• The Sun Years
  • Albums 1-10
  • Albums 10-20

• The Columbia Years
  • Albums   1-10
  • Albums 10-20
  • Albums 21-30
  • Albums 31-40
  • Albums 41-50
    
• The Mercury Years
  • Albums   1-10
• Bear Family
  • Albums   1-10
• Misc labels
  • Albums   1-10
  • Albums   10-20
  • Albums   20-30
  • Albums   30-40
  • Albums    40-50

  American Recordings            
                                            Link

Page Index

1. Country Boy  45 EP
2. I Walk The Line 45 EP
3. The Singing Storyteller
4. Sunday Down South
5. Johnny Cash With The Tennessee Two
6. Johnny Cash The Sun Years
7. The Very Best Of Johnny Cash
8. Roads Less Traveled 
9. Cash Sings Cash 

This Is Where It All Began 

You Will Stand On The Very Same Spot That Johnny Cash & Elvis First Recorded. Here Is Where You Can hear Inside Stories Of BB King Howilin Wolf, Ike Turner, Before Elvis ... And Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, And Johnny Cash Who Were Drawn To Record By The Sun Sound 

Country Boy  45 EP

Country Boy  - EP-112

Side #1

1. Country Boy
2. If The Good Lord's Willing

Side #2

1. The Rock Island Line
2. I heard That Lonesome Whistle Blow

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I Walk The Line 45 EP

I Walk The Line EP - 113

Side #1

1. I Walk The Line
2. The Wreck Of Old  97

Side #2

1. Folsom Prison Blues
2. Doin My Time

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The Singing Storyteller

Sun LP- 115

Side #1

1. Goodbye Little Darling
2. Give My Love To Rose
3. Hey Good Looking
4. I Can't Help It
5. I Could Never Be Ashamed Of You

Side #2

1. I Couldn't Keep From Crying
2. I Love You Because
3. The Ways Of A Woman In Love
4. You're The Nearest Thing To Heaven
5. Come In Stranger
6. Next In Line

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Sunday Down South

Sun LP - 119

Side #1       ( Johnny Cash )

1. If The Good Lord's Willing
2. I Was Where When It Happened
3. Remember Me
4. Belshazah
5. Goodnight Irene

Side #2      ( Jerry Lee Lewis )

1. Will The Circle Be Unbroken
2. Carry Me Back To Old Virginia
3. When The Saints Go Marching In
4. Old Time Religion
5. Silver Threads

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Johnny Cash With The Tennessee Two

CD Charly - 146 Sun Label

Side #1

1. Cry Cry Cry
2. Luther Played The Blues
3. Folsom Prison Blue
4. So Doggone Lonesome
5. Mean Eyed Cat
6. Wide Open Road
7. Two Timin Woman
8. There You Go
9. I Walk The Line
10. Country Boy
11. Train Of Love
12. Get Rhythm
13. Hey Porter
14. Belshazar
15. If The Good Lord's Willing
16. The Wreck Of The Old 97
17. You Tell Me
18. Oh Lonesome Me
19. Big River
20. Doin My Time
21. Rock Island Line
22. Don't My Time
23. Home Of The Blue
24. Straight A's Of Love
25. Come In Stranger
26. Blue Train
27. Next In Line
28. Hey Good Lookin
29. Katy Too
30. Thanks A Lot

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Johnny Cash The Sun Years

CD Sun / Rhino R2 - 70950

Side #1

1. Folsom Prison Blues
2. Hey Porter
3. I Walk The Line
4. Get Rhythem
5. Guess Things Happen That Way
6. Rock Island Line
7. Luther Played The Boggie
8. Mean Eyed Cat
9. Big River
10. Come In Stranger
11. Train Of Love
12. There You Go
13. Ballad Of A Teenage Queen
14. So Doggone Lonesome
15. The Ways Of A Woman In Love
16. Give My Love To Rose

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The Very Best Of Johnny Cash

Newly Released CD Collectable Label CD-6010

Track List  ( 24 Hits On The Sun Label )

1. I Walk The Line   ( Lyrics To Song )
2. Hey Porter
3. Oh Lonesome Me
4. Get Rhythm
5. Cry. Cry. Cry.
6. Folsom Prison Blues
7. Guess Things Happen That Way
8. You Win Again
9. The Ways Of A Woman In Love
10. Luther Played The Boogie
11. Train Of Love
12. Two Timin Woman
13. Next In Line
14. Wide Open Road
15. Rock Island Line
16. Country Boy
17. Ballad Of A Teenage Queen
18. Big River
19. Come In Stranger
20. Don't Make Me Go
21. Always Alone
22. Belshazah
23. Blue Train
24. Down The Street To 301

