I've said it before... and I'll have to say it again... Johnny Cash is bigger than country music. He is the type of artist who transcends his genre. He's really a musical icon. A living icon that represents what American Music is all about!
I had the great fortune of growing up in a home where country music was appreciated. I know this would have been a curse to many of you, and believe me at times I felt like it was... but I say it was fortunate now because of the fact that I was exposed to the work of Johnny Cash early. From that early exposure onward I have always felt a connection to his music, even when I didn't really care for country I still felt like I was a Johnny Cash fan. The one album I remember listening to over and over was Orange Blossom Special. My Mom and Dad had the big scratchy record album which I played over and over. I loved it!
Johnny Cash defies being labled, he is a category buster! This 1965 recording, Orange Blossom Special does just that. This particular recording has a distinct folk feel to it.
As a kid I loved the songs, "It Ain't Me Babe" and "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" it wasn't until I had grown up to be a teenager that I heard the Bob Dylan versions of these songs. I really like the fact that Johnny was open to all types of music and was so impacted by the work of Dylan that he chose to record some of his tunes.
Johnny has never been afraid to push the edge of the envelope! I bet there were a few country radio stations afraid to play some of these songs back in the '60's. Just like today... I hear most country stations won't play songs from his latest album.
It's a shame that they won't... Johnny Cash is brilliant and it's too bad the closed minded radio industry won't play his work. But as fans of the Man in Black we keep his music going. And I hope Johnny has the strength and years to keep on going a little longer. We love you Johnny Cash!
This one will bring a smile. Pure country, and progressive stuff (this is 1965!), featuring two of Bob Dylan's classics. The title track, "The Wall" and "Long Black Veil" belong to Johnny. You may find that his trademark vocals, and very competent studio accompaniment, stamps all offerings on this album, with a raw Cash seal.
This Johnny Cash album was released in 1965. All tracks except for one were recorded in December of 1964. The album is titled after Cash's hit single "Orange Blossom Special". The album is most noted for including Cash's versions of three Bob Dylan songs. These are all great, as are all the other songs on the album. "The Long Black Veil" and "The Wall" in particular are recognized as Cash classics. A highly recommended album.
As the album notes point out, this 1965 LP was significant historically, marking the crossing of the line between hippie folk music and conservative country. Three Bob Dylan songs were included along with a variety of other folk songs, two songs by Cash (there's one more as a bonus track on this CD), and some old-time country. I appear to be in the minority in not really liking the Dylan crossovers much, and in feeling that much of this album wasn't ideal material for Cash, at least not at the time. (I think he handled this kind of material better in later years, with better arrangements too.) Most of the album is enjoyable, but not much if any is close to Cash's best, and there are parts that stick out as more strange than good. I'll try to describe both the good and questionable so you can make your own judgment.
The title song that leads off the album is a good example of an oddity. Written as a showpiece for fiddle, here the fiddle parts for "Orange Blossom Special" are done on harmonica and, for one solo, a saxophone. While the harmonica may sound more like a train whistle (the Special being a train), it doesn't have the bite or, as played here by Charlie McCoy, the traditional vigor that makes the song a showstopper. Boots Randolph's sax doesn't burn the house down either. It's a pleasant, moderately fun rendition, and different from others, to be sure, but no more, nothing like what you might expect from the liner notes, which include a narrative by Cash titled "'Orange Blossom Special' ... tore the house down." That turns out to be about the fiddle version. (Incidentally, that narrative may be a little mixed up fact-wise. I'll include below some notes about it and the mystery voice who does the spoken part with Cash.)
The Dylan covers form a trilogy on parting with women he doesn't love, either because she's too square or cloying or because he's "free-wheelin'," or both. They all include ironic lyrics, and at least a couple appear to be rather sour parodies of traditional folk songs. "It Ain't Me Babe" is done up with close harmony vocals from June Carter (before she was June Carter Cash), harmonica, and mariachi horns. Cash seems to play up the satirical side of the song when he half-shouts the choruses and ends each by practically spitting the final "babe." Or maybe he's just trying to bring it to life. This one makes me cringe, but others find it delightful.
The other two Dylan covers, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and "Mama You Been on My Mind," are less oddly arranged and sung, though we do get a sax and some odd vocal phrasing in the latter. The last bonus track is an earlier recording of "Mama You Been on My Mind" with Mexican horns and what sounds like occasional straining to get the words into the line, an issue in a few other cuts as well.
About half the songs are relaxed, quiet folk songs, mostly with some of the standard Cash rhythm section, dialed back a little. These are, overall, the most successful cuts, in my view. Like the album as a whole, they have the feel of songs quickly assembled and performed without much rehearsal. That's how Cash preferred to work, and it had its good points, in not smothering spontaneity, and its bad points, including some sloppiness in phrasing and not always getting the most out of a song.
