Bitter Tears/Blood, Sweat And Tears/Ring Of Fire [Box set]

Amazon.com
This specially priced three-CD collection offers an excellent way for listeners to delve deeper into Cash's Columbia work of the early 1960s. Bitter Tears is a sober, pared-down, and stirring 1964 collection created in defense of and from the viewpoint of Native Americans. Another concept album, 1963's Blood, Sweat and Tears, features nine work songs, including the monumental eight-minute "Legend of John Henry's Hammer," plus traditional African American field blues and classics from Merle Travis, Jimmie Rodgers, and Harlan Howard. Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash, also from 1963, is not a greatest-hits package as the subtitle would have you believe, although the title cut did top the country charts. Instead, it offers a worthy sampling of Cash's moods--majestic saga songs, gospel hymns, love songs--as the steady Tennessee Two churn is embellished by everything from banjo to mariachi horns to background chorus to the Carter Family. --Marc Greilsamer

Tracks:

As Long As The Grass Shall Grow
Apache Tears
Custer
The Talking Leaves
The Ballad Of Ira Hayes
Drums
White Girl
The Vanishing Race

Tracks:

The Legend Of John Henry's Hammer
Tell Him I'm Gone
Another Man Done Gone
Busted
Casey Jones
Nine Pound Hammer
Chain Gang
Waiting For A Train
Roughneck

Tracks:

Ring Of Fire
I'd Still Be There
What Do I Care
I Still Miss Someone
Forty Shades Of Green
Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)
The Rebel - Johhy Yuma
Bonanza!
The Big Battle
Remember The Alamo
Tennessee Flat-Top Box
(There'll Be) Peace In The Valley (For Me)

Amazon.com

This specially priced three-CD collection offers an excellent way for listeners to delve deeper into Cash's Columbia work of the early 1960s. Bitter Tears is a sober, pared-down, and stirring 1964 collection created in defense of and from the viewpoint of Native Americans. Another concept album, 1963's Blood, Sweat and Tears, features nine work songs, including the monumental eight-minute "Legend of John Henry's Hammer," plus traditional African American field blues and classics from Merle Travis, Jimmie Rodgers, and Harlan Howard. Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash, also from 1963, is not a greatest-hits package as the subtitle would have you believe, although the title cut did top the country charts. Instead, it offers a worthy sampling of Cash's moods--majestic saga songs, gospel hymns, love songs--as the steady Tennessee Two churn is embellished by everything from banjo to mariachi horns to background chorus to the Carter Family. --Marc Greilsamer

Customer Reviews:

A real must-have for any music fan.......2000-10-18

This 3 CD box is a must-have for all music fans. It's not country music - actually it's just music which sounds country. Two of these records - Bitter Tears and Blood, Sweat & Tears - are among Cash's first concept albums. Bitter Tears is an album sung from an Indian's perspective - song by song Cash is revealing the nature and feelings of America's most oppressed minority (which once wasn't a minority) - the Native Americans. The album was co-written by an Indian, Peter LaFarge, author of such hits as "The Ballad of Ira Hayes", or sadly ironic and rare pearls as "Custer". Blood, Sweat & Tears provides us with another concept - songs of a hard working man. Cash tells us stories about poor, hard working people, but avoids adding too much sugar. These are touching tales such as "The Legend of John Henry's Hammer" - a nearly 9 minutes long story of a hammer-swinger, or "Casey Jones", the "good engineer to be laying dead". The albums are among the first concept albums in music history, and that's why they also might be worth listening to. The third album - The Ring of Fire - is a collection of Cash's early hits from his early Columbia years, and includes such gems as "The Ring of Fire" or "Bonanza", and - occompanied by those two concept albums - gives us a larger view at the first 5 years of Cash at Columbia, and at the music that - from our 21st century view - was beyond its time. A must-have!

Music Album:

Music Album