Customer Reviews

Ride This Train

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As with several other albums/cd's I've bought, I didn't like this at first. After repeated listenings, I'm a true believer. This is a concept album in the truest sense of the word - between tracks you hear Johnny talking about America, along with the sounds of a steam locomotive - it's as though Johnny is travelling cross country and telling stories of various Americans including slaves, slave-owners, outlaws, Cajuns, lumberjacks, miners etc. This cd could be used by history teachers - it's that interesting. My favorite track is Dorraine of Ponchartrain - it's a real tear jerker along the lines of a 19th century Ebony Eyes (Everly Brothers). Goin to Memphis is also really cool - reminds me of John Fogarty's "Workin on a building". All four bonus tracks are excellent - Willie Brown is a feminist's delight - the "player" dies of a broken heart. The Ballad of the Harpweaver isn't really a song, it's a narration along with an ethereal sounding reverb on the electric guitar - it's an other-worldly psychic tale - genuinely weird and interesting. Smiling Bill McCall is hilarious - a Nashville radio star idolized by all the kids who attempts suicide because he hates his theme song and turns out to be 4 feet tall and bald. If a Cash fan loves "Boy named Sue" - he/she will positively love Smiling Bill McCall. I think the 1959-1963 period was among Johnny's finest years of output. I love this CD so much, it's a narcotic to me - I have trouble removing it from my cd player. I recommend it as highly as possible.

If you read my reviews, you will know that I generally don't hand out a 5 star rating for just anything.

This is a masterpiece. It is like watching a movie. All the songs tell a different tail, but they all fit together somehow.

For a recording this old, it sounds like it was recorded yesterday. The songs are clear and Cash's voice sets far up front of the instruments.

None of these songs were ever released as singles as far as I know, so if you haven't heard the album, then most likely you haven't heard any of the songs before.

And also, most Johnny Cash fans know that in the 60's he was having voice problems that seriously hindered some of his recordings. I really take that into account when I buy his albums from that period. This album, however, was before all the voice problems, and his voice is as robust and clear as it ever was. In fact, I dare you to find a recording where Johnny is vocalizing any better than he does here.

I have almost everything Johnny released now on CD. To me this album stands alone on a par by itself. I have never been a huge fan of contemporary country/pop but have always been a fan of good story telling. I mostly prefer loud bombastic heavy metal and rowdy, beer drinkin' honky tonk like The Outlaws, Kevin Fowler and Roger Creager. Johnny is one of the exceptions. I guess having it played constantly back in the early 70's by my folks psychologically preconditioned me. Storytelling is a lost art and when it is done as masterfully has it has been done here...you are at a loss if you don't get to hear it. I recommend this to anyone who likes storytelling or Johnny.

Columbia's year-long reissue program, celebrating Cash's seventieth birthday, began in February with the release of "The Essential Johnny Cash," and continues with enhanced releases of several crucial original LPs. Each album is remastered, and expanded with new essays, bonus tracks and a newly penned introduction from Cash.

In 1960, a year after his arrival at Columbia, Cash offered up "Ride This Train": "a stirring travelogue of America in story and song." Rather than the album of train songs suggested by the title, the eight selections, including titles by Merle Travis, Tex Ritter and Red Foley, offer a potpourri of American archetypes: outlaws, lumberjacks, coal miners, chain-gangs, and immigrants. Tying the songs together with narrative and steam-train sounds, Cash invented a form he'd revisit throughout his career. This reissue is filled out with four bonus tracks, including a previously unissued recording of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem, "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver."

Over the decades, Cash's sound, forged on his very first single at Sun, has proven a remarkably spacious and fertile ground in which to develop his genre-bounding songbook. Given the depth and breadth of his catalog, a compilation, such as "The Essential Johnny Cash" serves as a Cliff's Notes introduction, while the original LPs provide richly detailed chapters in the story of an American musical icon.

3-3/4 stars, if Amazon allowed fractional ratings.

This is not, as might be supposed, a collection on train songs. It is, as the subtitle of the album says, "a stirring travelogue of America in song and story". Each track starts with a monologue by Johnny Cash (backed by train sounds), where he portrays a different character each time. Then he will sing a song as that character. Some of the characters he plays are a coal miner, a lumberjack, a prisoner, a slave owner and outlaw John Wesley Hardin. This is a very enjoyable album. The CD adds four bonus tracks, which are of average quality.

This is one of the hard-to-find actual studio albums of JC, buried among the Greatest Hits collections. It's a real treasure though - but you'll have to get used to the concept of a travelogue. Each song is preceded by a narrated introduction which today would sound corny, but on this album it doesn't. The songs are haunting and beautiful. No hits on this one - which makes it better for hard core fans who've heard Ring of Fire enough already.

I was SO pleased to be able to find this album! In my opinion, this is one of the finest albums Johnny Cash ever recorded. I'm sure it is the only place he ever recorded the song "Old Doc Brown", which never fails to touch my heart. All of my children (now grown with children of their own) remember this album (as an old LP) and were just as pleased with it as I was! Thank you SO MUCH for providing a place to find treasured memories!

Here again I used to own Lp version & was happy to replace with CD with added tunes & restored quality. I am very pleased & recommend it to all.

I have been listening to this album and I do mean album for over 30 years and it just gets better each time I listen.
If you like Johnny Cash you will like this album.

This is a solid offering from the Man in Black, but somehow, it just falls short of true greatness.
This is a fun album, I love to put it on, and listen to Cash's stories of different areas of the country. Always interesting, sometimes amusing, the stories are what really makes this a solid album. Some people may not like to listen to stories over, and over again, but as any fan of Cash knows, his voice is just a great one to listen to, and I can't help but listen to the stories he tells.

The songs though kind of fall a little flat. There are some good songs on here. Being from Oregon, I particulary enjoy Lumberjack. Loading Coal is also a particularly good song. The rest of the songs are solid, and there isn't one that isn't good (perhaps Slow Rider), but there just aren't enough great songs to give this a rating of 5.
The aditional tacks are good, but the narration is missed, as is the train sound effects, and make then a kind of ackward addition.