By Patrick Luce Nov 23, 2006, 13:44 GMT
In the last year or so, the final recordings of music giant Johnny Cash were issued on 'American V: A Hundred Highways,' which soared to #1 Pop and #1 Country. A new hits compilation, 'The Legend Of Johnny Cash,' went #5 Pop and #2 Country as well as double platinum. Now Cash’s voluminous vault yields a never-before-released live performance that makes its debut on DVD.
Johnny Cash In Ireland - 1993 (Mercury/UMe), now available, captures the Man in Black and his entire revue performing at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin for an Irish television production. Presented in various superior sound formats, including 5.1 Surround Sound, the approximately one-hour-long concert showcases Cash singing many of his greatest hits--“I Walk The Line,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Get Rhythm,” “A Boy Named Sue,” “(Ghost) Riders In The Sky,” “Daddy Sang Bass” and “Ring Of Fire” plus “I Still Miss Someone.”
He also sings with wife June Carter Cash (their classic duet “Jackson”), son John Carter Cash (“No Use In Treatin’ Me This Way”), Kris Kristofferson (“Big River” and “Long Black Veil”), and The Carter Family, who perform their own gems too--“Keep On The Sunny Side,” “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” and “Wabash Cannonball.” In addition, John Carter Cash solos Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” and Irish popster Sandy Kelly joins Cash, Kristofferson and The Carter Family on “Forty Shades Of Green,” the Johnny Cash-penned tribute to Ireland.
Though seemingly everything that can be said about Cash has been said, one aspect of his career rarely explored is how his popularity in Ireland and the U.K. helped sustain and revive him. Celtic music was a foundation of both folk and country and his continued adulation there owed much to that tradition. Touring Ireland in 1989, he heard on the radio Kelly’s version of the Patsy Cline hit “Crazy”--the country’s biggest selling record of the year.
He invited her to one of his shows and brought her on stage to sing. He later invited her to Nashville and they recorded “Woodcarver” together, which went gold in Ireland. So it was natural that she would again appear with him in Ireland in 1993.
Between record companies that year, he also sang on “The Wanderer” from Ireland’s biggest music artist, U2, for that enormously popular group’s Zooropa. Buoyed by the praise of a new generation, he then signed with Rick Rubin’s American Recordings and Johnny Cash began the final phase of perhaps the most extraordinary career in modern American music.
Cash in Ireland is now available at Amazon and AmazonUK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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