Johnny Cash – The Fabulous Johnny Cash (1958/2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 28:48 minutes | 313 MB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia Nashville Legacy

The Fabulous Johnny Cash was Cash’s first album for Columbia Records and one of his best for the label. Unlike some of his latter-day albums, there wasn’t much filler on the record. At the time of its recording, Cash had just been freed from his contract with Sun. Instead of recording these songs for his last Sun sessions, he wound up saving much of his best material for his Columbia album, and that’s what makes The Fabulous so consistent. The album builds on his basic, spare sound, but it is slightly more polished than his Sun records. But what makes it so entertaining are the songs themselves. From “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” and “Frankie’s Man, Johnny” to “Pickin’ Time” and “The Troubador,” the album is filled with first-rate songs, with only a handful of mediocre songs like “Suppertime,” which don’t distract from the overall quality of the album at all. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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Johnny Cash – Songs Of Our Soil (1959/2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 26:05 minutes | 276 MB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia Nashville Legacy

One of Cash’s earlier pseudo-concept albums, this doesn’t exactly follow a specific theme like farming or hymns of the American land the whole way through. Rather, it’s a collection of a dozen songs that generally are on the folkier and more Americana-centered side of Cash’s repertoire, though of course such songs have always had a prominent place in his material. He bagged the songwriting credits for all but one of the songs on Songs of Our Soil, skillfully relaying tales of drinking, disastrous farm flooding (“Five Feet High and Rising”), the vicious circle of sharecropping (“The Man on the Hill”), death and burial (“The Caretaker”), Native Americana (“Old Apache Squaw”), and spiritual-like piety ([RoviLink=”MC”]”It Could Be You [Instead of Him]”[/RoviLink]). The death-in-the-desert tale of “Hank and Joe and Me” might get unintentionally camp with its rather jaunty depiction (complete with gospel-like backup choral vocals) of the narrator dying of thirst on a quest for gold. Although “J. Cash” gets the songwriting credit for “I Want to Go Home,” in fact it’s his version of the homesick sailor folk tale more commonly known as “Sloop John B,” recorded elsewhere by the Weavers, the Kingston Trio, the Beach Boys, and others. It’s a good set, though pretty short at 26 minutes, and lacking the hits or classics that decorate some of his other vaguely Americana concept albums. ~ Richie Unterberger
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Johnny Cash – Ride This Train (1960/2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 32:22 minutes | 351 MB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia Nashville Legacy

Ride This Train was the first explicit Americana concept album that Johnny Cash recorded. As the title implies, the album is about railroads, how they developed, and how they changed the land. Apart from a couple of songs, Ride This Train isn’t comprised of traditional folk ballads — they are songs that tell the history of trains and rails, offering an educational lesson. Cash expounds on the songs with brief spoken narratives. Though it is hard to fault Cash’s intentions, the songs aren’t very good (although “The Shifting Whispering Sands” is a standout) and the history is a bit simplistic and silly. On the whole, Ride This Train sounds as if it were of a piece with the Walt Disney educational features produced at the same time, and like those films, it is more interesting as an historical artifact than a piece of art. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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Johnny Cash – Out Among The Stars (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:35 minutes | 847 MB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia Nashville Legacy

If Out Among the Stars had come out when its sessions were completed, it would’ve appeared sometime in 1984, arriving between 1983’s flinty Johnny 99 and 1985’s slippery, sentimental Rainbow. Allegedly, this album — discovered by Legacy and John Carter Cash during some archival work in 2012 — was shelved because its Billy Sherrill production was just a little bit too pop for Johnny Cash’s taste, but that reasoning isn’t sound, particularly with the Chips Moman-produced crossover of sugar of Rainbow taken into consideration. Moman had been riding high on the hits he produced for Willie Nelson — notably “Always on My Mind,” Willie’s last great crossover smash — and he applied a similar heavy-handed touch to Cash, who at that point was several years away from his last Country Top 10 hit (“The Baron” went to 10 in 1981). Sherrill had a lighter touch with Cash than Moman, something that might surprise listeners who associate his name with his symphonic, string-heavy productions for George Jones, but the producer winds up simply sweetening Johnny without changing his core sound. Comprised of sessions from 1981 and 1984, Out Among the Stars is generally chipper and bright, containing a couple of spare, reflective moments — the sentimental “After All,” the June Carter Cash bluegrass duet “Don’t You Think It’s Come Our Time,” and “I Came to Believe,” the gospel-ish closer that ambles along nicely — that add a little dimension to a cheerful album. “Out Among the Stars” nicely updates the signature Cash train-track rhythm, a cover of the Dave Edmunds/Carlene Carter duet “Baby Ride Easy” rolls along with spirit, Cash yucks it up with Waylon Jennings on a cover of the Hank Snow standard “I’m Movin’ On,” and “I Drove Her Out of My Mind” conjures some of the old outlaw magic. Every one of these seem like they could have some kind of potential on the charts, so the fact they were shelved is a bit of a mystery because, when taken together — despite misguided novelties like “If I Told You Who It Was” — it adds up to one of Cash’s stronger ’80s albums. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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Johnny Cash – Orange Blossom Special (1965/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 33:56 minutes | 338 MB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia Nashville Legacy

