever deeper to mine material from legends like Cash from their vaults. It has resulted in no less than two recent concert recordings from Cash; Man in Black:Live in Denmark 1971 released in early December last year and now this show, recorded in Czechoslovakia circa 1978. Add these to 2003’s A Concert Behind Prison Walls, Johnny Cash at Madison Square Garden (a 1969 date finally seeing the light of day in 2002), and 2011’s 53 track Bootleg Vol lll:Live Around the World. And that’s just for starters. Considering how much he performed, it’s likely more are on the way.
You've got to be a Johnny Cash fan to truly appreciate what's happening on the third volume in Legacy's Bootleg series Live Around the World. This double-disc collection contains 53 tracks culled from 23 years, 1956 to 1979. The heart of its performances are from the Newport Folk Festival in 1964; a show for the troops in Long Binh, Vietnam in 1969; for Richard Nixon at the White House in 1970, and at the Osteraker Prison in Sweden in 1972…
A companion to the 2015-2016 Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit of the same name, Dylan, Cash and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City is a double-disc history of the moment when country met rock – or when rock met country, as the case might be. In this particular reading of country-rock history, the movement begins in 1966, when Bob Dylan headed down to Nashville to cut Blonde on Blonde with a crew of the city's renowned studio musicians. Prior to that, country could be heard in rock & roll mainly through rockabilly, a music that functions as prehistory on this collection, present through the presence of Sun veteran Johnny Cash but not much else.