Album Reviews

Does American music get much better than this? No. Cash's twangy Sun sides represent the purist distillation of his art: the mournful, unadorned nasally voice bathed in perfectly timed tape delay backed by the “Tennessee Two.” Could there be a White Stripes without Johnny Cash? Not likely. His influence was enormous, yet no one dared to imitate Johnny Cash, so singular was his musical persona.

These deceptively simple sides were carefully produced, engineered and mixed live-to-tape by Sam Phillips at Sun. Colin Escott's annotation explains the origin of the unique Cash recorded sound and follows the great one's career through his Sun days and on to his move to Columbia Records. Though Cash signed to that label in 1958, Phillips had enough Cash in the can to release new material for another decade.

All the famous Cash penned tunes are here: “Hey, Porter!,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” “I Walk The Line,” and “Get Rhythm,” among them. There are 24 others, some familiar, some lesser known. Even though the Cash formula is spare, by now well-worn, and gets repeated throughout, it has a refreshing purity of purpose that neither dates nor becomes tiresome. There is some variety in the production, including “Ballad of a Teenage Queen,” written by Sun production assistant Jack Clement, which features a back-up chorus, and an overdubbed soprano added for dramatic effect. The novelty song went on to become one of Cash's biggest sellers.

Once signed to Columbia Cash refused to provide new material for his final Sun sessions, so Clement, Charlie Rich and others provided the tunes-most of which were also hits.

These mono recordings are as pure as the material they captured. Once Phillips had established the Cash sonic formula, he stuck to it, though in the later sessions, back up singers and additional instruments were sometimes added.

Sundazed's careful mastering provides as transparent a window onto the proceedings as you're likely to hear.

According to Sundazed, Bob Irwin meticulously assembled cutting reels using the original master tapes and then reassembled the tapes onto their original reels. That's the way Steve Hoffman created The Eagles Greatest Hits and that's the right way to do it.

By the way, Kevin Gray, who mastered Wilco's double LP edition of A Ghost is Born told me recently that though the recording was analog, the LP was cut from a digitally sourced mix and that set sounded good.

Not surprisingly, the tunes are delivered here as good as I've heard them sound and in an additional piece of good news, the 180 gram pressings from United in Nashville using presses purchased from the old UNI plant are at least as good as what was produced in Gloversville and maybe better. That's a relief!

No American music record collection should be without Johnny Cash's original Sun sides. This nicely packaged, reasonably priced double LP, 28 song compilation is all you need. Highly recommended.