Even if the best and most popular songs on this 1965 album are the ones most likely to show up on greatest-hits compilations (“The Long Black Veil, “Orange Blossom Special,” “It Ain’t Me Babe”), it certainly rates as one of Cash’s finer non-greatest-hits releases. If nothing else, it would have historical importance for the inclusion of three Bob Dylan covers, at a time when Dylan was just starting to get heavily covered by pop musicians (and not often covered by country ones). “It Ain’t Me Babe,” with duet vocals by June Carter, was the most notable of them, although hearing it these days, some may be taken aback by the mariachi horns. Ditto for “Mama, You Been on My Mind” (which Dylan himself had not released when Cash recorded it), where it’s startling to hear Boots Randolph’s yakety sax come in for a bit. “The Long Black Veil,” though, is an ageless classic, and the title cut one of his best train-oriented songs. The rest of the album is respectable and diverse, if not as outstanding, and includes the stark Cash original “You Wild Colorado,” more duet vocals from Carter on the Johnny Horton cover “When It’s Springtime in Alaska,” a bouncy rendition of the Carter Family’s “Wildwood Flower,” the spiritual “Amen,” and, less successfully, a sentimental reading of “Danny Boy.” The 2002 CD reissue adds three bonus tracks that were previously unavailable in the United States (and had been included on the Bear Family box set The Man in Black: 1963-1969), among them an acoustic cover of A.P. Carter’s “Engine 143” and a different version of “Mama, You Been on My Mind” (this time with mariachi horns!). ~ Richie Unterberger
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Johnny Cash – Man In Black (1971/2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 29:04 minutes | 608 MB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Legacy Recordings

Man In Black is Johnny Cash’s chart-topping 1971 masterpiece. This politically-infused album produced two top twenty hits, “Man in Black” and “Singin’ in Viet Nam Talkin’ Blues.” This star-studded affair features Norman Blake, June Carter Cash, Marshall Grant, Billy Graham, W.S. Holland, Farrell Morris, Carl Perkins, Jerry Shook and Bob Wootton. Absolutely essential.
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Johnny Cash – Johnny Cash: Forever Words Expanded (Deluxe) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:44:50 minutes | 2,09 GB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Legacy Recordings

When Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash passed, they left behind what John Carter Cash, their son and Johnny Cash: Forever Words co-producer, describes as a “monstrous amassment” of things, including a treasure trove of undiscovered material that includes Johnny Cash’s handwritten letters, poems and documents, penned across the entirety of his life.
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Johnny Cash – Johnny Cash: Forever Words Expanded (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:56 minutes | 1,41 GB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Legacy Recordings

When Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash passed, they left behind what John Carter Cash, their son and Johnny Cash: Forever Words co-producer, describes as a “monstrous amassment” of things, including a treasure trove of undiscovered material that includes Johnny Cash’s handwritten letters, poems and documents, penned across the entirety of his life.
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Johnny Cash – Johnny Cash At San Quentin (Live) (1969/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 34:04 minutes | 738 MB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia Nashville Legacy

One of country music’s unequivocal stars, Johnny Cash retained respect for the travails of the audience elevating him to that position. Recorded live at one of America’s most notorious prisons, this album displays an empathy bereft of condescension and captures a performer combining charisma with natural ease. The material is balanced between established favorites and new material including “Wanted Man” (an unrecorded Bob Dylan song), and the lighthearted hit “A Boy Named Sue.” It was not the first time Cash had recorded in a penal institution, but this appearance, at a time when American values were vociferously questioned, suggested the artist’s rebelliousness had not dimmed.
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Johnny Cash – Johnny Cash and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:12 minutes | 827 MB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Legacy Recordings

12 classic Johnny Cash performances reimagined via new symphonic arrangements recorded at Abbey Road Studios. ‘Johnny Cash and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’ is part of a series of RPO albums showcasing classic recordings by timeless artists in sublime new musical settings. Recorded at the fabled Abbey Road Studio 2, the album is executive produced by John Carter Cash and produced by Nick Patrick with Don Reedman.
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