Sings the Ballads of the True West [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]

Johnny Cash

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 27, 2002)
• Original Release Date: August 27, 2002
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B00006GO9E
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #119,985 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Though not among Johnny Cash's strongest overall efforts, True West is not a completely failed experiment, either. Originally released in 1965 as a double album, it weaves Cash's narrations and original compositions with traditional songs and interpretations of other writers' material to draw one man's portrait of the Old West. Cash turns in some of his sturdiest vocals, virtually inhabiting the likes of "I Ride an Old Paint" and Carl Perkins's morbid "Ballad of Boot Hill." And he gets points for not scrubbing up some of the more raggedy old traditional lyrics. But there's often too much extraneous stuff--background singers, strings, sound effects--and while they are clearly to Cash's specifications and executed seamlessly, his own weather-beaten voice alone would usually have been more effective; for all the drama in his vocals, too much of this exasperating set sounds like background music. By the way, this album's mythmaking "Hardin Wouldn't Run" provided the basis for Bob Dylan's mythmaking "John Wesley Harding." The 2002 reissue adds a pair of bonus tracks. --John Morthland

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an Old West for the ages, March 22, 2003

By	Jerome Clark (Canby, Minnesota) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Songs of the Old West, September 12, 2003

By	D. Bakken "dobak" (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sings Ballads of True West, January 31, 2007

By	Jerry Lee (South Jordan, Ut USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.