johnny cash

Dream a Little Dream of Me (1950)

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong duet on an old jazz standard. Honestly, I don’t know if I could love this record more. Armstrong was himself, of course, incredibly versatile. In 1970, he guested on what would have been at the time one of the definitive red-state shows, The Johnny Cash Show. But, perhaps surprisingly, his duet with Cash really isn’t all that bad.

SAN QUENTIN (1969)

She’ll probably deny it now, but I had this song on in the car once and, midway through, my sister turned to me and said “Man, they really don’t seem to like that Sam Quentin guy, do they?” Read the rest of this entry »

KEEP ON THE SUNNY SIDE (2003)

There’s a dark & a troubled side of life
But there’s a bright and a sunny side too

GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY (1968)

“If you go when the snowflakes fall / When the rivers freeze at summers end / Please see for me that she’s wearing a coat so warm / To keep her from the howling wind…”

“THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT THE FIRST TIME, SECOND TIME I DID IT ON MY OWN…”

A line from Bob Dylan’s Together Through Life album has been garnering some comment recently. “I’m listening to Billy Joe Shaver, and I’m reading James Joyce” he sings on I Feel a Change Coming On. “Some people they tell me I’ve got the blood of the land in my voice.”

Now 69, Billy Joe Shaver is one of the last surviving country outlaws. I met him in the summer of 2006, when he was a “spiritual advisor” to Kinky Friedman’s campaign for Governor of Texas. (As the man who wrote If You Don’t Love Jesus Go To Hell, Shaver was an odd pick for pastor to the Jewish Friedman. But the pair went way back.)

The following April, Shaver was back in more familiar territory, arrested for shooting a man outside a bar in Lorena, Texas. Read the rest of this entry »