Johnny Cash-American Recordings

 

 

Johnny Cash American Recordings

I’ve always known who Johnny Cash was. He’s Johnny Cash, a mythical figure who’s deep voice and large presence just seemed to dwell in my consciousness. I don’t know of a time when Folsom Prison Blues didn’t exist. I know that I was alive on the release of A Boy Named Sue, but it seems like it was always there. I’d watch Johnny when he showed up on the Mike Douglas Show, which came on after school and would have a variety of musical guests.

From late ’75 to early ’76 I listened to country music station KLAC, and recall two hits of that time, Johnny Cash’s One Piece at a Time and Tom T. Hall’s Faster Horses.

In the 80s, I thought of Johnny as a kind of dinosaur that continued to roam the earth, a larger than life figure that called up a time long past. While I was on the Otter (KOTR) in SLO, my radio co-host and I pulled the new U2 Album, Zooropa and played the Wanderer on a lark. Playing it now, I stand by my original opinion-why? It’s a good vocal performance for Cash, but the synthesized backing track seems gimmicky, and I wonder if the song would have been improved with the synth mixed down and an acoustic guitar mixed up.

A few years later, on a ski trip in Mammoth with a girlfriend and her family, her step-dad pulled out American Recordings, and I listened to Delia’s Gone. I was floored.

For the next few days, I asked to hear that cassette every evening, and bought American Recordings when I got home. This old man (just a touch older than I am now) was singing these amazing songs, just him and his old Martin acoustic. The music was so full, I don’t think I realized that there were no backing musicians. (Like a Bird on a Wire is playing right now, filling the space here in my backyard). A credit to producer Rick Rubin, who somehow managed to capture the fullness of the rooms (Johnny’s cabin and Rubin’s living room) in the recordings.

House of Blues, Sunset Strip

There were a couple of live tracks, Tennessee Stud and The Man Who Couldn’t Cry, played for an adoring crowd at Johnny Depp’s Viper Room, and I’d got to see Johnny at the House of Blues on his birthday in 1996. Johnny commanded the stage in a way that I’ve only seen a few performers do. He started the way you’d imagine-“Hello, my name is Johnny Cash,” and went right into I Walk the Line. June came out and sang a few songs, and it looked like Grandma and Grandpa climbed onstage. June belted songs from the bottom of her feet-it was quite a sight. We were also treated to Carlene Carter and Rosanne Cash, and Johnny looked happy and proud. The encore saw Tom Petty, Mike Campbell and Howie Epstein come out for Rusty Cage. By the end, I was convinced that Johnny could have come out and sang the phone book and it would have been awesome.

All volumes of American Recordings are excellent, and Johnny’s version of Hurt, especially with the video, is frightening, showing the frailty of a man near death, and alarming in that wife June is shown gazing at him, and would precede him to the Promised Land. I almost put his VH1 Storytellers album with Willie Nelson on this list as well. I enjoy the 60s era Columbia records, too, but Rick Rubin really seemed to know how to get the best out of Johnny Cash, and as I get older, I’m glad that Johnny Cash did excellent work in his 60s.