This page is part of a larger Johnny Cash discography (and an even larger country music website), looking at the various best-of collections that have come out over the years, as well as other Cash-related resources and links. Regular album reviews can be found on the pages listed below.
Johnny Cash "Now, Here's Johnny Cash" (Sun, 1961)
One of many best-of packages Sun issued during Johnny's hitmaking years on Columbia. Lotsa great classics, as well as some lesser-known material, more off the beaten track.
Johnny Cash "The Original Sun Sound Of Johnny Cash" (Sun, 1964)
Johnny Cash "Greatest Hits, Volume I" (Columbia, 1967)
Johnny Cash "Original Golden Hits, Volume I" (Sun, 1969)
Johnny Cash "Original Golden Hits, Volume II" (Sun, 1969)
Johnny Cash "Johnny Cash Sings The Greatest Hits" (Sun, 1970)
Johnny Cash "The Johnny Cash Collection: Greatest Hits Volume II" (Columbia, 1971)
Johnny Cash "Original Golden Hits, Volume III" (Sun, 1971)
Johnny Cash "Greatest Hits, Volume III" (Columbia, 1978)
Johnny Cash "Johnny Cash - Biggest Hits" (Sony, 1984)
Johnny Cash "Johnny Cash: Columbia Records 1958-1986" (Sony, 1987)
Johnny Cash "Classic Cash - Hall Of Fame Series" (Polygram, 1988)
Johnny Cash "The Essential Johnny Cash: 1955-1983" (Sony Legacy, 1992)
For about a decade this 3-CD box set was the definitive Cash collection; it's still pretty groovy. Great stuff, including a lot of off-the-beaten-track material, as well as all the big hits. Recommended!
Johnny Cash "The Man In Black: 1954-1958" (Bear Family, 1990)
A 5-CD, 138-song collection, covering Cash's Sun years, complete with tons of outtakes and other goodies. As with most Bear Family box sets, this is both vexing and a blessing. Vexing because it's quite simply a bit overwhelming, a blessing because it's packed with practically everything Cash did in his early years, and because the the sound quality is top notch. Recommended, though perhaps only for the true, hardcore Cash fan.
Johnny Cash "The Man In Black: 1959-1962" (Bear Family, 1991)
This 5-disc, 134 song set follows Johnny into his association with Columbia Records, and shows both his brilliance and occasional blandness as he integrated himself into a "real" studio system. Disc Five includes a bazillion outtakes and multiple takes of certain songs, perhaps of interest to true believers only. But the box set as a whole is fantabulous.
Johnny Cash "The Man In Black: 1963-1969" (Bear Family, 1995)
A monolithic, 6-CD, 152-song testament to one of Cash's most fertile (and, paradoxically, troubled) periods.
Johnny Cash "Come Along And Ride This Train" (Bear Family, 1991)
This 4-CD box set includes eight of the old Columbia albums: Ride This Train, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Johnny Cash Sings The Ballads Of The True West, Mean as Hell, America - A 200 Year Salute in Story and Song, Bitter Tears From Sea To Shining Sea and The Rambler, along with several songs originally releases as singles.
Johnny Cash "Johnny Cash: The Hits" (Polygram, 1997)
Johnny Cash "Super Hits" (Sony, 1999)
Johnny Cash "The Legendary Johnny Cash" (1999)
Johnny Cash "Sixteen Biggest Hits" (Sony, 1999)
Johnny Cash "Love, God and Murder" (Sony, 2000)
A theme album, focussing on the bleaker side of the Cash ouvre. Genuinely scary at times!
