Consumer Guide Album

Johnny Cash: Columbia Records 1958-1986 [Columbia, 1987]
Turns out he was always a folkie, a damn good one despite such lovable pop trifles as "A Boy Named Sue" and its decade-late follow-up "The Baron." The whole first side was recorded in his first seven months with the label; in fact, three of the five tracks were cut and wrapped on August 13, 1958. By contract, exactly one selection was busy being born between February '71 and March '79, the country trifle "One Piece at a Time," and while I'd substitute its assembly-line companion piece "Oney" for Nick Lowe's December '79 "Without Love" (which has more assembly line in it than anyone's letting on), that gets the trajectory of his career about right. Lately he's righted himself some, but it's the ageless stuff he's best at--John Henry and Ira Hayes, "Orange Blossom Special" and "Ghost Riders in the Sky," and let us not forget "Highway Patrolman," which proves Bruce Springsteen is Woody Guthrie if anything ever did. A−