Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1029 in the Series) is Rosanne Cash, The List When Rosanne Cash was 18, she was spending most of her time on tour with her famous father, Johnny.  One day, Johnny was checking out what she was listening to.  Most of her tastes, like most teenagers, were towards the music of the day.  He thought it was time to teach her a little bit about music. So he brought her into the tour bus, sat her down, and wrote out a list of, what he felt, were the 100 most essential country songs of American music history. She held onto that list. She would look at it year after year.  She became quite...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day is Johnny Cash, American Recordings V: A Hundred Highways The year was 1994, and it was not the best of times for Johnny Cash.  His health, starting to fail from a series of illnesses and decades of hard living, was seemingly bringing “The Man in Black” much closer to the end than he was ready to admit.  His latest major record label, Mercury Records had dropped him after one last commitment record, The Mystery of life, that was released in 1990 and included updated versions of “Hey Porter”, “Angel and the “Badman”, and “The Greatest Cowboy”, that were good simply because they are very good songs, but showed none of the outlaw grit...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#920 in the Series) is  Johnny Cash,  Out Among the Stars In the last years of his life, and currently with the multiple releases of the Rick Rubin produced American Recordings series of recordings, we have been treated to new music from Johnny Cash. The songs presented on these records were mostly scaled down un-plugged style versions of old classics along with deep in the vault songs from artists Cash admired. Every song in the series was a powerful reminder of the greatness of the past, and a sobering look into eyes and on to the soul of one of the greatest artists ever to walk the line. And now, courtesy of the...

  Today’s Cool album of the Day (#901 in the Series) is Rosanne Cash,The River & The Thread.   Many people will to want to know – is this a country album, a folk album, an Americana / Alt-country album? Well – yes to all three but primarily I think it’s a Southern album. Each of the songs are finely crafted short stories in the great Southern tradition. They each work all by themselves telling a story that’s either from the Cash family history or a work of fiction. They also work together to paint a portrait of the South that is equal to the best Southern fiction writing. There are songs of family, a feeling of community or the...

  Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “One Too Many Mornings” by Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash Still a mystery to me why these recordings have never been officially released… The Dylan-Cash Sessions took place in Nashville’s Columbia Studio A on February 17-18, 1969 at the tail end of the Nashville Skyline recording sessions. During the same week that Dylan turned in such indelible recordings as “I Threw It All Away,” “Lay Lady Lay,” “To Be Alone With You” and “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You,” Johnny Cash, who had been recording in an adjoining  studio turned up for some recording fun. What transpired were several days of session in which the two traded songs and...

  Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “The Mercy Seat” by Johnny Cash By the year 2000 and the third album in the American series, Johnny Cash had reestablished himself as one of the greatest singers, not just in country music, but in all music. Producer, Rick Rubin, began working with him several years before and allowed Johnny Cash do what he did best in the studio…be JOHNNY CASH! Cash began working with Rick Rubin in 1994. Rubin was the founder  of Def Jam Records, and was responsible for producing seminal recordings by Public Enemy and The Beastie Boys. It must have taken quite a leap of faith for Johnny Cash to, not only work with Rick...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#602 in the Series) is The Little Willies, For the Good Times (Milking Bull) Those of you that have been Norah Jonesing for an encore to The Little Willies and their eponymous album that featured fun eclectic versions of classic country songs like “ I Gotta Get Drunk”  and “Nightlife” alongside the  masterpiece “Streets of Baltimore”, and a rousing original song that sings the praises of Lou Reed called, appropriately enough, “Lou Reed”,  need wait no more. This time around For The Good Times, the second release for the band that consists of Lee Alexander on bass, Jim Campilongo and Richard Julian on guitar, Dan Reiser on drums, and the incomparable Norah...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#588in the Series) is The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Volume II. Will The Circle Be Unbroken Vol II is, obviously, the follow up to the 1971 album. If you’re not familiar with the two, they were a pair of albums released by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band that featured a roomful of guest stars. The original album gave us names like Roy Acuff, Merle Travis, Vassar Clements etc. Volume II continued the tradition. Some wonderful names are on this release. Here we find, Johnny Cash, Sam Bush, Bruce Hornsby, EmmyLou Harris, Levon Helm, John Denver (Before he made a big splash), John Hiatt, John Prine, Rosanne Cash, Randy Scruggs, Roger...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#373 in the Series) is Johnny Cash,  at Folsom Prison. Rosanne Cash was on tour recently on a west coast tour, one of her stops was in Folsom, California.  While there, she made a stop to the prison where her famous father recorded one of his most famous albums 44 years earlier. She played a few songs in the lunchroom, just as he once did.  Many times I think about concerts and say “I wish I were there.” This is one that hearing a tape would be just as fine, thank you. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison almost did not happen.  It was in the works for some time and then some major...