This version is pretty good, but the great version came from Johnny's live album "Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison." It's at a whole different level, with Johnny's energy kicked up and the actual Folsom prisoners reacting in the background.
true, although for me it's more like "it actually is my style and i love it". Absolutely _cannot_ get into modern contemporary country, but this outlaw type and older stuff is right up my alley. Johnny Cash was always the exception for country music
LOL yep. Pretty much anyone who says they do not like country, like me, but then hears Johnny Cash and says, "This is not normally my thing, but I like it".
Makes me wonder what happened to the young boy who was told by his Mum to always be a good boy, that years later he murdered someone, just to experience death. .
Johnny Cash is an artist that seems to have no boundaries as far as people loving his music. Rockers love him, country people love him, old and young...true legend and ultimate storyteller.
That's so true. I saw him live in 1994 and there were punks, rockers, old folks and young in the crowd. Everyone had a blast and got along great! One of my top 5 concerts of all time!
So true ! I love him very much and June and now I have met a lot more people who like or love Johnny Cash or at least know him. But in my case there are more old than younger people. I am 22 ,I am from Germany and I am very oldschool and proud of it ! 😁😉🙂
Honestly, growing up listening to rap, getting into metal, disco all kinds of music. Johnny Cash’s music is so soothing and makes me feel so wonderful. Even when I’m sad his music picks me up more then anything can
No surprise that Lex likes this. Johnny Cash's music and lyrics have that universal appeal that speaks to everyone. A LOT of rockers like myself are Johnny Cash fans. ✌❤🇨🇦
The clickety clack, clickety clack is the train on the tracks sound...and while this song features a train, this beat/rhythm was featured on the majority of Johny Cash songs in some manner....You definitely need to check out more of him. Johny Cash was The Man in Black and one of the greatest American composers and performers. A genuine hero of working class and oppressed people who was never afraid to kick down a door(or kick in a stage light)...Check out "I Walk The Line" and "Hurt" .
That sound came from Johnny's guitar, they were a trio called the Tennessee Three with no drummer, Cash and Luther Perkins on guitar and Marshall Grant on bass. Perkins was the lead guitarist, where as Cash provided the rhythm. It was a trademark sound of Cash's rockabilly era with Sun Records.
1000% I just recommended ,Hurt. Walk the Line, Ring of Fire, A Boy Named Sue. Then you go into The Highwaymen. So much to treat the ears and to treasure.
In 1988, Cash headlined a Saturday night at the hot air balloon rally we have every year in Statesville, NC. I wasn’t there; I was a 22 year old Metalhead, and I had to be at work before 5:00AM on Sundays. But the next morning, his bus pulled up in front of The City Newsstand where I was working, the folding doors opened up, and The Man In Black himself stepped out and into my store. I sold him a package of Goody’s Headache Powders, a Coke in the little glass bottle, and a Car Trader magazine. I was too surprised to be talking to Johnny Cash to think of saying anything else but, “Have a nice day!” as he was leaving. But he was so cool, he knew exactly what to say, he said, in a very deep voice, “Thankya, kindly.” My brush with greatness… Hahaha
"Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison" is one of the best concept albums ever recorded. When he did this and "Cocaine Blues" in the prison itself and you can hear all of the prisoners reacting in the background, it's just an amazing sound. You all should listen to the whole album even if you don't react to it. It's one of my favorite road trip albums.
Johnny Cash was an exception to every rule. He was a national institution with an incredibly popular TV show in the 1970s. He was essentially a country singer, but he recorded songs by all sorts of styles of artist, and in some ways you could say he was the first punk rocker - not in musical style, but in attitude. Despite that he had a way of making everyone feel warm and happy. We will not see his like again. You're right about the zydeco-like sound. Try his songs "I walk the line", "Jackson" (recorded with his wife June Carter Cash, a member of the Carter family - country music royalty), or, for his fun side, "A Boy Named Sue" and "One Piece at a Time".
Definitely a must is Cash's many gospel songs when introducing a new listener. He carried the bad boy image, like Elvis was hooked on drugs (road life was hard), and found redemption thru June Carter. The Carter family was famously musical. Johnny and June had a special love for her to repeatedly forgive and take him back, until the day that John realized what he had.
