Johnny Cash - Legend of Johnny Cash, Vol. 2 (CD)

Well selected career-spanning single disc

By redtunictroll  Nov 21, 2006

Pros: Good selection of tracks.

Cons: Hard to fit Cash's career onto a single disc.

This 20-track collection is a good follow-up to last year's volume one. Both offer up seminal Cash sides, from his early days at Sun through his golden years at Columbia, his stay at Mercury in the '80s and his career capping sides for Americ...an. Both volumes also sandwich themselves in the narrow space between single-disc hit collections and deeper anthologies like 1992 and 2002's "Essential" titles, 2000's thematic "Love, God, Murder," 2005's 4-disc "The Legend," or Bear Family's oppressive triple-shot of box sets. Both single-disc "Legend" volumes sample from the entire length of Cash's career, which means that they necessarily short-change any one phase, and leave out some seminal album releases. What you get instead is a sketch ? rather than a full-color picture ? of Cash's artistic arc, from slap-back echo at Sun through his righteous songs of the man in black, and finishing with stark, folk-styled renditions recorded with Rick Rubin for the American label. Cash's fans may find this selection of tracks to be scattershot, duplicative of discs they already own, or unrepresentative of their particular favorites. But fans with deep Cash collections aren't the audience for this release. Instead, the songs have been selected and sequenced to make a compelling spin for new converts, those inspired by Cash's passing and subsequent biopic. And for these new fans, the Legend discs provide a good introduction to Cash's vast catalog that provides a bird's eye view from which to zoom in on specific eras or styles. [?2006 redtunictroll at hotmail dot com] Read more Less