SANTA MONICA, CA. (Top40 Charts/ Universal
Music Enterprises) - Add another musical chapter to the legend of
Johnny Cash with the first-ever release of a classic 1990 performance that includes several songs he rarely performed live. "Johnny Cash - The Great Lost Performance" (Island/UMe), released July 24, 2007, debuts nearly 17 years to the day of the original concert when Cash and his revue took the stage at the Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park, New Jersey on July 27, 1990.
Only recently unearthed and newly mixed from the original multi-tracks, the nearly hour-long CD features Cash at his most compelling - performing in front of a live audience. Among the 18 songs on "Johnny Cash - The Great Lost Performance" are renditions of some of his greatest hits, from such early songs as "I Walk The Line," "Hey Porter" and "Folsom Prison Blues" to the later "Ring Of Fire," "Sunday Morning Coming Down" and "(Ghost) Riders In The Sky." In addition, a wonderfully upbeat Cash not only duets with wife June Carter Cash on a boisterous "Jackson" and another very early song, "The Wreck Of Old '97," but the pair also punctuate the music with wonderful introductions and revealing stories.
Yet what raises "Johnny Cash - The Great Lost Performance" to the status of new classic are the rarities. The album includes his first performance anywhere of his original "What Is Man?," his only recorded version of country gospel's "Wonderful Time Up There" and "A Beautiful Life," and his only concert version of the genre's "Life's Railway To Heaven," whose studio version by Cash was released only posthumously.
The remaining tracks are among the favorites of Cash fans: "Forty Shades Of Green," "Come Along And Ride This Train," "Five Feet High And Rising," "Pickin' Time," "Ragged Old Flag" and "Tennessee Flat Top Box."
Inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and winner of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Kennedy Center Honor, Cash passed away at age 71 on September 12, 2003. Yet his popularity has continued to grow. In 2005 his biopic "Walk The Line" was an acclaimed, Oscar-winning box office hit and in 2006 his final studio album, "American V: A Hundred Highways," went to No 1 on both the Pop and Country charts.
Now, in 2007, "Johnny Cash - The Great Lost Performance" arrives as a further reminder of the power and the glory of one of the greatest artists in music history.
