Rating My CD's: A Boy Named John

12. Johnny Cash -- The Legend Box Set

In a lot of ways, Johnny Cash was just like Elvis. Both were sons of the Mississippi Delta; both grew up poor as dirt; both wandered in to Sun Records in Memphis in the middle of the 1950's hungry and talented; both achieved international fame and became legends in their own time. Up until 1968 or so, their career arcs show suprising similarity.


After that, they break apart to an almost perpendicular degree. The King's '68 Comeback ended up not re-vitalizing Elvis' career so much as eulogizing it nine years ahead of time. He sank down into drugs and debauchery and became just another sacrifice offered on the altar of Fame, apotheosized in mystic sightings and velvet portraits. Only now, 30 years after his death, are the cognoscenti prepared to take him seriously again.


Obviously, Johnny Cash did not do that, despite a shared weakness for drugs, and the entirety of this 4-disc set amply demonstrates why. Simply put, Johnny Cash had more in the tank, more songs to write and sing. His body of work is greater than the sum of its parts. Sun Records started him, but could not complete him.

He wrote songs with conviction instead of cleverness, never failing to put the whole of his basso profundo behind every lyric. This remained true whether the song was his or not, whether the song is one that I like or not. I'll admit to skipping songs on this set more than I usually do with artists I like as much as I do Cash; songs from the 60's and 70's with that super-acoustic, heavily-stringed feel that inevitably evokes painfully-realistic Westerns starring Robert Redford and Little House on the Prairie.

I mean, I knew going in that I'd like the 50's stuff, "Hey Porter" and "Get Rythmn" and everything in that vein. Those songs are easy to dig. But on repeated listens, those other songs started getting under my skin. I started to feel them. I started to embrace the emotion on them, the mix of the joy of living and the melancholy of surviving. I think it was the third-or-fourth time through "Sunday Morning Coming Down" that I realized what a great song it is. Cash doesn't merely transcend the queasy-strings arrangement, he owns it. He makes it hurt. He mines the truth of it and makes it as emotionally hard as "Folsom Prison Blues." It's a relevatory feeling, of the kind that makes you think new things about what music can sound like. Only the greats can manage that.

Normally, when I get a box set, I figure I'm done with someone's work. I mean, there's an infinity of records and only so much disposable income. But working my way through this has but made me hungry for more. I haven't touched his American Recordings, his true renaissance work. I do think I might need to fix that.

In other words, country music officially doesn't suck.

Grade:LL