We've seen it time and time again, and it's still a damned shame. Sometimes, a man has to die to get respect (not to mention airplay, but that's a rant for another day.)

I glumly admit that I'm one of the ones who discovered Johnny Cash very late in his career; all I remembered him for were those Standard commercials in the 70s, and by the time I knew everything as a teenager he was hopelessly hokey, as far as I was concerned. Well, as it turned out I didn't know everything I thought I knew, and here as I begin the long roller-coaster slide towards forty, damned if Johnny Cash isn't brilliant.

So here's the quandary; when I get sent a greatest hits collection of Cash, I know the music is going to be good. The question is, why another CD? Why repackage yet more music? In this case, the answer is "Because it's a fine selection of early Johnny Cash music." While it might be easy to ignore this CD collection because familiarity breeds contempt, there are some valid reasons to check out The Original.

The first is the sound quality, which is excellent. The crowd laughter and ambient sounds on "A Boy Named Sue" really brings home that this is a damned funny track, and has aged well. In fact, The Original has a very good sound to it; full and detailed, despite being tracks from early Columbia/CBS releases.

The second is the track selection. Unlike the 1987 Columbia Records 1958-1986 greatest hits or the 2001 Man In Black: The Very Best Of Johnny Cash, The Original is a focused selection of tracks They range, roughly, from 1956 ("I Walk The Line") to 1976 ("One Piece At A Time"); the era where Cash was more or less dominating the country charts and making considerable inroads on the pop charts. Surprisingly enough, in about a half hour of looking online I couldn't find a greatest hits for Cash that covers this period exclusively, despite there being more Johnny Cash greatest hits CDs (including wonders by K-Tel and TeeVee) than there are Democratic presidential candidates. There are box sets -- especially the exhaustively complete The Man In Black series put out by Bear Family Records -- but this is your best bet for a definitive sampling of Cash's early work that won't require you to drop forty bucks or more. There are two brief caveats here -- one, none of Cash's groundbreaking singles for Sun Records (with the exception of "I Walk The Line") are on this CD; and two, the liner notes are extremely sparse and completely opinion. I would have liked some more concrete information to put the songs in context.

In the end, though, these are minor considerations; if you take this for what it is, a survey of Cash's golden years with Columbia/CBS, it's an excellent collection and a good value. Fans should snap up The Original immediately, and for the curious who are wondering what all the fuss is about it's a great place to start.

Rating: A-

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