Featured White Papers
- Oct. 14th: Simplified IT with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) (ZDNet)
- PCI DSS therapy for the smaller retailer (McAfee)
- The rise of Web commuting (Citrix Online)
Content provided in partnership with
Johnny Cash: The Legend
Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine, Winter, 2006 by Mike Tearson
Johnny Cash The Legend Columbia/Legacy 92802
June Carter Cash Keep on the Sunny Side: Her Life In Music Columbia/Legacy 90908
Johnny Cash." The Legend is a four-CD set of 104 selections, 7 previously unreleased. Of the 75 tracks on the three-CD Essential Johnny Cash which The Legend effectively replaces, 32 do not appear on the new set. Each of the four CDs is themed. Discs One and Two combine to cover most of the hits and best known songs. No way they could house all of them as just through 1988 Cash had notched an astounding 132 hits on the country charts alone. A complete collection of these would already be larger than this entire set. A truly definitive Johnny Cash set would be prohibitively vast. Still what is here is easily the best available retrospective, excluding the multiple Bear Family releases of everything John ever recorded.
The themed disc concept works quite well, particularly Disc Three, The Great American Songbook and Disc Four, Family and Friends. Songbook showcases facets of Cash less frequently addressed, mostly sparsely rendered blues and folk songs that speak to the very foundation of his musical self. Family and Friends shows just how fearless Cash was in trying out ideas many would reject out of hand and making them work on his own terms.
Keep on the Sunny Side collects 40 June Carter Cash performances dating from 1939 to 2003, from Carter Family through collaborations June did with Homer and Jethro, Cal Smith and, of course, Johnny Cash, plus solo work. June only made four solo albums and thus had a much smaller body of work to draw from. But what is here is choice. June's wild comic side, her more tender and loving side, her devotion to family, particularly her mother and her spiritual side are all well represented.
Both sets are lovingly annotated and profusely illustrated with excellent, revealing photos. The sound transfers and mastering are superb, likely the best these sides have ever received. Both are packaged gorgeously. As stated at the top, both of these are absolutely essential collections of irreplaceable artists we will permanently miss even while celebrating them by playing their music.
COPYRIGHT 2006 Sing Out Corporation
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group
