Johnny Cash’s Great Lost Albums

Cash in 1960. Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

In 1957, after a television appearance in Los Angeles, Sun Records star Johnny Cash was asked by Columbia Records producer Don Law if he was interested in a new deal. Cash, feeling trapped by Sun’s creative and financial limitations, had one question: Could he make an album of spirituals? Law said yes. A year later, Cash was a Columbia act and cutting his first gospel LP, Hymns by Johnny Cash.

It was the start of a label–artist bond that is unthinkable today: nearly 60 albums over three decades, including studio hits, film soundtracks, concept projects, Christmas collections and Cash’s historic prison-concert records. They are all in Johnny Cash: The Complete Columbia Album Collection, a 63-CD box that also contains import-only live discs and non-LP rarities. “I would be limited in what I could do,” Cash said in 1982 of his time at Sun, where he helped invent rock & roll and modern country music. “With a major record company, I could do all that and reach more people with my music. I think I was right, too.”

Dropped by Columbia in the Eighties over falling sales, Cash hit another artistic peak at Rick Rubin’s American Recordings before his death in 2003. But these deep-legacy albums in the Columbia box commemorate a time when Cash was the voice of America, on its most prestigious label.

Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian

1964

In the midst of the civil-rights battle, Cash issued this reflection on another trail of injustice. Native American singer Peter La Farge wrote most of the songs, but the shock and shame was Cash’s, sung with elegant gravity and country-angel glow from the Carter Family.

 Man in Black

1971

Cash’s nickname came from the title tune, in which he describes his wardrobe as mourning gear for a hopelessly divided America. His independent streak is also evident in the vocal cameo by the Rev. Billy Graham and Cash’s front-line account of a USO tour in “Singin’ in Vietnam Talkin’ Blues.”

 

På Österåker

1973

In 1972, Cash played another prison gig ”“ in Sweden, where this album was first issued. It lacks the walloping novelty of the Sixties jailhouse LPs, but the intimacy and stripped-down-band kick capture the rough magic of a Johnny Cash show, anywhere, in this golden era.

Gone Girl

1978

Cash was sliding into commercial twilight when he made this mixed bag of grit and corn. But Cash covers the Rolling Stones’ “No Expectations” like an escape anthem, at Sun-rockabilly velocity, and notes a new alternative country in “Song for the Life,” written by future son-in-law Rodney Crowell.

Johnny 99

1983

Cash’s next-to-last Columbia studio album is a preview of his comeback with Rubin: earthy instrumentation and an acute mix of vintage and modern tunes, in this case by George Jones, Guy Clark and Bruce Springsteen. The album did not chart, but you hear the redemption down the road apiece.