THE COMPLETE MERCURY ALBUMS 1986-1991/ EASY RIDER: THE BEST OF THE MERCURY RECORDINGS After almost 30 years on Columbia Records, country music legend Johnny Cash released his first album on Mercury Records. As John Earls witnesses, it wasn’t always a marriage made in heaven
MERCURY/UMC
Outside of Elton John, Neil Diamond and Rod Stewart, few respected artists’ records are found in charity shops more frequently than Johnny Cash’s. Yet you rarely see copies of the six albums Cash made for Mercury. Untouched since their initial release, it’s as if the wilderness years before American Recordings in 1994 didn’t happen.
Finally reissued and remastered at Universal’s Nashville studio by veteran engineer Kevin Reeves, the albums are compiled into a reasonably packaged boxset, and also available separately on 180g vinyl. One instant gripe: the series’ CDs have bonus tracks that aren’t available on vinyl, though the more haunting, sparser demos for the CD of Classic Cash: Hall Of Fame Series were released separately as the Early Mixes album for Record Store Day.
Now nearly 30 years have gone by since Cash’s last Mercury album, The Mystery Of Life, does his lost work deserve reassessing? At times, yes. You’d struggle to make a case for any individual album to rank alongside Cash’s best work. But, as the simultaneously released 24-song Mercury compilation Easy Rider shows, there are some fine moments. Having left Columbia after over 30 years, Cash drifted onto Mercury, rather than arriving with any fresh creative drive. This was made explicit on his first album for the label, Class Of ’55: Memphis Rock & Roll Homecoming.
Reuniting Cash with fellow Sun graduates Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, it’s a good laugh, but the handful of new songs seem written in a coffee break – the highlight is a rollicking take on John Fogerty’s Big Train (From Memphis). The pick of the set follows, with 1987’s Johnny Cash Is Coming To Town a whirlwind rockabilly featuring The Carter Family and Waylon Jennings. It’s an angry, defiant record, with I’d Rather Have You one of Cash’s best self-penned songs and his reading of Elvis Costello’s The Big Light a fiery precursor to American Recordings. Conversely, motoring anthem Heavy Metal (Don’t Mean Rock And Roll To Me) is the kind of clunky comedy people have in mind when they dismiss Cash’s 80s. This applies to most of the subsequent album, Water From The Wells Of Home, which features so many guests it’s hard to make Cash himself out. Every song is a duet. New Moon Over Jamaica is a risible dud
