Newly Unearthed Johnny Cash Concert Recording To Be Released As Album In July

Artist: Johnny Cash
Album: 40th Birthday Show: Amsterdam Broadcast 1972
Label: Video Music
Release date: July 7, 2017

14 years after his passing, the appetite for newly unearthed recordings from the Man in Black is still at an all-time high as evidenced by a new album forthcoming from a 1972 live concert performance.

On February 26, 1972, country icon Johnny Cash celebrated his 40th birthday, and did so with a full-blown jamboree at Amsterdam’s 13,000 capacity RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre.

The show featured an all-star line-up, with other country legends makingappearances, both alone and alongside Johnny. With Cash’s own band The Tennessee Three providing the backing throughout , Carl Perkins opened the show followed by The Carter Family - with, of course, wife June Carter - and the The Statler Brothers also appeared,the quartet who had opened for Johnny Cash on his TV show, which had run from 1969 to 1971.

By 1972, Johnny Cash was firmly steeped in his “man in black” persona, standing out from the typical “rhinestone cowboy” image thatwas common in country at the time. The recording featured here contains Cash’s entire performance from the evening in question andfeatures a rich mix of material from his already extensive back catalogue; indeed many Cash classics are included, such as ‘Man InBlack’, ‘I Walk The Line’, ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and ‘Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down’. With Carl Perkins joining Cash for ‘I Walk The Line’,and June Carter taking the stage too for the rest of the set, which includes a sterling version of ‘Jackson’, the song with which the couple won a Grammy Award in 1967. They repeated this feat in 1971 with the following number of the night, Tim Hardin’s ‘If I Were ACarpenter’. As the evening progresses, the entire ensemble returns for a series of spirituals, including an exceptional version of ‘Children Go Where I Send Thee’.

Track listing:

1: I Walk the Line (Instrumental) 
2: A Boy Named Sue 
3: Ramblin' Around/Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down  
4: Man in Black 
5: I Still Miss Someone 
6: Five Feet High and Rising 
7: Pickin' Time/Detroit City 
8: These Hands 
9: Me and Bobby McGee 
10: Wreck of Old 97/Orange Blossom Special 
11: The Prisoner's Song 
12: Cocaine Blues 
13: Folsom Prison Blues 
14: I Walk the Line 
15: Jackson 
16: If I Were A Carpenter 
17: It's Very Nice To Be In Holland (June Carter) 
18: Help Me Make It Through The Night 
19: June Carter Speaks 
20: No Need to Worry 
21: Can The Circle Be Unbroken (By And By) 
22: Daddy Sang Bass 
23: Children Go Where I Send Thee 
24: A Thing Called Love