They called him the Baron. Big Johnny Cash, with that Oak-Hewn voice you could pick out from a choir of thousands, those brooding good looks that have, over the years, turned into a craggy face that looks like a working model for a new carving on Mount Rushmore. Picking fact from fantasy in the man’s legend is like hunting for the proverbial needle in a haystack because Johnny cash’s done his fair share of exaggerating in his time so the beginner doesn’t know where to turn for the truth.

Maybe the truth is unimportant and the only fact you need to know is that Johnny Cash exists for real and even if he didn’t someone would have invented him to perpetuate the loner gunslinger myth in modern terms. Because that’s what Johnny Cash is – “The Man In Black” came to wreak havoc on your town. But instead of a six-gun slung on his hips this man holds a guitar and lets you have it between the eyes with a stream of great songs – some of which he’s been singing since the fifties, some of which are new but are delivered like old friends. 

These days he travels with a small army of family and friends, employs back-projected train movies to add to the drama can fill any size hall you care to book. Back when these classics were cut there was just him, lead guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant (The Tennessee Two) amplifiers that would just about serve in a modern rehearsal room and these amazing songs. 

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Roads Less Traveled 

Varise Sarabande CD - 302 066 214-2
Available Now 
The Rare And Un-Issued Sun Recordings 
Liner Notes Below 
Some Song Tracks Never Heard Before !!!!

Track List 

1. New Mexico 
2. Goodnight Irene
3. I Couldn't Keep From Crying  
4. Belshazar 
5. Don't Make Me Go 
6. Blue Train 
7. The Ways Of A Woman In Love 
8. Doin My Time 
9. Leave That Junk Alone
10. My Treasure 
11. My Two Timin Woman
12. I Love You Because 
13. I Was There When It Happened 
14. Born To Lose 
15. If The Good Lords Willing 
16. Always Alone 
17. Wreck Of The Old 97
18. Wide Open Road 

Johnny Cash’s Sun hits have not been out of print since the mid-fifties. You won’t have to look very hard to find to find them on the complete range of obsolete media; 78s, 45s, EPs, LPs, 8-tracks and cassettes. Get them now on CD. They’ve lasted because Johnny Cash’s brilliant economy is as affecting today as it was 1956. But what else did Johnny cash record for Sun? He was there for three years. Auditioning in late 1954 and exciting in June 1958. The tapes Cash left behind were the subject of scrutiny, and he was still Sun’s best selling artist when the label was sold in 1968. Between 1958 and 1968, Sun’s president Sam Phillips dipped into his stockpiles of Johnny Cash titles for six albums and ten singles. Surprisingly, some tapes still remained untouched, squirreled away in out-take boxes and on reels with other artists names on them. Johnny Cash was a listener with an acute ear for the forlorn., and the Sun out-takes revealed his early listening “My Two Timin Woman” was a Hank Snow song, but one that Cash out of his way to find because it was only issued in Canada in 1947.

It’s equally hard to know where he first heard “The Hills Of Mexico” {New Mexico) a venerable cowboy ballad that had been recorded as far back as 1925 as “The Trail To Mexico” How perfect the tic-toc of Luther Perkins’s guitar echoes the clip-clop of the hooves. Around the same time, Cash recorded an achingly simple version of Marty Robbins’s 1953 hit “I Couldn’t Keep From Crying” Neither Cash nor Luther was ever more plaintive. “I Love You Because” stems from 1956. Cash seemed to be responding to the song’s guideless pledge of allegiance very similar in some ways to own “I Walk The Line” Leon Payne, a blind Texas honky-tonk star, wrote the song for his wife Myrtie and his first recording it in 1949. A huge hit for Jim reeves in the Sixties, it was fairly obscure, forgotten song when Cash cut it. The undubbed master, shorn of an oppressive vocal chorus, reveals a very prominent honky-tonk pianist, who could very well be Jerry Lee Lewis trying to earn a few bucks for Christmas 1956.

