Johnny Cash: Biggest Hits

I haven't come across anything like this before: it looks like there were two albums with the same title and the same cover but almost completely different songs. The version of Biggest Hits on MusicBrainz and on Wikipedia has only three songs in common with the (much longer) LP I have, which has this tracklisting. It must be a US/UK difference. Wikipedia observes that few of the ten tracks on the US release could realistically be called "big hits". My version doesn't have The Ballad of Ira Hayes, but may have a slightly stronger claim on the title.

Though, as with Hank, it shows that JC was still in the variety entertainment business, mixing the pathos of Folsom Prison Blues and Sunday Morning Coming Down with the comedy of One Piece At A Time and the singalong of Ring Of Fire and Daddy Sang Bass (you saw the story about the ad agency that wanted to use Ring of Fire to advertise haemorrhoid-relief products, didn't you?).

I bought the album in the mid-eighties, on the recommendation of the same Hank Wangford article that first led me to the original Hank. Cash wasn't cool then — before the long rehabilitation that led from The Highwaymen through a U2 guest spot to the Rick Rubin renaissance.

Still, a lot of the sons retain that very simple and effective chick-a-boom beat that Cash traded on from I Walk the Line on. About five years ago, I had a DVD of a documentary about Cash, and it mentioned an interviewer's question to Luther Perkins, guitarist in The Tennessee Three, challenging him about his style: "A lot of other guitarists use a lot more varied and complex fingerings up and down the fretboard, but you keep it very simple; almost monotonous."

"Ah, yes," Luther replied. "They're looking for it," he explained patiently. "I found it."

Discogs entry for this album Wikipedia entry for the other version of this album Rate Your Music entry for the other version of this album

Comments

[M.J. Nicholls]

I always thought "Ring of Fire" would end up in a gonorrhoea ad (i.e. the burning during urination). Then again, who advertises gonorrhoea?

What I love about Cash compilations (and there are HUNDREDS of them) is that everyone who hears one will almost instantly seek out something else from the great man.

Give or take a few Americana embarrassments, his 1960s discog is near flawless.