Johnny Cash

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.

Johnny Cash's populist fusion of folk, country, and gospel done up with an unhurried, plainspoken eloquence made him both a country icon and an American treasure. Whether singing his own songs or covering songs written by young alternative rockers in his autumn years, anything he touched became vintage Johnny Cash as soon as he stepped to the microphone. This collection includes the classics "I Walk the Line" and "Big River" as well as Cash's fine version of Bob Dylan's "Wanted Man," but it lacks essentials like "Ring of Fire" and "Folsom Prison Blues," and ends up being a little hit or miss, but – as they say – any Johnny Cash beats no Johnny Cash at all.

Johnny Cash - The Complete Mercury Recordings 1986-1991 (2020) {7CD Set, Universal Music 0602567726951}
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© 1986-91, 2020 Mercury / UMe ‎| 0602567726951
Country / Country-Pop / Traditional Country / Country-Folk

In 1986, after almost 30 years on Columbia Records, Country music legend Johnny Cash released his first album on Mercury Records – Class Of ’55, in collaboration with fellow Sun Records alumni Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. Seven years later, his last recording before signing with Rick Rubin’s American Recordings would be another collaboration, “The Wanderer”, with U2.

Tribute albums frequently betray their subject, but not this homage to Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears, the country giant’s 1964 salute to Native Americans. A concept album about a discomfiting cause – the US’s treatment of its indigenous people – Tears was a radical statement resisted, to Cash’s fury, by the Nashville establishment. For its 50th anniversary, producer Joe Henry gathers a stellar house band that takes turns to lead. Gillian Welch delivers an entrancing As Long As the Grass Shall Grow; Emmylou does likewise with Apache Tears. Steve Earle drawls: “I ain’t no fan of Custer” and instrumentals evoke North America’s haunted plains. Very fine.

Johnny Cash released more than half a dozen gospel albums during his career, beginning with 1959's Hymns by Johnny Cash, and he scattered gospel tunes throughout his other works as well. A deeply religious man, he sang his songs of praise with as much, or perhaps more, conviction as he did his secular material – even the most skeptical non-believer would have to appreciate the honesty and soul of Cash's gospel recordings. Cash: Ultimate Gospel collects 24 of his best, most drawn from his Columbia catalog with a pair ("I Was There When It Happened" and "Belshazzar") emanating from Cash's early Sun Records period, and two ("Oh Come, Angel Band" and "Children Go Where I Send Thee") originally on the Cachet label.

Johnny Cash is a country music icon. His best period, of course, was probably on the Columbia label. This one picks up after he left Columbia in 1986 and signed with Mercury. Still, this isn't a bad set at all. This is another great disc in UMG's 20th Century Masters series. If your a huge Johnny Cash fan like I am, than this is a welcome member to your Cash collection. But, if your new or just a casual fan to Cash's music, buy this along with Sony's '16 Biggest Hits' and you are off to a great start.

Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and The Nashville Cats - A New Music City (2015) {2CD Set Legacy 88875066552}
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© 2015 Legacy / Sony Music | 88875066552
Country / Country-Rock / Folk Rock / Blues Rock / Progressive Country

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.

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…

Johnny Cash was in the unenviable position of being a living legend who was beloved by fans of classic country music without being able to interest anyone in his most recent work when he was signed to Rick Rubin's American Recordings label in 1994…