Disco de Johnny Cash: “Ride This Train”

If you read my reviews, you will know that I generally don't hand out a 5 star rating for just anything.

This is a masterpiece. It is like watching a movie. All the songs tell a different tail, but they all fit together somehow.

For a recording this old, it sounds like it was recorded yesterday. The songs are clear and Cash's voice sets far up front of the instruments.

None of these songs were ever released as singles as far as I know, so if you haven't heard the album, then most likely you haven't heard any of the songs before.

And also, most Johnny Cash fans know that in the 60's he was having voice problems that seriously hindered some of his recordings. I really take that into account when I buy his albums from that period. This album, however, was before all the voice problems, and his voice is as robust and clear as it ever was. In fact, I dare you to find a recording where Johnny is vocalizing any better than he does here.

This is one of the hard-to-find actual studio albums of JC, buried among the Greatest Hits collections. It's a real treasure though - but you'll have to get used to the concept of a travelogue. Each song is preceded by a narrated introduction which today would sound corny, but on this album it doesn't. The songs are haunting and beautiful. No hits on this one - which makes it better for hard core fans who've heard Ring of Fire enough already.

I was SO pleased to be able to find this album! In my opinion, this is one of the finest albums Johnny Cash ever recorded. I'm sure it is the only place he ever recorded the song "Old Doc Brown", which never fails to touch my heart. All of my children (now grown with children of their own) remember this album (as an old LP) and were just as pleased with it as I was! Thank you SO MUCH for providing a place to find treasured memories!

Columbia's year-long reissue program, celebrating Cash's seventieth birthday, began in February with the release of "The Essential Johnny Cash," and continues with enhanced releases of several crucial original LPs. Each album is remastered, and expanded with new essays, bonus tracks and a newly penned introduction from Cash.

In 1960, a year after his arrival at Columbia, Cash offered up "Ride This Train": "a stirring travelogue of America in story and song." Rather than the album of train songs suggested by the title, the eight selections, including titles by Merle Travis, Tex Ritter and Red Foley, offer a potpourri of American archetypes: outlaws, lumberjacks, coal miners, chain-gangs, and immigrants. Tying the songs together with narrative and steam-train sounds, Cash invented a form he'd revisit throughout his career. This reissue is filled out with four bonus tracks, including a previously unissued recording of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem, "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver."

Over the decades, Cash's sound, forged on his very first single at Sun, has proven a remarkably spacious and fertile ground in which to develop his genre-bounding songbook. Given the depth and breadth of his catalog, a compilation, such as "The Essential Johnny Cash" serves as a Cliff's Notes introduction, while the original LPs provide richly detailed chapters in the story of an American musical icon.

3-3/4 stars, if Amazon allowed fractional ratings.

Ride This Train reflects a new feeling of freedom and exploration in America's culture. Interstate highways were being built and cars mass produced, making it easier for travelers to discover America's treasures. The memories of World War II belonged to a generation past, and although America was entering a time of high pressure Cold War, without the media presence that we have today to keep people on alert and fearful for their safety, many people were still living simple lives, dreaming of the day they could take their families to travel around the nation. This album allowed them to do just that without leaving their homes.

When Columbia Records first released this recording, the public assumed it was a compilation of songs about trains, due to the title and the cover showing Johhny Cash on a desert ridge holding a gun, with a train in the background. What they soon discovered was that the record contained eight tracks that gave examples of the different people that make up our great land. It uses the train as transport--complete with sound effects--to take the listener on a tour of America, through space and time, a historical travelogue combining narrations and songs.

The first track, "Loading Coal", tells the story of a boy whose father is a miner in Kentucky. Not a glamorous occupation by any means, but the boy is dreaming of the day when he can follow in his father's footsteps. The train then moves westward where we hear about John Wesley Hardin, a notorious outlaw, followed by the glimpse of the life of an old saddle tramp, "Slow Rider".

The traveling theme continues, with narration between the songs, as the music takes the listener to Oregon, timber country, where the song "Lumberjack" tells of the first day of climbing for a new high-climber. Crossing back to Louisiana, Johnny sings "Dorraine of Pontchartrain", a sad song about a woman who lost her life on the waters there.

Now the music is "Going to Memphis", which is a song not about the music life as you would expect a Memphis based song to be, but about a convict on a work-gang. "When Papa Played the Dobro" is a fun song, designed to bring the listener back up from the black tone of the previous track, telling the story of going to the fair and the joy a child found in listening to his father play.

"Boss Jack" takes the listener to Arkansas, to Johnny's hometown of Dyess, describing an idyllic picture of cotton plantation life, as many wish it had been. Traveling once more on that train takes the listener to Iowa, where Irish immigrants have settled. Relating the story of "Old Doc Brown", Johnny shares about how one man can influence the lives of so many others through generosity and goodwill.

And so ends the travels through the country, leaving the listener with the feeling that they have actually met these people and experienced these places, thanks to the lyrics and music of Johnny Cash and other writers. I am not necessarily a fan of `old' music, but I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this CD and will make some of these songs a regular part of my listening pleasure.