We’ve seen it time and time again, and it’s still a damned
\nshame. Sometimes, a man has to die to get respect (not to mention
\nairplay, but that’s a rant for another day.)<\/p>\n
I glumly admit that I’m one of the ones who discovered Johnny
\nCash very late in his career; all I remembered him for were those
\nStandard commercials in the 70s, and by the time I knew everything
\nas a teenager he was hopelessly hokey, as far as I was concerned.
\nWell, as it turned out I didn’t know everything I thought I knew,
\nand here as I begin the long roller-coaster slide towards forty,
\ndamned if Johnny Cash isn’t brilliant.<\/p>\n
So here’s the quandary; when I get sent a greatest hits
\ncollection of Cash, I know the music is going to be good. The
\nquestion is, why another CD? Why repackage yet more music? In this
\ncase, the answer is “Because it’s a fine selection of early Johnny
\nCash music.” While it might be easy to ignore this CD collection
\nbecause familiarity breeds contempt, there are some valid reasons
\nto check out
\nThe Original<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The first is the sound quality, which is excellent. The crowd
\nlaughter and ambient sounds on “A Boy Named Sue” really brings home
\nthat this is a damned funny track, and has aged well. In fact,
\nThe Original<\/i> has a very good sound to it; full and detailed,
\ndespite being tracks from early Columbia\/CBS releases.<\/p>\n
The second is the track selection. Unlike the 1987 Columbia
\nRecords
\n1958-1986<\/i> greatest hits or the 2001
\nMan In Black: The Very Best Of Johnny Cash<\/i>,
\nThe Original<\/i> is a focused selection of tracks They range,
\nroughly, from 1956 (“I Walk The Line”) to 1976 (“One Piece At A
\nTime”); the era where Cash was more or less dominating the country
\ncharts and making considerable inroads on the pop charts.
\nSurprisingly enough, in about a half hour of looking online I
\ncouldn’t find a greatest hits for Cash that covers this period
\nexclusively, despite there being more Johnny Cash greatest hits CDs
\n(including wonders by K-Tel and TeeVee) than there are Democratic
\npresidential candidates. There are box sets — especially the
\nexhaustively complete
\nThe Man In Black<\/i> series put out by Bear Family Records —
\nbut this is your best bet for a definitive sampling of Cash’s early
\nwork that won’t require you to drop forty bucks or more. There are
\ntwo brief caveats here — one, none of Cash’s groundbreaking
\nsingles for Sun Records (with the exception of “I Walk The Line”)
\nare on this CD; and two, the liner notes are extremely sparse and
\ncompletely opinion. I would have liked some more concrete
\ninformation to put the songs in context.<\/p>\n
In the end, though, these are minor considerations; if you take
\nthis for what it is, a survey of Cash’s golden years with
\nColumbia\/CBS, it’s an excellent collection and a good value. Fans
\nshould snap up
\nThe Original<\/i> immediately, and for the curious who are
\nwondering what all the fuss is about it’s a great place to
\nstart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":26607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5664],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-37853","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-johnny-cash","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37853"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}