Learn to ball a jack. Learn to lay a track. Learn to pick and shovel, too. And take my hammer. - from The Legend of John Henry's Hammer

(This is the third of four Johnny Cash reviews leading up to the release of this "Johnny Cash: The Legend" 4-CD box set on August 2.) Review of DISC 1 - Win, Place And Show - The Hits, here. Review of DISC 2 - here.

DISC 3 - The Legend: American Songbook (26 tracks, 66 minutes)
By Temple A. Stark, Casa Grande, Ariz.

Apparently your American Songbook has a lot to do with trains. Seven of the 26 songs here lie between the iron spikes, cross ties and steel rails: "The Wreck of old 97", "Rock Island Line", "Waiting For a Train", "Casey Jones", "The Legend of John Henry's Hammer", "I've Been Working on the Railroad" and "Wabash Cannonball." Half a dozen more reference trains.

Just like you always wanted to hear Cash narrate "Take Me Out To the Ball Game," this previously unreleased version of "I've Been Working ..." completely satisfies and fits the man perfectly. As does rockabilly, from Cash's first days of learning the guitar while stationed in Germany.

Rockabilly has a natural driving rhythm that recalls the rails and the rolling steel wheels of cargo and commerce railroad cars passing through to the next city. It sounds just like the locomotives pulling away and starting a journey: a slow motion, like it's going to stop. But it doesn't and rolls on. And, as in "A Thing Called Love" it speeds up and pushes on. And, of course, this rhythm is deliberate on "Rock Island Line."

That's fine by me. Last night on Arizona 84 I paralleled a long container train for about 10 miles, slowly gaining. Rain poured, and sheet lightning and strikes both crashed behind the flatbeds.

The windshield wipers in front of me pulled at the same time and had not Neko Case's music been playing I would have rolled down the window, got wet and listened to the Southern Pacific train cross the Casa Grande Valley.

The only other wide departure of music for Cash throughout the majority of his career is a Spanish style - Mariachi or just slow south of the border drawl songs such as Ring of Fire, Matador, and Rosanna's Going Wild. It's clear that in Cash's music, passion equals that hot Latin blood.

Perhaps that's too limiting. I hear a Cash voice that carries me along through some of his detours into musical hinterland. And to me that's a style all by itself. And I hear the Spanish, too, as something distinct.

This particular American Songbook does include, oddly, "Delia's Gone," describing in surprising detail the stabbing and shooting of Delia. It's a great song. I heard Guns and Roses' "Used To Love Her" first, but one is sung with more humor and the other is Johnny Cash:

If I hadn't shot poor Delia I'd have had her for a wife. Delia's gone one more round Delia's gone. First time I shot her, shot her in the side. Hard to watch her suffer but with the second shot she died.