The first six songs reeled off come from Sam Phillips' Sun Records - "I Walk the Line", "There You Go", "Home of the Blues", "Ballad of a Teenage Queen", "Guess Things Happen That Way" and "The Ways of A Woman In Love." Together they mark a hesitancy - from the perspective of history - when these are put along such pop-rock hits from Elvis, Buddy Holly or Bill Haley, along with their Jordanaires, Crickets and Comets. (There was, of course, Little Richard and a host of other country stars of the time).
It's easy to like this first disc of hits. They were indeed hits (including 13 No. 1 on the C&W charts) and have been heard across the decades. Many come with memories attached and such reminiscence can overcome many faults; faults that those unattached to the music can, perhaps, easily find. In life, yes, but in his music Cash had few faults - because he played it from his essence, from inside his heart.
Johnny Cash spans the birth of rock and roll music through to the early 21st Century. Two of the songs here are from 2002. And it is not only Cash "The Legend" but the music he spent his time on over the years, that matters.
But it started back in 1955.
Cash was a man of occasion and presence. Cash feeds off a crowd as good as anyone else; and when your audience is Folsom and San Quentin prisoners - well, there's a lot of give and take on that pent-up energy. Folsom Prison Blues takes on a more profound, new meaning when sung before prisoners in 1968:
Well, if they freed me from this prison, if that railroad train was mine. I bet I'd move out over a little farther down the line. Far from Folsom Prison, that's where I want to stay. And I'd let that lonesome whistle blow my Blues away.
You know their ears are pulling in the words; words that most listeners can appreciate but likely have not lived. Yet without taking it inside, you would never otherwise hear that strangely chilling and seemingly approving loud whoop from the crowd after, "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die."
"Daddy Sang Bass" comes right after "Folsom ..." and it's a jarring contrast - lives broken, next to a family circle unbroken. But here, there's that hope again:
"I remember when I was a lad, times were hard and things were bad. But there's a silver lining behind every cloud. Just poor people that's all we were, trying to make a living out of black land dirt."
Article comments
1 - Phillip Winn
This is a very neat idea!
2 - Aaman
What? The concept of reviewing each CD separately? Yep
3 - Phillip Winn
Yeah, that's what I meant. It makes a nice retrospective of Cash's career.
4 - Temple Stark
Glad you liked it. It just made sense. I knew I'd have a lot to say for 50-plus years of music and 104 songs.
5 - wallybangs
I'm glad you're doing the review like this Temple. I signed on to review the Cash too so I'm going to be able to do something completely different without feeling bad about it, plus we're gonna saturate folks with Johnny coverage for a week or so.
6 - Temple Stark
Those trackback pings worked beautifully there I just noticed.
The last few songs on disc 4 are complete heart-breakers.
I should also note - because it reads incorrectly - that June Carter Cash was not his wife in 1963, but they had met by then - very much "met."