It's fun to hear Cash sing the Carter Family's "Wildwood Flower." Like most of the quieter songs, it mainly sounds laid back, with a loping rhythm section.
June Carter duets with Cash on "When It's Springtime in Alaska," with only an acoustic guitar accompanying. I like that one best.
One of the folky songs, "Danny Boy," has a 2-minute spoken introduction in which Cash talks about family history that he ties into the song. It's a pleasure to hear Cash talk about anything, especially something close to him, though if you listen to the album frequently you may not want to hear it each time (no convenient way to skip it). The song itself will affect different people differently. The arrangement is simple, mainly just Cash singing with an acoustic guitar, with occasional women's chorus and a flute. I enjoy the doleful, rough quality Cash brings to it, and at the same time am slightly put off by what seems to be a struggle to hit some of the notes, which some will find all the more affecting, some hard to listen to.
"All of God's Children Ain't Free" is a protest song Cash wrote that must have stood out at the time, when country music wasn't doing protest songs. It sounds like what you might expect a Johnny Cash version of a Pete Seeger song to sound like, with the usual rhythm section and women backing him on each occurrence of the title line. The sentiment of the lyric is similar to that of "Man in Black" (which suits him better, I think).
The spiritual "Amen" that ended the LP is more rousing than the other cuts, with a good driving beat, lively piano, choir and banjo (!?). It isn't one of the most rousing versions I've heard of what can be a roof-raiser, but it's got some spirit.
All in all, the CD is a mixed bag, good for fans who are just happy hearing Cash sing, and especially for seekers of musical history and curiosities.
A few notes about the original liner notes. Cash tells a story of Ervin T. Rouse, one of the writers of the "Special," as some called it, finding Cash backstage at a show. According to another account by Cash and an account given by Randy Noles based on eyewitness testimony (in his
), Cash had spoken to Rouse on the phone and had invited him to meet him there, Rouse was driven there in a car, and he had already made reacquaintance with Mother Maybelle Carter outside the hall, all contrary to what the liner notes appear to imply. Rouse was actually 48 when Cash says he was probably over 60. Noles also settles, apparently on good authority (he spoke with at least one person who was there), who did the spoken dialogue with Cash on this song. It wasn't Pop Staples but a custodian and courier named Ed Grizzard, whom he had similarly employed on "The Legend of John Henry's Hammer."
In this, one of the most deservedly revered of his recordings, Johnny Cash employed a Nashville band in an adventurous excursion into the mid-1960s folk revival. Among the results is a rollicking, made-for-jukebox version of Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me, Babe," much superior to Dylan's own, which comes across as an uninspired revisiting of the earlier "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right." That song's here, too, with "All Right" morphed into the spelling monstrosity "Alright." Cash's reading of the latter is decent enough, though it's hard to beat either Dylan's furious original or, best of all, Ramblin' Jack Elliott's magnificently lived-in reading. Still, at the time it must have been shocking for a performer generally known as a country singer -- even one of Cash's maverick instincts -- to tackle Dylan material, albeit not of the political or surreal variety. Unfortunately, this otherwise admirable venture ends up being too much of a good thing. The album's third Dylan composition, "Mama, You've Been on My Mind," returns to precisely the same theme as the other two, with predictably diminishing returns -- and, worse, it's here twice.
There is, on the other hand, the wacky, unforgettable reworking of the title song, the only version of "Orange Blossom Special" I can still hear with pleasure (any longtime bluegrass fan will know what I mean). "You Wild Colorado," a minimalist, acoustic-guitar treatment of a lovely Cash original, sounds as if it could be at least a hundred years old. The black-humored saga-song "When It's Springtime in Alaska (It's Forty Below)," by the ubiquitous Tillman Franks (whose composer credits include "Honky Tonk Man" and "North to Alaska"), was a minor hit for Johnny Horton long ago. Cash's appropriately chilling version proves once again -- in the unlikely event that a doubter remains out there somewhere -- that he is a master of the narrative ballad. In another spirit, Cash's civil-rights-era anthem "All of God's Children Ain't Free" feels stirring and true four decades later. His take on the African-American spiritual "Amen" underscores his command of black as well as white gospel.
Anyone who loves early country music -- when it was literally a rural music -- will be gratified at the inclusion of "Engine 143" (aka "The F.F.V."), previously unreleased in the United States, from the repertoire of the Carter Family. This venerable train-wreck ballad, an authentic American folk song, documents the remarkable depth and breadth of Cash's music, which manages to contain the original Southern tradition and its children in both folk revival and modern country in one unbroken family circle.
Not everything here is great, but the best stuff is good enough to elevate Orange Blossom Special into the top ranks of Cash recordings. In the process, it reminds us why Johnny Cash is somebody special.
