Customer Reviews

Sings Ballads of the True West

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have this on very scratchy old vinyl that a co-worker gave me several years back, and I love it. I intend to buy this CD. 25 minutes to go is absolutely hilarious even though it's the story of a very worried man counting down the minutes 'til his hanging. Johnny pulls it off with a mixture of hysteria and humor. The Streets of Laredo, Boot Hill, The Blizzard are all great songs - really miniature human interest stories. I also love the Shifting Whispering Sands. There is poetry besides singing on this CD. It is very different, very unusual and quite excellent. I recommend it!

This recent reissue of "Johnny Cash Sings The Ballads of The True West" is well mastered by DCC's Steve Hoffman. The music is great and although the liner notes say 26 tracks, there are 20 tracks like the LP, and here are Steve Hoffman's words about why this happened: We had it all worked out to separate the narration from the songs by track numbers. The artwork was then printed. When we sent our new master tape to Sony for laser cutting. Someone there oooopsed and ignored my written instructions while reverting to the old 1960's album indexing. So, a mismatch. Sorry. Mistakes are sometimes made! Still good music, though

Ballads of the True West is a remarkably smart and accomplished recording. Hearing it for the first time in many years, I made the happy discovery that it is better than I'd remembered it. With vast ambition Johnny Cash sought to put down One Big Statement about the Old West, tying together in one coherent whole strands of history, legend, and popular culture. The result could have been pretentious piffle. It is everything but. If the record is not perfect, it's close enough.

The failings are fairly minor. The two most consequential are (1) the occasional use of the annoying, kitschy harmony singing of the Statler Brothers (for whose need to exist in any context no persuasive evidence has ever been demonstrated) and (2) the late Shel Silverstein's dopey, mean joke of a song "25 Minutes to Go." There is also a serious factual error in the late Carl Perkins's "Ballad of Boot Hill," about the celebrated, endlessly chewed-over OK Corral gunfight. The song has Billy Clanton pleading for mercy before being gunned down by the merciless Earps and Doc Holliday. In fact, the outlaw who so pleaded was Billy's brother Ike, whom the Earp party let go unharmed (see the meticulous reconstruction of the incident in Allen Barra's excellent 1998 book Inventing Wyatt Earp). Billy, who indeed died, was well-armed and spoiling for a fight. Further, "Green Grow the Lilacs" was not, Cash's liner notes to the contrary, "written in 1848" by a Texas soldier in the Mexican War. It's a variant of the traditional Irish "Green Grows the Laurel," which was already of advanced age by 1848.

These quibbles aside, Cash was in extraordinary artistic, even if not personal, form when, with Tex Ritter's able assistance, he conceived and executed BTW. The authentic cowboy folk songs are as powerfully rendered as one could ask. The venerable frontier waltz "I Ride an Old Paint" turns into a timeless anthem of the cowboy experience in Cash's resonant reading. "The Streets of Laredo" is equally magisterial, and "Sam Hall" is done with a perfect blend of humor and malice. There are some first-rate originals, in particular the hard-boiled outlaw ballad "Hardin Wouldn't Run." June Carter's spirited "The Road to Kaintuck" is a good song which would have been better if the Statlers had been locked out of the studio when it was being cut. Her mother Maybelle wrote "A Letter from Home" especially for the album, and it could easily have come from the early, classic Carter Family repertoire -- by which, of course, I mean high praise. Cash's fierce treatment of Merle Kilgore's "Johnny Reb" makes Johnny Horton's original seem almost comatose in comparison. There is also the two-part recitation "The Shifting, Whispering Sands," a stirring meditation on the desolate mystery of the Western landscape. "Stampede" is from the pen of doomed folk singer Peter LaFarge, better known for "The Ballad of Ira Hayes."

More a folk than a country record, never quite accorded the critical respect it so richly deserves, it is surely among Cash's most memorable albums. I suspect it will touch and thrill listeners long after Cash and we are gone.

