Categories : Country + Western, Music Reviews.
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Rating: 3/5 Released: November 1, 2005 Reviewer: David Coats |
The late fall and early winter are notoriously a time for record labels to release works of debatable necessity – Christmas records, live records, best-of packages. Johnny Cash’s back catalogue has been through this routine many times over the years, the latest resulting in Universal’s The Legend Of Johnny Cash. Cash was signed to so many record labels over the years that until now there was not a single-disc package that represented his hits from the Sam Phillips, Sun Records days right through the Rick Rubin, American Recordings era, and that’s the void that The Legend Of Johnny Cash was created to fill, featuring the biggest and best of Cash’s hits from Cry! Cry! Cry! all the way to Hurt.
The songs, of course, are legendary, and deservedly so. Listening to a career retrospective such as this, it’s impossible not to be impressed by the man and the impact of his work. However, most ardent Cash fans will already own all these songs at least once (nothing previously unreleased to be found here), and with the exception of six American songs, this is largely a stripped-down version of the Johnny Cash: The Legend box set that was released over the summer – even most of the interior photography is the same. As good as the content of this package is, it is really only necessary if you are a new fan and need a concise introduction to Cash’s considerable body of work. Even then, Cash is one of the rare artists whose material warrants investing in the expanded, original recordings, not just a best-of.
