| Format: | LP |
| Availability: | In stock |
5344170
24/03/2014
It is a long-established romantic conceit of country music and its audience that the singer is a simple, unsophisticated soul untouched by modern urban catastrophe, who touches us by serving up American innocence on a platter. Johnny Cash is not one of those. He will lie to you as easily as he'll tell you the truth; indeed, he'll tell you, charmingly, that he's lying to you. He will not hesitate to strike a pose, including the pose of The Honest, Simple Man. He has always connected, in his songs, with cowboys and prisoners and preachers and saints -- largely through an application of imagination and art so convincing that half the time people mistake him for the characters he sings about. He sings of blood, loss and heaven, in his own voice, in the voice of characters he creates. Some may quibble that the selection of cover songs for this disc, given his two previous efforts for American, is inevitably less of a surprise the third time around. But with performances stripped right down, from a bag of tricks that was always a triumph of expression over range, this new collection is a Special Limited Cosmic Edition of Name That Tune. Wizened but wise, Johnny Cash looks you right in the eye and tells you, "I can sing your life in three notes." And then he does. And, of course -- he knows it.