Johnny Cash - The Legend of Johnny Cash
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CD Details
Artist: Johnny CashEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2005-10-25
Music Label: Hip-O Records
Soundtracks:
- Cry! Cry! Cry!
- Hey Porter
- Folsom Prison Blues
- I Walk The Line
- Get Rhythm
- Big River
- Guess THings Happen That Way
- Ring Of Fire
- Jackson
- A Boy Named Sue
- Sunday Morning Coming Down
- Man In Black
- One Piece At A Time
- Highwayman
- The Wanderer - U2
- Delia's Gone
- Rusty Cage
- I've Been Everywhere
- Give My Love To Rose
- The Man Comes Around (Early Take)
- Hurt
Music reviews of The Legend of Johnny Cash
Music Review: Great Johnny Cash retrospective
Rating: 4 Stars
I admit that The Legend is not the complete Johnny Cash. I think you'd have to buy one of his boxed sets to get a good appreciation of his music. However, with all the publicity the movie Walk The Line(which stars Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny) has generated, I think you'd be wise to pick up The Legend. This record has some great highlights from Johnny's nearly half a century of making music.
The Legend features a lot of great tracks from the '50s and '60s. "Cry Cry Cry", "Get Rhythm", "I Walk The Line", "Folsom Prison Blues", and "Big River" all feature the booming guitar licks that Johnny made famous. Other highlights include the blistering "Ring Of Fire" and the bouncy "Jackson"(Johnny's duet with his wife, June Carter Cash). Johnny showed his sense of humor on "A Boy Named Sue"(from his live San Quentin record), which was written by his buddy Shel Silverstein. Johnny continued to have hits in the '70s, including his signature song, "Man In Black"; the reflective song "Sunday Morning Coming Down", written by Kris Kristofferson, another one of his buddies; and "One Piece At A Time", another humorous song. Though Johnny practically dropped off the charts in the '80s, he had success when he, Kristofferson, and their pals Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson toured and recorded together as The Highwaymen. "Highwayman", which became a big hit for the quartet, is a classic song featuring some great vocals and an awesome musical background.
Somewhat surprisingly, I am most impressed with Johnny's American Recordings songs from the late '90s and the early part of this decade. Producer Rick Rubin gave Johnny free rein to do whatever he wanted, and the results are great. The recent songs which are on here include Johnny's reworkings of his old songs("Delia's Gone", "I've Been Everywhere", and "Give My Love To Rose"); a couple of contemporary rock anthems("The Wanderer", featuring U2's Bono, and "Rusty Cage", which has some awesome guitar work); and the apocalyptic anthem "The Man Comes Around". The song that really aces the record, though, is "Hurt", written by the Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor. When Johnny sings, "I hurt myself today/To see if I still feel", one gets the feeling that Johnny is singing about his own substance addiction. Though Johnny regularly spoke publicly about his religious faith, he battled alcohol and pill problems off and on until his death.
As with any compilation, The Legend isn't perfect. Though it's impossible to capture the career of a legendary performer in one disc, a couple of my Johnny Cash favorites are missing here. The Western ballad "Ghost Riders In The Sky", along with another Highwaymen song, "Desperados Waiting For A Train", are among the best songs Johnny came out with, and yet this record doesn't include them. Still, The Legend is a great Johnny Cash retrospective. It features a lot of highlights from a performer who was admired as both a country and pop artist.
