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As the Man in Black celebrates his 70th birthday, he looks back on a career not only of legendary performances, but of remarkable songs that capture a bygone America, in vignettes of trains, rivers, rebels, street-corner shoeshine boys, and displaced lovers, moving on, never to return. To honor that contribution, now part of America's musical heritage, more than a dozen luminaries of country, rock, and folk--including
Bob Dylan,
Bruce Springsteen, and
Sheryl Crow--gather to interpret Cash's word portraits of the downtrodden and disenfranchised. Nearly every performance is a keeper, though some deliver a special thrill: Dylan introducing his rendition of "Train of Love" as a song he used to sing before he ever wrote songs himself;
Little Richard turning "Get Rhythm" into even more of a rockabilly raver; and Cash's daughter,
Rosanne, giving "I Still Miss Someone" a clean, sweet reading that underscores its poignant message. Yet it's Springsteen, in a cover of "Give My Love to Rose," who comes to own the project, laying bare the pain, hope, spirituality, love, and despair that Cash wove into the framework of almost all of his songs. An extraordinary set from, yes, kindred spirits all.
--Alanna Nash
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