Search - Johnny Cash :: Road Less Travelled: Sun Recordings

Travel this road

Mark Adams | Redwood Estates, CA United States | 02/17/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Apart from buying a more comprehensive collection, such as The Sun Years, a three-disc set released by Charly Records, this is a fine way to survey Cash's Sun recordings. What I would ask from this collection are a few more tracks--alternate versions of Folsom Prison Blues (though available on other releases) and I Walk the Line. However, the tracks on this collection shine a little more brightly by the absence of the more popular tracks, which makes it a very good collection that you should put in your CD collection."

Intriguing

James E. Bagley | Sanatoga, PA USA | 05/16/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"An intriguing musical footnote for Cash devotees, these 18 clean-sounding demos, undubbed originals, and alternate takes (with false starts) date from around 1954 to `58 at Sam Phillips's Sun Records. It's classic Cash stripped to the bare essentials -which is how he has always sounded best. Uncluttered with backup singers, "Ways Of A Woman In Love" has slightly different words than the hit version. "Wide Open Road" is a rare Tennessee Three tape from Red Kernodle's brief stint on steel guitar. "My Two Timin' Woman," a 1947 Hank Snow song released only in Snow's native Canada, shows how far young Cash (or Phillips) searched for songs.

"New Mexico" (a dusty cousin to Ramblin' Jack Elliott's standard "Diamond Joe"), "Wreck Of The Old 97," and Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene" mark Cash's folk roots, while Jimmie Skinner's composition "Doin' My Time"-like some of Cash's writings - is so plain spoken, it could pass for a trad ballad. Gospel didn't interest Sam Phillips (a factor in Cash's leaving Sun), but Cash did manage to record his own inspirational effort "Belshazar" during this period, written in the spirit of his future in-laws The Carter Family's "Little Moses." Even at the start of his career - though it's unlikely that many realized it - Cash was among America's elite folk singers."

His discards were better than most singer's polished release

William E. Adams | Midland, Texas USA | 01/20/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This collection might be subtitled "The dregs of the Sun Archives" and be accurate, but my God, how good these 18 short, unadorned renditions are! They come from throughout his Sun career (very early in 1955 to early in '58) so they are not "audition" songs by an untrained singer. But how Johnny Cash-like they are...the Johnny of the 1990's, who finally was allowed to release performances with little or no accompaniment and no studio enhancements. His voice, his emotions, in many cases his writing, his guitar and the guitar of Luther Perkins and the bass of Marshall Grant is all anyone ever needed by Johnny Cash. On this CD, you get some "country" and you get some "folk" songs as well. I like his versions of Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene" and the traditional "Wreck of the Old '97" and can't help but compare them to versions by my favorite folksinger, the late great Cisco Houston. (Check out www.ciscohouston.com). Johnny and Cisco never met, as far as I know (Cisco died in 1961) but I think they would have had a lot to talk and sing about if they had. This CD will likely become one of the most-played in my Cash collection, because simplicity is never really out-of-date when the singer's voice makes you believe in the words, and the words are interesting in themselves. The stuff on here actually is better than the final singles released by Sam Phillips, which were all gussied up for the '50's commercial sensibility. If you are a fan of Johnny, don't neglect this collection."