Outlaw country music! You need to see more of this genre. Other good ones are Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, David Allan Cole, Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, , and many others. Its a mix of country music, rockabilly, honky tonk and blues. Rebel cowboy music. Big during the '60s, '70s, and early '80s. Johnny Cash was well respected by punk rock (influenced (cowpunk groups like Violent Femmes, Social Distortion, etc), metal, rock, and rappers. Many of Cash's songs have been covered over the years as well.
The height of skill is to make the simple into something spectacular. Three chords and a legendary voice and you have timeless classic. You need to check out the version from Folsom Prison, Johnny Cash kicked up the tempo a bit and is IMO a better version of this song.
I get the similarities between the beats of Zydeco and this. It's cool you mention Zydeco. I'm from Lafayette, LA and I'm a HUGE zydeco fan. Nothing makes me happier than to Zydeco (dance) with my wife to a Keith Frank gig. I understand why we haven't exported it to a large scale, due to some of it being in French/English slang, but I wish more of the country could experience the joy of dancing at a Zydeco gig. The music and the people become one in ways that I've never experienced at other live music events. I'm sure my bias is coming due to my Cajun/Creole roots.
I have said it to many people,Johnny Cash was the first white rapper. I know that rap wasn't even a genre at that time,but if you listen to the songs he did and how he sang them he was rappin'
This is some old school outlaw country music jaja. Its like rockabilly, rock and country music combined with rebellious lyrics. Punk rockers, hip hop heads, rockers love Johnny Cash, tbw. Many bands cover his songs too. More outlaw country artists are Jessi Colter, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Kris Krisstopherson, Hank Williams, David Allan Coe, Margo Price, etc.
This song has a simple 12 bar blues chord progression, I don't know what key it's in but I've played it as a blues in E to the Rythm of Chuck berry's Johnny B Goode in E blues, then I can flawlessly transition from one to the other at will, it's a cool party trick. 12 bar blues shuffle in E is a good place to start with guitar because there's literally thousands of songs and you can play Rythm guitar to them all with very little variation.
Lex Let me suggest a direction you might want to take. You said you like zydeco. You guys did What I Am by Edie Brickell (E-D) and the New Bohemians. The band was a great band before Edie joined it and then took off when she came in. The drummer for the New Bohemians has a Texas zydeco band called Zydeco Blanco. It also features the bass player from What I Am playing sax. I can’t be neutral with them because they are my personal friends. But check out more Edie and New Bos.
This takes me way back. I was raised on this. 58 years old and this reminds me of the smell of the cabinet "hi-fi" when it got over heated from playing all those records. This is close to the first song I had memorized. I was around six, I guess.
RIP JOHNNY CASH!! My Dad played his 63 Fender Strat & sang Johnny Cash Elvis George Jones Merle Haggard Willie Waylon Jennings Conway Twitty All the legends.... I miss my dad so much He just passed away to Covid age 73 a year ago! Elvis music and country music is healing to me RIP DAD!!!!! I LOVE AND MISS YOU
he never played a fender strat, his lead guitarist luther perkins did however, johnny only played acoustic gibson j200, martin d-35, fender malibu etc.
@Brad & Lex: Nobody can play a thing when they first pick up a guitar. This includes Jimi Hendrix and Steve Vai. They were beginners too at one time. So don't get to hard on yourself by saying I can't play anything. It takes time for your fingers to loosen up and be able to make those chord shapes. The fastest way to play anything is practice over and over again. Sooner or later the fingers get loose and learn what they're supposed to do.
Did not realize this was a Johnny Cash song. I heard it dozens of times, by my Dad playing/singing it. I just naturally assumed it was Hank Williams (Sr.) as I thought Hank was he played. Guess now I'll have to find out what all the songs I grew up hearing my Dad play P.S. Johnny's great, but I like my Dad's version better :)
Not a Cash fan, but he's definitely the type of artist that comes to mind when someone says "outlaw music". Imo, the stream should have been like the biker stream, where it's vibe based, and has a few sub-genres to work with, but it was more of a lyrical themed stream. For me, it would have been more rebel country/western, southern rock, dark whiskey-soaked singer-songwriter type of music. Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Lynyrd Skynyrd, C.O.C., Hank Williams III, certain Load era Metallica, etc.