Description of The Legend of Johnny Cash
The Legend of Johnny Cash spans his entire career for the first time on a single disc. Featuring 21 of his recordings on the Sun, Columbia, Island, and American Recordings labels, it's the first compilation to include his work on American. Also highlighting the package is a 16-page deluxe booklet with photos and essay by author Rich Kienzle.His Sun Records tracks begin with his first single, "Hey, Porter"/"Cry! Cry! Cry!," a Country Top 20 penned by Cash and produced by Sam Phillips. Straddling country and rock 'n' roll, they scored in 1956 with the Top 10 Country "Folsom Prison Blues," #1 Country/Top 20 Pop "I Walk The Line" and #1 Country "Get Rhythm." Also heard from his Sun days are 1958's "Big River" (#4 Country/Top 20 Pop) and "Guess Things Happen That Way" (#1 Country/Top 20 Pop).Cash signed with Columbia in 1958 and five years later had a #1 Country/Top 20 Pop hit with "Ring of Fire," a ballad co-written by June Carter, who in 1967 would duet with him on the #2 Country "Jackson" and later become his wife. In 1969, the live Johnny Cash at San Quentin yielded his biggest hit: Shel Silverstein's novelty "A Boy Named Sue" (#1 Country/#2 Pop).Kris Kristofferson composed Cash's 1970 #1 Country hit "Sunday Morning Coming Down" while Cash himself composed his personal philosophy on 1971's #3 Country "Man in Black," his nickname for the rest of his days. Also from his Columbia tenure are 1976's "One Piece at a Time" (#1 Country/Top 30 Pop) and 1985's "Highwayman" with Waylon Jennings and Kristofferson.Cash joined Mercury in 1986 and The Legend of Johnny Cash includes a track from that period titled "The Wanderer," a duet with U2 written by Bono and U2, taken from the group's 1993 release Zooropa. That same year Rick Rubin, known for producing rap and rock acts, offered to record Cash singing whatever he chose. 1994's American Recordings, including college radio favorite "Delia's Gone," brought Cash to a new generation and won the Best Contemporary Folk Album Grammy. On 1996's Unchained, Cash brilliantly interpreted Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage" as well as the Hank Snow classic "I've Been Everywhere" and copped the Grammy for Best Country Album. On 2003's American IV: The Man Comes Around, he revisited old favorite "Give My Love to Rose" and gave new meaning to Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" (the video for "Hurt" was 6 times nominated at MTV's 2003 VMAs and also won a Grammy for "Best Short Form Music Video" that same year). From 2003's posthumous box set Unearthed, The Legend of Johnny Cash adds an early take on "The Man Comes Around."This introduction to the Man in Black's catalog is about as fine a one as can be found on one disc, primarily because the 21 classic tracks span J.R. Cash's entire career, from his first rockabilly single, "Hey, Porter"/"Cry! Cry! Cry!" (Sun Records, 1955), to his last significant alt-country tracks (American Recordings, 2003). Though Cash had his peaks and valleys in the studio, what shines brightly on this collection is how constant--how unwavering--his creativity remained, whether he was writing and performing original material or interpreting the work of others. His voice, too, remained a majestic thing of wonder, even as Cash often sang off-beat; settled his bass-baritone somewhere around, if not on the note; and cared more about power and emotion than strict rules of measure--something that became especially important as illness changed his great oaken voice into a frail instrument. In this way, he was able to infuse novelty songs ("One Piece at a Time," "A Boy Named Sue") with undeniable cool and maintain the poetry of Kris Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down" even in the awful advent of a gloppy, too-peppy string section. Other chestnuts here take on new dimension in retrospect. "Jackson," a duet with wife June Carter Cash, seemed almost comedic ("hotter than a pepper sprout") when it was released, but now reveals the couple's own white-hot sexuality, primarily in June's elegant, if straightahead vocal. The surprise of The Legend of Johnny Cash is how seamlessly the newer material blends with the seminal, and how full-circle it sometimes comes: Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage" doesn't seem markedly different from the quietly defiant songs that Cash defined himself with in the '50s and early '60s. Yet the compilation producers, like Cash himself, saved the best for last. "Hurt," Trent Reznor's poignant meditation on addiction, is devastating as written, but becomes a thing of terrible beauty in the ailing Cash's ravaged, autobiographical delivery. Sequenced as the final cut on the album, it ends with a kind of shocking void; stunning in its intensity, dropping the listener off a cliff of something very akin to grief. No artist, no matter what genre, could have planned a more haunting exit. --Alanna Nash
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