Music Review: Johnny Cash - Ultimate Gospel

Johnny may be dead, but he is not forgotten. His music lives on. Columbia has just released a new CD of his Gospel Songs. Now many of us might scratch our heads at this.

Johnny was the wild man, his gospel as I understood it came mainly from bottles and needles, rather than from the Bible. My wife (who knows more than I do about most things), straightened me out on the subject. Johnny Cash started out as a very clean cut singer, and Ultimate Gospel is mostly re-edited and cleaned up recordings from the 1950s and 1960s. Most of the songs have appeared on previous recordings, however the CD does contain three previously unreleased songs. For that reason alone, if you are a Johnny Cash fan you will want to pick up this CD to add to your collection.

Until fairly recently I was not a big Johnny Cash fan, but there is something about his voice that just grows on you. He is the epitome of traditional country music. His style is so unique that even I, a country music neophyte, can spot a Johnny song from 3 miles away!

Ultimate Gospel contains 24 tracks, and most of them are pretty short (3 mins). You don’t have to be a gospel fan to enjoy this CD, they are all classic examples of Johnny. Alas not all of them work well, some gospel tunes have been stereotyped to the extent that not even the most avid fan can like these versions.

I absolutely hated "Amazing Grace." This was, in my mind, a truly brutal destruction of a very delightful tune. The same can be said of his rendition of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." These are songs that only certain people should ever try. Johnny Cash never had the voice depth to work with a song like "Swing Low."

The very first track "He Was A Man" is not a song, it is Johnny evangelizing. I found this a wonderfully absorbing piece. From there we springboard to 23 other songs, and with the two exceptions I mentioned earlier the listener is treated to some fabulous music.
Many of the songs were not familiar to me and I enjoyed them A’La Cash as I had nothing to compare them to. If you are a Johnny Cash fan, you absolutely need this in your collection.   Don’t be scared about the gospel thing, a song is a song! This is a great CD that chronicles some of his very early works.

Article Author: Simon Barrett

Simon is an Educator in Calgary, Alberta. His own piece of idiocy is zzsimonb's rantings and he is also a contibuting editor for Blogger News Network.

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