Track Listing

1. Ring Of Fire
2. Folsom Prison Blues
3. Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down
4. I Walk The Line
5. The Wall
6. Long Back Veil
7. Big River
8. I'll Go Somewhere And Sing My Songs Again
9. Let Him Roll
10. Ballad Of Barbara
11. Sam Stone
12. ( Ghost ) Riders In The Sky
13. Where Did We Go Right w/June Carter Cash
14. I Walk The Line outro

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #176300 in Music
• Brand: Dig
• Released on: 2007-01-09
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Live, Original recording remastered

Album Description
This classic Johnny Cash performance was taped for the Austin City Limits TV show in January 1987. It features many of Johnny's classic songs and includes a duet with June Carter Cash as well. The CD includes many songs not heard in the original broadcast.

Amazon.com
Johnny Cash was not only a great artist but a great performer, as this 1987 Austin City Limits taping (also available on DVD) attests. Though he was years past his hitmaking peak and had yet to enjoy his late-career comeback, his legendary stature was undiminished and his baritone sounds surprisingly supple and warm. With his veteran band providing superb support, he intersperses the requisite hits--"Ring of Fire," "Folsom Prison Blues, "I Walk the Line," and a rousing "Big River"--with a more folkish selection that includes a lyrical recasting of the traditional "Barbara Allen" and a stripped-down medley of "The Wall" and "Long Black Veil." He also dips into the work of fellow songwriters Kris Kristofferson ("Sunday Morning Comin' Down"), Tom T. Hall ("I'll Go Somewhere and Sing My Songs Again"), Guy Clark ("Let Him Roll"), and John Prine ("Sam Stone") and makes those songs his own. Wife June Carter Cash joins him in a testament to their love with a duet on "Where Did We Go Right?" --Don McLeese

Customer Reviews

No one will ever approach him
I teach at a multicultural urban university. Sometimes, just to find out, I'll ask a class, ranging in age from 15 to 55, from countries from our shores to Albania to Nigeria to Mexico to Serbia to places I can neither pronounce nor spell, Xanzibar, if you will, if they know who Johnny Cash is. Yep. They all shout out, for Johnny. The class erupts. He is revered across all lines, the sole universal.

This record is a testament to his skills onstage and as a song interpreter, which we know from the American Recordings. The pacing is crisp but rich, wonderful asides to introduce the songs, the performances spectacular in their modest Cash manner, and the song choices flow toward the redemptive--at least for those of us who will heed the cautionary tales. This is a cleansing, cathartic set that anyone, familiar or not with Cash's history, will tumble headlong into. He's got a harness on melodic and rhythmic shifts that can only come from a lifetime of introspection.

Maybe someone someday will come along with Cash's absolute integrity and talent, but I'd not put money on it. He's one for the ages, like Shakespeare or Li Po or Dante or Cervantes. And since we're not going to be around long enough to produce another in his league, savor this now. Check your thermometer. Viva, Johnny! See you soon.

An incredible live performance!
The LIVE FROM AUSTIN CITY LIMITS series has been releasing concerts from some great artists; Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Tony Joe White, and others have seen some of their best performances captured and released on CD/DVD. Now there's a new addition to your collection, from the one and only Johnny Cash. And it is certainly one of his best recorded performances.

That's saying a lot, of course. Cash was (is) a legend who recorded many stellar live albums (SAN QUENTIN, FOLSOM PRISON, anyone?). This album doesn't rank up there with those, of course, but it is a stellar album in its own right. His lively renditions of "Big River" and "Folsom Prison Blues" will get you singin' out loud and stomping your feet; his energetic performance of the melancholy classic "Long Black Veil" is a pure delight. He gives a special introduction to "I Walk The Line," for the members of the audience born since '56 "who might not have heard it." His performance is intimate, yet showcases easily why he remains one of the best performers of any musical genre. Buy this album if you are a Cash fan, or if you just love music that breaks boundaries. Thank God Austin City Limits is reissuing these classic performances; special thanks for releasing this one.

The King of Texas
The older I get, the more I appreciate Johnny Cash. I have quite a few of the "Live from Austin" issues, and have been a Cash fan for over 40 years now (I was a teenager in Folsom when he made his visits to the Prison, including the one captured on "At Folsom Prison" -- guess what song was "#1" on every jukebox in town for the next ten years?). So I can't quite explain why I waited to buy this record for so long. Perhaps it was because I had at least ten Cash albums, and because a "live" record without Johnny and June doing "Jackson" just could never measure up to "AFP".

Well, I was wrong to wait. Be warned -- if you buy this CD, you may never take if off your CD player. The reviewer who wrote this doesn't measure up to the classic live records "AFP" and "San Quentin" was wrong. The only negative comparison I can make to those two is the comparison of the raucus prison audiences, and Cash's inimitable banter, with the sedate Chardonnay, and doubtless well-edited, Austin crowd. But it is OK. It all works. Because the songs, the performances, and the production are perfect. "Live from Austin" is now ascended to the top of my "Records to Take to a Desert Island" list.

What great songs! And they are matched measure for measure by Cash's peerless phrasing and the silky, gruff, bass and baritone of the richest voice in music. Cash balances masterful performances of his own classics with reprises of great songs of other great writers. The cuts of Cash's own "Ring of Fire," "Folsom Prison Blues", "I Walk the Line", and "Big River" found here are as good, or better, than any other version you will listen to. He honors -- truly honors -- fellow hall of famers Kris Kristofferson ("Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down"), Guy Clark ("Let Him Roll") and John Prine ("Sam Stone") with brilliant interpretations and great voice to go with a perfect little Texas stage band. The list goes on from there, however, with memorable great songs from somewhat less accomplished writers (Marijohn Wilkin's "Long Black Veil," Tom Hall's "I'll Go Somewhere and Sing My Songs Again," and Stan Jones's classic "Riders in the Sky" have never been sung better. And -- critically, for me -- the absence of "Jackson" compared to "AFP" is (nearly) made up for by John and June's heavenly cut of Don Schlitz and Dave Loggins's "Where Did We Go Right?".

If anyone doubts that Johnny Cash is the greatest singer-songwriter, and performer, America has produced he or she will change their mind when they hear this record. It is all here. Johnny survived the pills, the pain, the Starkville jail, and even 1970's television. He came through it all with grace, style, and a huge talent for creating unforgettable, and inimitable, music from the simplest elements. "Live from Austin" has it all. As Terry Lickona writes in the liner notes, "God bless you, Johnny Cash."