The Complete Original Sun Singles
Varese Sarabande 1999
If you care about Americana, Cash's songs for Sun Records are as essential as Huckleberry Finn. Taking a raw, no-frills approach to country music that incorporated rockabilly's bopping rhythms, Cash was the biggest country artist on producer Sam Phillips' storied roster. This two-disc set collects the A and B sides of twenty singles recorded between 1955 and 1958 -- including Cash's first waxings of classics such as "Get Rhythm," "Big River," "I Walk the Line" and "Folsom Prison Blues."
Hymns by Johnny Cash
Columbia 1959
Cash left Sun to record gospel, and he followed his rocking Columbia debut, The Fabulous Johnny Cash, with this set of hymns, sung with the fervor of one who'd never lost faith despite his wandering ways. As U2's Bono wrote in his liner notes for 2000's Love, God, Murder, "Johnny Cash doesn't sing to the damned, he sings with the damned." Cash's career is full of sacred songs. But Hymns, an alternately rousing and stately mix of standards ("Swing Low, Sweet Chariot") and originals ("It Was Jesus"), is where it began for a man who knew his way around both Saturday night and Sunday morning.
At Folsom Prison
Columbia 1968
Johnny Cash's best-known record is a live set cut before a captive audience at Folsom State Prison, in Represa, California, on January 13th, 1968. This spirited, warts-and-all performance opens with a familiar greeting ("Hello, I'm Johnny Cash") and proceeds bullishly through outlaw narratives ("Cocaine Blues") and a condemned man's last thoughts ("25 Minutes to Go"), along with corn-pone comedy ("Flushed From the Bathroom of Your Heart") and the moving "Greystone Chapel," written by a Folsom inmate. The 1999 reissue adds three unreleased tracks and is uncensored to boot, so you can hear Cash say "shit" and "hell." Just behind Folsom in quality is the 1969 classic At San Quentin.
The Essential Johnny Cash, 1955-1983
Columbia/Legacy 1993
Almost all you need is here. This three-disc box set remains the definitive overview of Cash's three decades at Columbia and his years at Sun, in the Fifties. It combines fifteen Sun classics with sixty selections from his vast Columbia catalog, affording a taste of his numerous styles, guises and preoccupations: Western lore, trains ("Orange Blossom Special"), prison life, comedy ("Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog"), old-time religion and his own self-mythologized antihero ("Man in Black"). If you're looking for a little more concision, check out the two-CD Columbia/Legacy compilation with the same name from 2002: Included on that Essential Johnny Cash is his otherworldly collaboration with Bob Dylan ("Girl From the North Country"),
plus his 1993 guest spot on U2's "The Wanderer."
American Recordings
American 1994
No second acts in American life? Forget it. Cash rebounded with a vengeance on Rick Rubin's
American label with this collection of stark, forceful performances. This was Johnny Cash in black-and-white, bare-boned, raw-knuckled, close-up. Sin and redemption were the themes, and the songs came from such unlikely sources as Tom Waits and Glenn Danzig. His daring carried over to three follow-ups, including last year's The Man Comes Around, which includes Cash's stirring cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt."
(RS 933, October 16, 2003)