“Wide Open Road” was one of the first songs that Johnny Cash wrote. He recorded it at his very first session, when the Tennessee Two was the Tennessee Three. Some say that steel guitarist Red Kernolde got scared and went home, leaving Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant, but if that was the case he stayed long enough to play on one cut. Kernodle’s remembered it differently: he was an older guy, he says, and there was too much staying up nights and running around. Luther Perkins’s daughter remembered the Klernodle’s wife threatened to leave if stuck with music. Anyway, this is what you’d have heard if you’d caught Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three opening a car lot or playing a honky-tonk in early 1955. “My Treasure” was another very early song, and, after Cash joined the Grand Ole Opry he pitched it to Ernest Tubb, who recorded it in January 1957. Cash‘s version (notated on the tape box as) “Treasure Unmeasured” was overdubbed and released in 1961, but the label was misprinted “My treasure” as if it were a love song to an accountant.

“Don’t Make Me Go” Was one of the follow-up to “I Walk The Line” and a comparison with the issued version is quite revealing. Sam Phillips had hired a young production assistant, Jack Clement, who can be heard playing a prominent acoustic guitar on the released version. Earlier versions are very stark in comparison, leaving Luther with perhaps too much ground to cover. It became Cash’s fifth hit in eighteen months, forcing Sam Phillips To consider an album. On some level LPs were anathema to Phillips, who believed in the sanctity if the two-minute single, but albums gave Cash a chance to reveal his eclectic taste. “Wreck Of The Old 97” was a true-to-life ballad about the crash of mail train 97 into a ravine near Danville, Virginia on September 27, 1903. Written by an unknown balladeer to an earlier folk melody “The Ship That Never Returned” it was first recorded in 1923 at the very dawn of the country music business. “Doin My Time” was another revealing choice because the original version was by Jimmie Skinner, a singer whose style was very much a template for Cash’s. Skinner’s gritty baritone fronted a very simple backing, a mandolin taking the role that Luther Perkins assumed. The first album also gave Cash the opportunity to record a religious sang, something Phillips had consistently denied him.

Jimmie Davis’s 1955 hymn “I Was There When It Happened” featuring Marshall and Luther’s sweet refrain, was chosen over Cash’s original composition, “Belshazar” “If The Good Lord’s Willing” was a new song by a new artist, Jerry Reed. In all likelihood, Reed had based it on Hank William’s radio sing-off. One of the more bizarre contenders for the album was “Leave That Junk Alone” written about booze rather than dope. Cash’s demo survived, although the song never again surfaced. It was in the mode of outré country hits like “Cocaine Blues” a song Cash later recorded, incidentally, as “Transfusion Blues”.

“Goodnight Irene” dating from the “Ballad Of A Teenage Queen” session with Jack Clement once again on acoustic guitar, was rejected in 57, only to be overdubbed and issued in 1964. The undubbed original is mellow and effecting. By early 1958 it was clear that Cash would be leaving Sun upon the expiration of his contract. He was withholding his songs, giving Charlie rich a chance to earn a little money as a songwriter and session pianist. “The Ways Of A Woman In Love” was a lovely song, and this early version sports some subtly different lyrics. Two Ted Daffan songs, “Born To Lose” and “Always Alone” also stem from the last sessions. Both were later overdubbed, but are undubbed here. “Blue Train” recorded at the very end of the Sun contract, is quite simply classic Cash. It opens with a simulated whistle (Luther Perkins) a slide over the neck while turning the amp on, perhaps?) and although it was written and first recorded by a young Tennessee singer, Billy Smith, it’s quintessential Johnny Cash.

The Sun Sound was one that Johnny Cash neither altered (very much) nor bettered. Although he harbors mixed feelings about those early years, he’s constantly asked to define what it was that made the Sun Recordings so special. “The we did it was honest” he concluded later. “We played it and sang it the way we felt it and there’s a lot to be said for that. Amen

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Cash Sings Cash 

Newly Released CD 

     Track List 

1. I Walk The Line 

2. Big River 

3. There You Go

4. Give My Love To Rose 

5. Katy Too

6. So Doggone Lonesome

7. Train Of Love 

8. Hey Porter 

9. Don't Make Me Go

10. You're The Nearest Thing To Heaven 

11. Straight A's In Love 

12. Country Boy

13. Cry Cry Cry 

14. Next In Line 

15. Mean Eyed Cat 

16. Home Of The Blues 

17. Get Rhythm

18. Come In Stranger 

19. Luther Played The Boogie 

20. Wide Open Road 

21. Folsom Prison Blues 

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Revised: September 03, 2007