Disco de Johnny Cash: “Now, There Was a Song!”

Well friends, if there was ever a Johnny Cash album that is true country, this is it. All these great versions of country standards such as My Shoes Keep Walking Back To You, Time Changes Everything, Honky Tonk Girl and the rest are very well done. This is indeed a different Johnny Cash style but like that other reviewer said he is in excellent shape on this album. I wish Johnny recorded more country albums like this, but I think every Cash fan will enjoy this album. I guess back in those days people were so uptight about using words like Cocaine in a song, that's why he had to change it to Transfusion Blues. Now you will hear Johnny's famous style with Luther Perkins on guitar, etc. Enjoy!

This album reminds me of Costello's "Almost Blue" what with "My Shoes Keep Walking Back To You" yet it also transcends it. It is Cash doing country standards with the "Beat Vision" described by Bob Dylan in 1963. Indeed, "Transfusion Blues" is both an earlier version of Cash's "Cocaine Blues" and Dylan's "In Search of Little Sadie".

"Honky Tonk Girl" was used on Oliver Stone's U TURN soundtrack and "Seasons of My Heart" beats Jerry Lee and Linda Gail Lewis's version hands down. What with albums such as, "Bitter Tears", "Ballads of The True West", and "Ride This Train" Cash is the ultimate chameleonesque concept artist and not David Bowie. Hell, its rumoured that Bowie did a cover of Ira Hayes in 1974 for an unreleased album.

This is one of the more "Nashville" sounding releases of Cash's. Weeping steel guitar, fiddle, honky tonk piano...it's all here. This reissue sees Cash tackling cover songs from George Jones, Ferlin Husky, Marty Robbins, Ray Price, Bob Wills, Melvin Endsley, Ernest Tubb,Hank Snow, Roy Hogshead, Hank Thompson and Hank Williams, Sr.

Packagingwise, there are pluses and minuses. The liners would benefit from inclusion of lyrics, but it's nice to have the original puff piece from the LP back included. ("It's the kind of singing that makes a listener declare,"Now, THERE was a song!")

The run time is short (about a half hour) so this probably SHOULD have been a "twofer" reissue with another Columbia catalogue Cash LP to make a better value. The price though is only $10 so it's probably reasonable even with the brevity.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Best tracks here are "Transfusion Blues" (actually "Cocaine Blues" with some lyric changes). The track sounds like basic Sun-era "boom chicka boom" Johnny with some Nashville gloss. Another uptempo one, "I Feel Better all Over", is fine..as are drinking her off my mind tune "Just One More" and weeper "I'd Just be Fool Enough (to Fall)".

LOWS:

Perhaps one tune that might have benefitted from a more typical spare Cash arrangement is "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry". It never feels as melancholy as it should..perhaps a harmonica would have been better in place of the fiddle to evoke the ghostly air of the Hank classic?

BOTTOM LINE:

It's not an "essential" Cash CD. But if you're a fan of the Man in Black you'll probably like quite a few cuts.

3 1/2 stars

I purchased a near mint vinyl copy of this at a record show a few years ago,and it quickly became one of my most played Johnny albums. Great covers of vintage country, Somehow I think Johnny would rather be playing this stuff than the songs Rick Rubin has had him record in recent years;while I still enjoy that,what he's doing here is more natural and makes better sense.

This is a very different Johnny Cash album, and a very well done album!!! I think the other reviews said it all, but Johnny does gorgeous covers of country standards and his style is a lot different from his other recordings. This is pure country! I have this album on the second Man In Black box set. Highly recommended!