Johnny Cash

Video: Johnny Cash’s Final Public Performance at The Carter Family Fold, July 5th 2003

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

The site was Hiltons, Virginia, a short distance from Bristol, the “Birthplace of Country Music,” where acts including the Carter Family made some of the very first country recordings. Just three miles down a narrow country road from Hiltons, in a large wooden structure known as the Carter Family Fold, Cash was introduced by one of the Fold founders, Janette Carter, the daughter of Sara and A.P., two-thirds of the original Carter Family with Maybelle Carter. Cash, who toured and recorded with the Carter Family throughout the Sixties, would later become inexorably linked to the family when he married June Carter, the second of Mother Maybelle’s three daughters.
-Stephen L. Betts (rollingstone.com)

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January 5: The late great Sam Phillips was born in 1923

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen
Sam Phillips, the founder of the label Sun Records, poses with Elvis Presley.

Sam Phillips was not just one of the most important producers in rock history. There’s a good argument to be made that he was also one of the most important figures in 20th century American culture.
~Richie Unterberger (allmusic.com)

Please check out the new book:

Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll
Written by Peter Guralnick

COVER Guralnick_SAMPHILLIPS

Rock ‘n’ roll was born in rural Alabama, 1923, in the form of Sam Phillips, the youngest son of a large family living in a remote colony called the Lovelace Community. His father had a gift for farming, which was brought to an end by the Depression. His mother picked guitar and showed the kind of forbearance that allowed her to name her son after the doctor who delivered him drunk and then had to be put to bed himself. And yet from these unprepossessing origins, in 1951 Phillips made what is widely considered to be the first rock ‘n’ roll record, Ike Turner and Jackie Brenston’s ‘Rocket 88’.

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December 15: Johnny Cash released the single, Folsom prison blues in 1955

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

sun-johnnycash

Folsom Prison Blues is a song written and recorded by American country music artist Johnny Cash. The song combines elements from two popular folk genres, the train song and the prison song, both of which Cash would continue to use for the rest of his career. It became one of Cash’s signature songs. It was the eleventh track on his debut album With His Hot and Blue Guitar but was also included (same version) on All Aboard the Blue Train. Folsom Prison Blues was in the country Top Five in 1956, though Cash had written it while in the Air Force somewhere before 1954.

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Jan 13: Johnny Cash recorded At Folsom Prison in 1968

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

“Folsom Prison looms large in Johnny Cash’s legacy, providing the setting for perhaps his definitive song and the location for his definitive album, At Folsom Prison. The ideal blend of mythmaking and gritty reality, At Folsom Prison is the moment when Cash turned into the towering Man in Black, a haunted troubadour singing songs of crime, conflicted conscience, and jail.”
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine (allmusic.com)

One of the best live albums in recording history was taped on this date in 1968, hell, it’s one of the best albums period. Today it is it’s 48-year anniversary.

folsom

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

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

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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