Johnny Cash – Singing At His Best

 

Picture: C     Sound: C     Extras: D     Main program: C+

 

 

The Johnny Cash DVDs keep rolling out with Passport adding the late, great singer to their Singing At His Best series.  The difference here is that some of the songs here are from his Christian Gospel catalog.  The songs are self-evident in the mix of the following titles:

 

1)     Guess Things Happen That Way

2)     It Was Jesus

3)     Pickin’ Time

4)     Big River

5)     I Was There When It Happened

6)     Way Of A Woman In Love

7)     Five Feet High & Rising

8)     Heartbreak Hotel

9)     I Got Stripes

10)  Suppertime

11)  Don’t Take Your Guns To Town

12)  All Over Again

13)  You’re The Nearest Thing To Heaven

14)  Frankie & Johnny

15)  Give My Love To Rose

16)  God Has My Fortune Laid Away

 

 

This is Cash as Sun Records made him a success and he was just moving over to Columbia Records.  His performance of Heartbreak Hotel has fun with Elvis Presley’s image, which he sends up to fun perfection.  All of this was shot at the same time and is a fine early show, though it sadly runs less than 40 minutes, which is a shame.  I do not know if this went on longer and if so, does that footage exist.  However, it is some of the earliest footage of The Man In Black and is more than worth seeing.

 

The full frame, black & white image is aged and soft throughout, but it is nice to have any surviving footage left of this at all.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono also shows the age of the material, whose sound is a few generations down, but the performances remind us of how great Cash was early on.  There are no extras, but fans will not care, they’ll just want to have this to see.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo