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PERSONAL FILE
Johnny Cash
(Columbia Legacy / Sony)
HHHH (Out of five)
"I’ve sung this song mainly to myself," Johnny Cash tells us in one of several one-to-one spoken attempts to provide context to these intimate, back porch performances.
Spanning the years 1973-1982, a period that saw Cash no longer a hitmaker but already a legend, these home recordings present the Man in Black alone with his guitar, paying homage to such previous legends as the Carter Family, the Louvin Brothers and Lefty Frizzell as well as finding the songwriting muse that had by this point publicly deserted him.
The results, though unlikely to turn any new converts in the direction of the late artist’s commanding body of work, confirms that even as Nashville courted the pop charts and prepared its house for today’s ‘young country,’ the heart of country music still lay with originals like Cash.
Decades later, Rick Rubin would attempt to capture the same intimacy that inhabits these songs, with significantly paler results.
Ironically, those recordings elevated Cash to the status these surely would have, in a better world. Cash is in that world now, but he has kindly left us these reminders of his unique voice.