The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show

1	The Johnny Cash Show Open/I Walk the Line 2:53
2	Flesh and Blood 3:03
3	Stand by Your Man / Tammy Wynette 2:47
4	Medley: She Thinks I Still Care/Love Bug/The Race Is On 3:47
5	I've Been Everywhere 2:15
6	Detroit City / Bobby Bare 3:23
7	Ring of Fire / Ray Charles 3:51
8	It's Too Late / Derek & the Dominos 4:13
9	Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again) / Kris Kristofferson 3:24
10	Medley: Only the Lonely/Oh, Pretty Woman / Roy Orbison 3:59
11	Belshazzar / The Statler Brothers 2:37
12	Brown Eyed Handsome Man / Waylon Jennings 2:46
13	Girl from the North Country / Joni Mitchell 3:44
14	Fire and Rain / James Taylor 3:48
15	Daddy Sang Bass / Tennessee Three 2:23
16	Closing Monologue/I Walk the Line (Reprise) 2:13

Barnes & Noble

An audio companion to the awesome, like-titled double-DVD released in 2007, The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show 1969-1971 reprises a few memorable live performances from the show's two-year network run, and adds several others that are unavailable on the DVD set. The new tracks include a feisty duet between Cash and Lynn Anderson on Hank Snow's "I've Been Everywhere"; a powerful rendition of "Detroit City" by Bobby Bare, complete with a sweet, yearning string section and woodwinds; an orchestrated medley by Roy Orbison blending "Only the Lonely" with a rocking "Oh Pretty Woman"; Cash and Joni Mitchell in an affecting duet on "Girl from the North Country" (the DVD features this song as a Cash-Bob Dylan duet); and young James Taylor fingerpicking and singing a stunning, spare "Fire and Rain" (on the DVD he's seen performing "Sweet Baby James"). Other highlights include Derek and the Dominoes, in the group's only TV appearance, performing a churning, charged version of "It's Too Late" (the DVD features the King of Rockabilly, Carl Perkins, sitting in with the band for a fiery dissertation on "Matchbox"); a tough medley by George Jones on "She Thinks I Still Care/Love Bug/The Race Is On"; Waylon Jennings and his band tearing up "Brown Eyed Handsome Man"; the entire Cash troupe -- which included Mother Maybelle Carter and her daughters, the Statler Brothers, and Carl Perkins -- working out the soulful celebration that was Perkins's "Daddy Sang Bass"; and Kris Kristofferson offering a majestic take on one of his early masterpieces, "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)." It's only a taste of the broad fare the Cash show offered, but it's mighty fine indeed. David McGee

All Music Guide

Johnny Cash wasn't the first major country music star to host a television series, but he was the first to have a weekly show on a major network, and given Cash's eclectic willingness to embrace any kind of music as long as it was good and honest, it's not surprising that during its two years on the air The Johnny Cash Show featured a variety of noted musical artists who didn't often appear on television, including Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong, Neil Young, and Bill Monroe. None of those performers appear on this CD drawn from the archives of The Johnny Cash Show (though they can be seen on a companion DVD set released by Columbia/Legacy), and the big studio band that muddies the arrangements of "I Walk the Line," "Daddy Sang Bass," and "I've Been Everywhere" on this disc prove that for all Cash's brave good intentions, there were some conventions of American television he wasn't able to escape. It's also hard to say why, given the star-studded roster of artists who graced Cash's stage, this disc features Bobby Bare, Lynn Anderson, and Tammy Wynette instead of, say, Stevie Wonder, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Pete Seeger (though in all fairness Bare's rendition of "Detroit City" on this album is terrific). The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show doesn't quite deliver the show's most historically significant and exciting moments, but what's here is generally pretty good. Ray Charles delivers a passionate reading of "Ring of Fire," Cash duets memorably with Joni Mitchell on "Girl from the North Country," Waylon Jennings sings "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" with his usual casual authority (and his banter with Cash is spontaneous and funny) and Kris Kristofferson is near the top of his game as a performer as he sings "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)," while Cash delivers the goods with strong renditions of "Flesh and Blood" and "Belshazzar." Johnny Cash's television series was a fearless experiment in bringing the best of American music to the small screen, and the DVD collection demonstrates that it often achieved that lofty goal; this CD doesn't hit that same target, even if it does preserve a few pearls from the Cash archive. Mark Deming