Johnny Cash "Sixteen Biggest Hits, v.2" (Sony, 2000)
Johnny Cash "The Essential Johnny Cash" (Sony Legacy, 2002)
The world will never want for the lack of Johnny Cash best-ofs, but I gotta say, this is one of the best. A tight, compact, 2-CD reading of the Cash canon, with a few new rarities and extras such as Johnny's pairing with Irish pop-rockers U2, and similar goodies. Mostly, it's all the familiar hits: "Ring Of Fire," "I Walk The Line," "Teenage Queen," "Big River" and all the rest. A solid collection, perhaps not as definitive (or as overwhelming!) as the earlier 3-disc set by the same name, but still pretty satisfying. Probably more than enough Johnny Cash for the casual fan to groove out on.
Johnny Cash "Millennium Collection" (MCA Universal, 2002)
In 1986, Cash took a breather from his longtime label, Columbia Records, signing with Mercury Nashville to record a series of finely understated albums. This disc collects a dozen tunes from that 1986-92 period, leaning heavily on pleasant remakes of old hits -- songs we've all heard before, but here with richer, more fleshed out arrangements. It's a nice departure from the starkness of his old albums, and can be seen as a bridge into his rock-oriented hipster revival on the American label. Not earthshaking, but perfectly nice.
Johnny Cash "Christmas With Johnny Cash" (Sony Legacy, 2003)
A collection of a dozen Cash Christmas oldies, gathered from over a couple of decades. The stuff off his 1980 Classic Christmas album is every bit as ludicrous and appalling as folks have said: the shrill vocal chorus and cluttered "classical" arrangements are a real mismatch for Johnny's voice, and tend to drown him out. But some of the older material (which dates back to the early '60s) is pretty sweet and shows Cash at his most charismatic and committed. The disc ends with a previously unreleased live recitation tune, "Christmas As I Knew It," which is pretty nice, despite the low fidelity (and even some telephones ringing in the background during one verse!). A nice holiday offering, though the '80s stuff will probably get on your nerves.
Johnny & June Carter Cash "The Hits" (Sony-BMG Legacy, 2006)
Amazingly enough, this is the first collection -- ever -- on CD of the Johnny and June's duets. Naturally, its existence is due to the lamentably flawed Walk The Line biopic, but hey -- whatever works. Before now, their duets were confined to full-album reissues or as sidelights to various Johnny Cash best-ofs... Now we can truly hear a pure, undiluted dose of Johnny & June, and the results are quite nice. The album title is a little misleading -- only a handful of the sixteen songs on here actually made it into the Top Ten, and over half the tracks didn't make it into the Top 40. But the hits are memorable -- there's "Jackson," of course, as well as their cover of Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me, Babe," a surprise smash that brought Dylan's work into the country mainstream. Considering the religious devotion that was the bedrock of their marriage, this set could have included more gospel material (one-and-a-half songs, by my reckoning, with "If I Were A Carpenter" being the one-half...) But Sony-BMG seems to have made the same calculation that Hollywood made -- go light on the preaching and minimize your risk of potentially alienating any paying customers. It might not accurately reflect the whole Carter-Cash vibe, but it does make a more marketable product. And a fine product it is: if you want to check this fabled country couple out, this is a fine place to start! (Also check out my Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash discographies.)
Johnny Cash "Ultimate Gospel" (Sony-BMG Legacy, 2007)
Nobody sings gospel quite like Johnny Cash, as heard in this stunning collection of devotional work that Cash recorded for Columbia/CBS over the years. The album gathers liberally from his many religious records of the late 1960s and early '70s, efforts that had a quixotic air about them, but always exuded born-again intensity that left little room to doubt his (and June's) sincerity and depth of conviction. Many of the songs come to us shorn from their original contexts -- from concept albums about the Holy Land, etc. -- but that doesn't make them any less haunting or piercing. His use of sound samples -- notably from Billy Graham lectures -- is pretty striking as well: take that, college rock hipsters! Johnny Cash did it first! (Only, not ironically...) Anyway, the main thing is, this is real, heartfelt religious music; all the passion and power that he put into his best-known secular work also went into his Christian recordings, and even the agnostic among us may find something here that'll strike a chord. Nice collection.
