Originally released on Sun Records in 1957, Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar! was the singer’s debut studio album. He was 23 years old at the time, long before being known as “The Man in Black” and 45 years removed from his status as the craggy legend who stopped time with a vulnerable cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt.” Nonetheless, the essence is all right here. Cash offers 12 songs steeped in folk and country traditions, leaning into train songs including “The Rock Island Line” and “The Wreck of the Old ’97,” lonely laments like self-penned 1955 debut single “Cry! Cry! Cry!” and “So Doggone Lonesome,” prison songs including “Doin’ My Time,” tales of the simple life like “Country Boy,” and a dash of earnest gospel with “I Was There When it Happened.” Several of the songs will be familiar to any armchair historian of 20th century popular music, but a couple of Cash’s biggest songs from this album will endure in the pantheon of immortality. The resolute “I Walk the Line” promises Cash’s not-quite-eternal devotion to first wife Vivian Liberto through a series of key changes that reach deep into his gravelly range. The song topped the country music charts in 1956, rooted in a freight train shuffle and abetted by the bass and guitar of the Tennessee Two, Marshall Grant and Luther Perkins. Like Hank Williams’ “(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle” (covered on this album), rockabilly classic “Folsom Prison Blues” fused the train and prison song genres. Cash’s Sun single produced another major country chart hit, giving regretful voice to a character at one time so cold that he “shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.” Cash was quoted saying it was the worst reason he could imagine for committing such a horrible crime. Intervention offers this influential set from Sam Phillips’ famous Sun Studio in Memphis, TN, on heavyweight vinyl mastered in monophonic sound at 45RPM for exceptional fidelity. (interventionrecords.com)
