Johnny Cash – The Great Lost Performance
Mercury Records (7/24/07)
Country
It’s a near-impossible task to review this album as any typical release—how much negative can one find in a musical legend? Like Elvis or Frank Sinatra, Johhny Cash has become one of those timeless entertainers that will always be remembered as a classic. And now, with the new live collection The Great Lost Performance, fans are getting one more new release of older material. While at first it may appear to be simply a money grab by Mercury Records, this concert turns out to be a gem of sorts.
The playlist has a little of everything—some old-timey gospel songs (“Life’s a Railway to Heaven”, “A Wonderful Time Up There”) and some Cash classics (“Ring of Fire”, “I Walk the Line”, ‘Folson Prison Blues”)—it shows a pretty broad spectrum of Cash’s work. But more than anything, the playlist shows Cash as a master storyteller. A bulk of the middle portion of the album is taken from his 1960 release, Ride This Train, where he basically told stories and took listeners “on an imaginary trip.†In this case, Cash tells stories about Mississippi, life on the farm and family, even tugging on patriotic heartstrings with “Ragged Old Flag”.
Cash passes the time between tracks with some great intros, too, detailing the story behind the song or how he wrote a particular piece (the best may be his intro to “Forty Shades of Green”, a song about Ireland, where he admits he just picked names of towns off a map for rhyming purposes). Throw in a couple of duets (“What Is Man” with Lucy Clark and a couple with his wife, June Carter Cash, in “Jackson” and “The Wreck of Old ’97”) and you’re left with one hell of a collection.
The album, recorded at The Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park, N.J., in 1990, is an intimate glimpse at a Cash concert. Clocking in at a little under an hour, the sound is perfectly mixed. The instruments never overpower the main element of the show—Cash’s silky voice. The audience gets noisy after each song (and at the beginning and end of the show) but is otherwise a non-issue.
There’s little to find at fault here. The show is a little light with fan-favorites but, as was already pointed out, this is a nice mix of the various sides of Cash—the singer, the religious man, the storyteller, the family man. It’s a good album for Cash diehards, or those that like Cash but haven’t picked up any of his back catalogue. This album probably won’t win over any new fans, or those that liked him purely for his cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”, but is possibly one of the most honest snapshots of the legend.
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