Category Archives: Johnny Cash

Classic Concert, Country, Johnny Cash, Live, Music Calendar

Dec 5: Johnny Cash played MSG, New York in 1969

December 5, 2014 Hallgeir 4 Comments

Redirecting to a newer version of this post….

Johnny Cash at Madison Square Garden is an album by Johnny Cash that was recorded in December 1969 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, but which was not released until 2002 (making it his 86th album overall).

The album was recorded just 4 months after Cash’s seminal At San Quentin was released, which is probably why it was not released soon after its recording. As with all Cash live shows of this period, he was backed up by the Tennessee Three, which consisted of W.S. Holland, Marshall Grant and Bob Wooton. After the first 11 songs, Johnny Cash took a short break and the guests stepped up to the plate with their current hits. As if Johnny wasn’t enough, we get Carl Perkins and The Statler Brothers in tremendous form. The Carter Family was a standard part of the Johnny Cash Show, and it is a real treat hearing Mother Maybelle with her daughters. They also performs back up vocals on many of the songs.

As with most Cash shows, the genres covered ran the gamut from country music to rockabilly to even some folk rock. Similarly to “Johnny Cash At San Quentin”, Johnny Cash at Madison Square Garden includes numbers performed by Perkins, the Statlers and the Carters while Johnny was offstage.

It is an absolute must have for any Johnny Cash fan! I still wonder why Sony took 33 years to release this gem.

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Johnny Cash, List, Memphis, Sun, Video

Johnny Cash: 10 best songs recorded @ SUN Studio

November 27, 2014 Egil 2 Comments

“The Sun recordings maximized the effective contrast between the hustling rhythm of the bass and acoustic guitar and the ponderous, sparse vocals & lead guitar. Phillips achievement was to keep Cash’s sound at it’s bare essentials, an then fatten it up with the use of slapback echo. Subsequent producers and engineers could never quite recapture that formula. .. Johnny Cash’s three years of recordings for Sun are a wonderful demonstration of just how far a whole can outclass the sum of it’s parts”
~Colin Escott & Martin Hawkins (Good Rockin’ Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock ‘N’ Roll)

I’m visiting SUN Studio again i January, and will post a series of SUN/STAX/Memphis related articles the coming months. This is the first one.

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Concert films, Johnny Cash, Live

Video of the day: Johnny Cash Live from Austin, TX 1987 (concert video)

November 14, 2014 Hallgeir 1 Comment

“In case you’ve been born since ‘56 and never heard it…this is the way it sounded 31 years ago when we recorded it.”
– Johnny Cash (introducing I Walk the Line)

“At one point, while introducing his band, Cash tells the audience, “I don’t even remember the bad times, there’s been so many good times,” but on the best moments of this performance, it’s clear he never forgot the valleys of his life, and they informed his work even on what should have been just another television gig following the release of an album (Johnny Cash Is Coming to Town) destined to be lost in the shuffle.It’s the strength of ordinary moments like this that serve as a reminder of how remarkable Johnny Cash really was, and while Live from Austin TX is hardly his definitive live album (that honor would go to Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison), it’s a potent and thoroughly enjoyable disc that fans will want to hear.”
– Mark Demming (allmusic.com)

Recorded on January 3, 1987, Live from Austin, TX is Johnny Cash’s performance from the Austin, Texas television show, Austin City Limits. It was released on New West Records in 2005. Cash performs many old hits, and performs new ones from his latest releases on Mercury Records, where he just recently moved to. The CD and DVD do not contain the whole show — the songs “The Big Light”, “A Wonderful Time Up There”, and “The Fourth Man in the Fire” were left out.

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Country, Great albums, Johnny Cash

November 5: Johnny Cash released Unchained in 1996

November 5, 2014 Hallgeir 1 Comment

unchained

Unchained is my second favorite American Recording done by Johnny Cash (after the first).

It is the second album in Johnny Cash’s American Recording series (and his 82nd overall). Like all Cash’s albums for American, Unchained was produced by Rick Rubin.

On the album, Cash is backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as well as a guest appearance of Flea, Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood. Marty Stuart also plays on 8 tracks.

Johnny Cash (w/Marty Stuart) – Rusty Cage (including interview with Jay Leno, 1996):

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Johnny Cash, Music Calendar

April 26 in music history

April 26, 2014 Hallgeir


20 year anniversary for Johnny Cash’s American RecordingsAmerican Recordings did something very important — it gave Cash a chance to show how much he could do with a set of great songs and no creative interference, and it afforded him the respect he’d been denied for so long, and the result is a powerful and intimate album that brought the Man in Black back to the spotlight, where he belonged. ~Mark Deming (allmusic.com)
William “Count” Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years. Many notable musicians came to prominence under his direction, including tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry “Sweets” Edison and singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. Basie’s theme songs were “One O’Clock Jump” and “April In Paris”.
Johnny Shines (April 26, 1915 – April 20, 1992) was an American blues singer and guitarist. According to the music journalist Tony Russell, “Shines was that rare being, a blues artist who overcame age and rustiness to make music that stood up beside the work of his youth. When Shines came back to the blues in 1965 he was 50, yet his voice had the leonine power of a dozen years before, when he made records his reputation was based on”.
*Devils & Dust* is the 13th studio album by American recording artist Bruce Springsteen, and his third folk album (after Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad). It was released on April 25, 2005 in Europe and on April 26 in the US. It debuted at the top of the US Billboard 200 album chart.
Ma Rainey (April 26, 1886? – December 22, 1939) was one of the earliest known American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. She was billed as The Mother of the Blues.
Duane Eddy (born April 26, 1938) is a Grammy Award-winning American guitarist. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he had a string of hit records, produced by Lee Hazlewood, which were noted for their characteristically “twangy” sound, including “Rebel Rouser”, “Peter Gunn”, and “Because They’re Young”. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

– Hallgeir

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