| Sings the Ballads of the True West - Johnny Cash | |
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Reviewed by Kathy Coleman
When Johnny Cash growls out a song, you can tell he means business. In 1965, when this album was originally recorded, Cash was at the very top of his game. His voice was at its gravely, rumbling best, and here he's singing and reciting songs that are all but forgotten today, when people actually think a guy with tight designer jeans in an unblocked wide-brimmed hat is a "cowboy." In "Johnny Cash Sings The Ballads of the True West," he remembers, and reminds all of us, what a COWBOY actually is.
Cash's 1965 concept album (recorded before most people even knew what a "concept album" was), re-issued for the first time on CD as a terrific part of the Johnny Cash 70th Birthday celebrations, starts out with his powerful speaking voice reciting "Hiawatha's Vision," inspired
by Longfellow's "The Song Of Hiawatha." From there, it only gets better and better. No one sings songs about the West anymore, with the exception of Riders in the Sky (and all too many people see them as a novelty act, more's the pity). It's wonderful to hear this style of song again,
presented here in all their glory, sung by a voice that seems to come right from the True West, even though Johnny himself is from Arkansas. Of course, once upon a time, Arkansas was pretty far west, as we're reminded in such songs as "The Road To Kaintuck," "Mister Garfield,"
and "Johnny Reb," before white men crossed the plains and the "Wild West" was born.
But we do get to venture into the "real" west, into Arizona and Nevada and New Mexico, Montana and Colorado and Wyoming, when Johnny Cash sings "The Ballad of Boot Hill," "The
Streets of Laredo," "Sweet Betsy From Pike," "The Blizzard," and "Hardin Wouldn't Run." From familiar sounds of old folk tunes such as "Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie" to Maybelle Carter's lovely "Letter From Home" to John R. Cash originals like "Mean As Hell" to the dark humor of Shel Silverstein's "25 Minutes To Go," this disc is one hundred percent a winner.
In 1965, when this disc was recorded, Johnny Cash was one of the most popular artists in America, if not the world. His voice and face were instantly recognizable in all genres of music, and he was a top-selling superstar. He was also not the venerable patriarch of a great musical family. He had not married June Carter yet; he was called a wildman; he battled drugs and partied hard. But it didn't have any effect on his brilliance, his creativity, or his music. Here on what was a double LP (one disc, with two bonus tracks over the LP version) appears Cash in all his magnificence. He's joined on this disc by such luminaries as his Tennessee Three and the Carter Family; and yes, that's the Statler Brothers you can hear on harmonies, as the original
Statlers got their start with Johnny.
The original album ended with "Reflections." Johnny's words read, "Listen to the cowboy's story, And if you cannot hear it in these legends, songs, and stories, Listen closely to the west wind and the secrets that it whispers in the forest, plains and valleys, in the sand forever
shifting." It's all gone now, by and large, but sometimes, for those of us who do still live out in here in the "Old West," you can find it. The shifting sands, mountains, valleys, and canyons hold their silent secrets, yielding the buried past only reluctantly to the curious. But as long as
there are people like Johnny Cash, and albums like this one, the memories will never die. This is cowboy music the way I remember cowboy music sounding and feeling. The way it's supposed to sound. A dusty, dirty, careworn and weather-worn cowboy who's never seen the
inside of a gym and wears his hat in the rain. That's a cowboy. Hallelujah.
Song List:
Sound clips courtesy of Barnes & Noble.
Album cover, used with permission of Legacy Recordings.
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