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Track Listing (Click to hear sample)
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Liner Notes Johnny Cash and his music are one-blending to produce the kind of songs that bridge the gap from heart to heart. As Johnny says, "There are three things you can't get away from. Loneliness, that certain kind of woman, and God." And so the songs in this album echo the sincerity of Johnny's words and the universal truth of his experience. When it comes to loneliness, You'd think Johnny invented the word. Naturally endowed with a rangy, big, hollow voice, Johnny's melancholy comes through strong on such blues ballads as his composition, "So Doggone Lonesome" or the old railroad folk song, "I Heard That Lonesome Whistle Blow." If there is an answer to man';s loneliness, it's Woman. A woman can change a man;'s life completely. This is what Johnny says, -a bit teasingly- in "I Walk The Line" (another Cash tune). This record, on single release, hit the top in the country and western field and also made "Top 20 in the Nation" in the pop field. Of course you have to take the bitter with the sweet-hence, "Cry, Cry., Cry." Coming to the third inescapable element, Johnny in this album sings one song of spiritual nature. There's religious conviction in the strong sensitive voice of Johnny Cash when he sings "I WAS There When It Happened." Those who know him say Johnny's religion to him is a very real thing, source of the peace he sings of so knowingly. How does a young man of 23 get to be so serious, so soon? In Johnny's case, it was a matter of facing hard, cold facts from childhood. Brought up on a 40-acre cotton farm at Dyess Colony, Ark., Johnny was one of six children. The Cash family, through of necessity hard-working, always had time to sing together, and it was at home Johnny acquired his love of music. At 18, Johnny enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. It was while serving "three long, miserable years" in Germany that he bought a guitar and taught himself to play. It went along way in combating blues and boredom, and to Johnny it was fun to work out original melodies now and then. Service life completed, Johnny enrolled in a Memphis radio school, determined to become an announcer. On an impulse, he went to Sun Records Company one day and rather shyly asked Sun Records President Sam Phillips to audition him. That was perhaps the most fateful day in Johnny's life, because he was immediately signed by Sun and his musical career was launched. That was late in '55, and one year later, Johnny was named the most promising country and western artist of the year in four separate polls. Johnny writes nearly all of his songs "when I'm on the road, feeling homesick....When an idea comes into my head, I jot it down. Later, at home, I fish out maybe 40 or 50 scraps of paper and see what I've got." Backing up Johnny are two long-time friends, electric guitarist Luther Perkins and bass player Marshall Grant. They supply a strong country beat that never lags. To hear Johnny Cash Album is to know Johnny Cash-the man, the lonely dreamer with a stubborn streak of realism which makes for unforgettable conversation in song. Top Of Page
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Info Personnel
Recorded:
ChartsAlbum - Billboard (North America)
Singles - Billboard (North America)
Info To put the performance on At San Quentin in a bit of perspective: Johnny Cash's key partner in the Tennessee Two, guitarist Luther Perkins, died in August 1968, just seven months before this set was recorded in February 1969. In addition to that, Cash was nearing the peak of his popularity his 1968 live album, At Folsom Prison, was a smash success but he was nearly at his wildest in his personal life, which surely spilled over into his performance. All of this sets the stage for At San Quentin, a nominal sequel to At Folsom Prison that surpasses its predecessor and captures Cash at his rawest and wildest. Part of this is due to how he feeds off of his captive audience, playing to the prisoners and seeming like one of them, but it's also due to the shifting dynamic within the band. Without Perkins, Cash isn't tied to the percolating two-step that defined his music to that point. Sure, it's still there, but it has a different feel coming from a different guitarist, and Cash sounds unhinged as he careens through his jailhouse ballads, old hits, and rockabilly-styled ravers, and even covers the Lovin' Spoonful ("Darlin' Companion"). No other Johnny Cash record sounds as wild as this. He sounds like an outlaw and renegade here, which is what gives it power listen to "A Boy Named Sue," a Shel Silverstein composition that could have been too cute by half, but is rescued by the wild-eyed, committed performance by Cash, where it sounds like he really was set on murdering that son of a bitch who named him Sue. He sounds that way throughout the record, and while most of the best moments did make it to the original 1969 album, the 2000 Columbia/Legacy release eclipses it by presenting nine previously unreleased bonus tracks, doubling the album's length, and presenting such insanely wild numbers as "Big River" as well as sweeter selections like "Daddy Sang Bass." Now, that's the only way to get the record, and that's how it should be, because this extra material makes a legendary album all the greater in fact, it helps make a case that this is the best Johnny Cash album ever cut. Re-Release Info 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. In 2006, Legacy Recordings released another deluxe version titled At San Quentin - Legacy Edition. The three-disc version included two CDs containing 31 selections, 13 of them previously unissued, plus a DVD called Johnny Cash In San Quentin, a 1969 documentary made by Englands Granada TV for British television. There are also interviews, some searingly candid, with the prisoners and guards who were present when the Johnny Cash Show packed the prison. *** Original release
Re-release (2000)
Legacy Edition (2006)
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Lyrics
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