Do you enjoy scavenger hunts? Perhaps this odd CD is your cup o'tea; it's Johnny Cash all right, the old songs just as they were when new, all you have to do is figure out which cut is which. The listing on the insert has little relevance to the final disc. The songs are all there, just not in the order indicated. It is fun to hear these old classic Cash tunes, but the problem is they really do sound just the same; the remastering leaves a lot to be desired.

A nice collection of western songs, sung by the great baritone voice of Johnny Cash, that evoke a feeling of loneliness and heartbreak, but with a sense of hope left.

My personal favorites are "Sam Hall", "Streets of Laredo", "25 Minutes to Go", and "Mister Garfield."

Johnny Cash was an American classic who will be sorely missed.

Highly Recommended!

This is probably my favorite Johnny Cash album. I first purchased it on a reel-to-reel tape in the early sixties. I love this CD even more. Thanks.

These songs are great in and of themselves, representing the values and struggles of another, better time, the days of the Old West.

However, Johnny Cash's performance is just amazing. This is one of my favorite albums of all time and I cannnot recommend it highly enough to fans of the Old West and Johnny Cash.

I think, after listening to this album, that "Little Doggies" may be the best song ever written. Do yourself a favor, get this album.

By the time of this 1965 release, Johnny Cash was no stranger to the concept album. His years at Columbia had been peppered with theme works covering religion, travel, land, cowboys and Native Americans. His storybook form, interweaving narration and song, led him to this album full of songs of the West. Originally a 2 LP set, this release was previously reissued on CD by DCC in 1999. Columbia/Legacy's latest CD augments the original LP with liner notes from Jonny Whiteside (in addition to Cash's own original notes), and a pair of extra tracks.

The sure-hand that Cash shows on this album is at odds with the traumatic circumstances under which it was recorded. In addition to his growing drug habit, Cash was on the road with a large band to support, divorcing his first wife, romancing his second, and facing the music for a variety of erratic public behaviors. Perhaps the ornery lyrics of "Sam Hall" and "25 Minutes to Go" aren't too far off the mark. Cash worked with Tex Ritter, Ramblin' Jack Elliot and others to intertwine historical research and popular myth, often substituting the thorny details of the former for the golden halo of the latter. By cutting closer to the truth, he wrested the Western song away from the glitter of Hollywood and added dashes of dusty trails and gritty frontier towns.

Chestnuts like "I Ride an Old Paint," "The Streets of Laredo" and "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" intertwine with three originals: "Hardin Wouldn't Run," "Mean as Hell," and "Reflections." The arrangements are mostly folk-music acoustic - Cash and a guitar, with perhaps a bass or banjo. A few tracks (e.g., "Laredo" "Bury Me Not") add strings or the occasional (and not particularly evocative or necessary) vocal chorus. Cash's voice is the anchor throughout, but his dedication doesn't always translate into extraordinary songs. The extended running time (just under 70 minutes) doesn't provide the focus of earlier efforts like "Songs of Our Soil" or "Ride This Train."

Cash's original liner notes (including descriptive paragraphs about many of the songs), and a glossary of "Western Lingo" are reproduced in full, and a pair of bonus tracks from the original 1965 sessions include the Pete LaFarge tune "Rodeo Hand," and an alternate instrumental take of LaFarge's "Stampede." The sum is a fine chapter of Cash's Americana songbook, though perhaps not his most memorable one.

3-1/2 stars, if Amazon allowed fractional ratings.

I can't sleep knowing there is a Johnny Cash album out there I don't have (Greatest Hits and Tributes excluded), which is why I bought this days after it's resissue, but I know a mediocre album when I hear one. Actually, this would be an awesome album if it weren't a double album. There's a lot of filler in between the good stuff. And the good stuff I'd heard before(except Sam Hall). If you don't own many Cash albums, don't get this one yet. But if you have a lot of his stuff, then get it if only to support the reissue process (currently I'm holding my breath for Hello I'm Johnny Cash).

For all Johnny Cash fans the "Ballads of the True West" album is a must have. It was never a top seller that I know of, but for those who like genuine traditional western music, nobody does it better rhan Johnny.

I was unable to purchase or order this album through any of my local music stores and I had a new copy of it in my hands a few days after ordering it from Amazon.

Stephen