Massive Johnny Cash box set an homage to the Man in Black

Steve Jones, USA TODAY
11:52AM EDT November 1. 2012



Anyone with a die-hard Johnny Cash fan on their holiday shopping list might want to consider putting a bow on a massive
new career retrospective from Columbia/Legacy.

The 63-disc Johnny Cash: The Complete Columbia Album Collection ($230) brings together 59 albums. It starts with 1958's
The Fabulous Johnny Cash, which featured his first No. 1 country single, Don't Take Your Guns to Town, and stretches
through 1990's Highwayman 2 with Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson. Cash, who died in 2003, would
have turned 80 this year.

Cash embraced a variety of musical styles -- country and western, gospel, blues, rockabilly, traditional balladry and folk --
though with his gravelly deep baritone made each distinctly his own. The set includes 35 albums being released for the first
time on CD in the USA. Each title is packaged as a mini-LP CD with its original artwork, including the five original gatefold
albums in Cash's Columbia discography. It comes with a full-color booklet that includes information on every album:
songwriters, recording dates and cities, musicians, guest performers, producers, release dates, catalog numbers and chart rankings.

Among the many rarities are two movie soundtracks produced in Nashville in 1970 by Bob Johnson: I Walk the Line, directed
by John Frankenheimer and starring Gregory Peck, and Little Fauss and Big Halsy, a motorcycle racing film starring Robert
Redford and Lauren Hutton.

There are also two new compilations to complement the boxed set. Johnny Cash With His Hot & Blue Guitar, a 28-track
collection of songs released during his Sun Records years (1954-58), and the two-CD The Singles, Plus, a 55-song collection
spanning 1958-1985 and featuring singles that did not appear on his Columbia albums, plus guest appearances by Bob Dylan,
the Carter Family, Mother Maybelle Carter, June Carter Cash, the Earl Scruggs Revue, Marty Robbins, Willie Nelson and Shel Silverstein.


Source : HERE