I know that this has nothing to do with Johnny Cash but this is how my train of thought works. Johnny Cash - Charlie Daniels, Charlie Daniels - Devil went down to Georgia, Devil went down to Georgia - OMG you have to hear the cover of Devil went down to Georgia that Steve Ouimette did. Anyone who is a fan of amazing guitarists has to check out Steve Ouimette.
Outlaw country 🎶 music. Gangster country music. Lot of punk rockers, rappers, rockers, etc loved Cash, too. His songs are covered a lot, too. Ya, like Zydeco washboard sound.
Merle Haggard was there when Cash performed and Merle later became major recording star with great songs, Mama Tried, Sing me Back HOme, My favorite The Fighting side of Me
You can never go wrong with Johnny Cash that's for sure. Sometime you should check out his two live prison albums. San Quentin and Folsom Prison. You get to hear the audience response to these songs. I love the old train songs and they capture it perfectly. Sometimes Johnny would weave wax paper between his strings to get that plunky sound but most of us just use the palm of our picking hand to do some partial muting of the strings. He has tons of great storytelling songs but one of the greatest is his cover of the old classic John Henry. It's about mining culture and the advent of the steam drill in mining which slowly replaced the tough burly men that would swing pickaxes all day until their backs went out. It's absolutely fantastic and his version is killer. He had a ton of great train songs like Orange Blossom Special and so forth, but one of my favorite is a cover of another hit but I love his version of it. It's called The Spirit of New Orleans, which was a real train line that ran in the south. Every verse packs a million images into it and it's a bit wistful about the dying days of the locomotive for heavy passenger travel.
Oh yeah, we covered this in our Honky Tonk band for a long time and we did it more up-tempo and made it our own but we still kept the same texture and feel. I would take the first guitar solo, the pedal steel would take the second one, and then we would play the third one together. Our frontman had the voice to carry it off as well. It was typically one of the handful of songs that we had that would drive the audience into a frenzy and they went from just having a good time dancing to going nuts. Women dancing on bar tops and tables and so forth. What a blast. You can't go wrong with Johnny Cash.
Johnny Cash’s voice is a piece of Americana, instantly recognizable like his close friend Willie Nelson or Louis Armstrong. You can hear the history in a voice like that…..
Lex, the sound that you are asking about is a combination of a bass fiddle and an acoustic guitar. With the stand up bass, what some country and early rock and roll players would do was tune their instruments down two or 3 keys so when they picked notes, the strings would slap against the neck, for a percussive effect. Also, Johnny Cash, though I don't think that he did it here, would place the bottom of his palm against the strings to give his playing a more percussive sound as well. He did this in I Walk The Line, the recording. In those days, many performers of this genre did not employ snare drums in their act
The movie *Walk the Line* about Johnny Cash, with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, gave me a newfound appreciation of his music. The scene in the movie with this song is one of the most powerful. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-s_NQ9yUQ6cY.html
We all love how raw Johnny Cash was. His music reminds me of the first band my dad played in. They cut a couple of 45s, the B side on one from 1960 they did a cover of Kaw-liga where you can tell that musically they were more influenced by Cash than Hank Williams. We played those 45s to death when we were kids.
He was a seminal artist, spiritual role model, and a cult of personality. I like Big River and Sunday Morning Coming Down, but Delia's Gone was his comeback hit with the new generation, and Hurt "made music videos a legitimate art form" Rolling Stone. Everybody does a reaction to that one.
Guys, I really love you. I've been watching for a real long time. I started with your Eminem reactions (because let's face it, this old stuff is gold and I really enjoy people listening to this the first time). You also are very good in your reactions because you don'T pause like every 3 seconds and feel like you have to interpret something into the last couple words. Your way also is amazing to coming from mostly Hip Hop through all these ares and Genres. I would be so happy if you could do me a favour and react to immortal technique - you never know. In my opinion one of the best storys of all time on track. Keep it up. Big love from Germany. Chris
Johnny cash songs are actually pretty simple on guitar, if your fingers aren't stretching right you might be reading your chords poster wrong. Trust me it's an honest mistake, I've noticed over the year's some chords that are on posters and some web sites show them in a weird way. It's hard to explain but basically , let's say it's for the A chord , it'll say 2nd fret 1,2 , the 1,2 are pointer finger, middle finger, meaning you hold down each string on whatever fret it's showing. I know this probably don't make sense lol, I've never had to explain it in text. But yeah Johnny cash songs are usually 3 chords, you'll get it figured out. 🤘
This song is pretty easy to play. I love playing it. The chord progression is: E major, A major, B7. You might have trouble with the B7 chord, depending on how far along you are in guitar playing, because it requires all 4 of your fretting fingers. But if I can do it, you certainly can.. It just takes some patience and repetitive perfect practice.
