Sony Johnny Cash - The Fabulous Johnny Cash

Originally released in 1958 and 1959 respectively, these were two of the first three albums Johnny Cash made for Columbia after departing from Sun studios. Cash, in his mid-20s but sounding several hundred years older, had by now established the distinctive boom-chicka-boom sound from which he has hardly deviated since. The Fabulous Johnny Cash, though it contains nothing so well remembered as such Sun-era hits as "Folsom Prison Blues" or "I Walk The Line", is nigh faultless: the arrangements are as spare as Cash's voice is rich, and the songs are great. Cash's "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" and "I Still Miss Someone" sit well alongside a few well-chosen covers of contemporary writers' songs. Songs Of Our Soil is an early example of Cash's fondness for the concept album, intended to evoke the realities--with which he was well acquainted--of life on the land. It serves mostly as an engaging curio, including a version of "I Want To Go Home" (the Caribbean work song later turned into "Sloop John B" by the Beach Boys), and "Old Apache Squaw", a Cash original demonstrating the beginnings of a long-standing interest in Native American affairs; though the word "squaw" is now filed alongside other unmentionable racial epithets, at least he was trying. --Andrew Mueller

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