I always watch peoples reaction to the part in the lyrics where he says he shot a man just to watch him die and Brad's raised eyebrows said it all... Peace you two & Godspeed...
One of his early songs. He always had empathy for the underdog, especially inmates. He was straight up country back then and truly never left his roots. People opened up to a style they thought they didn't like! I was one of them. Thanks to my Momma, I got introduced to him.
You must hear both Johnny Cash live prison albums. And the Merle Haggard one. Before you die. You have time. Both are legend and were hits on the radio.
This was the version I knew as a kid. It was released the year before I was born. The live version didn't come out until 1968, thirteen years after the studio version. Cocaine Blues is a good one. He kills someone in it too.
Was one of the first songs that I learned to play 40 years ago. At this point, I can play all guitar parts, bass part, and add drums pretty much blindfolded. Patience Brad. Don't let those strings frustrate you.
That sound is Johnny Cash’s signature sound. You will hear that beat in about every one of his songs. For the Bee Gee’s, their signature sound came from driving over an old bridge. I’m glad you guys took a risk on these older artists and especially country. Johnny Cash was a little before his time. He crossed forbidden barriers and didn’t care. He has a fun hit, “I’ve Been Everywhere”
This song has a hilarious memory attached to it for me ! My old friend went to a wedding fundraiser (social) underage & was sneaking drinks there, got busted by the liquor commissioner that was there and got an underage drinking ticket. Her dad picked her up from the cop shop & played this song in silence in the way home; nothing else. HAHA
Johnny never went to prison though he was arrested for vagrancy, he'd been picking flowers and having no money in his pocket. He partied harder than most rock stars. A reaction nobody has done "Tales From The Tour Bus". It's crazy. Waylon Jennings was a mad man, Prince stories, James Brown rolling up on his bassist Boots Collins and other band members smoking a joint, except it was wet. (PCP) They were scared to say anything as James ran a strict band and they needed the gig. James Brown falls in love with PCP. Crazy show.
you might also react to the Home Free cover or the vid of Home Free and AVi from PTX . I think you've done some Home Free before, thinking End of the Road. My feeling is that Lex has a soul meant for some old time country (from the 70's) has Lex ever reacted to Kris Kristofferson - Sunday Morning Coming down or Me and Bobby McGee
Johnny Cash is a freakin genius! A absolute MUST listen to is his “cover” of Nine Inch Nails - Hurt. Even Nine Ince Nails admitted that is was Cash’s song from the moment he sang it. They were actually a little upset at themselves because they really liked the song but when they let Johnny sing it they admitted defeat because they knew Johnny’s version of it would be remembered and a lot of ppl even now still think it was an original from Johnny.
If you want a fun take on this song, listen to "The Cats of Cash" by Garrison Keillor, who hosted "A Prairie Home Companion" on NPR for decades; he and opera singer Frederica von Stade did an album called "Songs of the Cat" that takes other songs and changes the words to them to be about cats. The whole album is gold, but The Cats of Cash weaves together three Johnny Cash songs, and this is the third of them. Lots of fun!
Justin Johnson's cover of this track is great. You should check out some JJ; he's on YT. Great slide blues guitarist. "Great" is a serious understatement, actually.
Johnny Cash's voice is not reproduceable. Joaquin Phoenix came as close as I have heard, and on his interviews he says he cannot do Johnny's voice anymore. He talks about having a voice coach for months leading up to the filming.
This is one of Johnny's most famous songs, but he didn't write a lot of it. He "borrowed" the tune and lyrics from Gordon Jenkins Crescent City Blues. Listen to the similarities.
the simple but effective guitar played by Luther perkins together with Marshall grant on the double bass made the rhythm section sound like a moving train. they later added a drummer W.s. holland and that was enough.
