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ourdramaqueenFrom Hollywood Reporter again:
April 20, 2006
Cash's 'Personal File' ready for eager public
By Chris Morris
Two new titles by top contemporary country acts, Rascal Flatts' "Me and My Gang" and Toby Keith's "White Trash With Money," slugged it out for No. 1 on the Billboard 200 this week. But elsewhere on the chart, Johnny Cash continued to abide.
"The Legend of Johnny Cash," the multilabel career retrospective devoted to the late country icon, rests at No. 24 this week; the package, issued late last year, has sold more nearly 1.6 million copies. Cash's catalog remains on fire: "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison" has scanned more than 200,000 units since the fall and is still a fixture in Amazon.com's top 10, while last year's boxed set "The Legend" has moved 125,000 units to date.
Expect a new wave of interest in Cash next month: On May 23, Columbia/Legacy will release "Personal File," a two-CD set of previously unheard solo material, recorded by Cash from 1973-80 and culled from the musician's studio vaults.
The material on "Personal File" came to light when John Carter Cash, son of Johnny and June Carter Cash, was clearing out his father's House of Cash studio in Hendersonville, Tenn., in late 2004.
"It's a lifetime's worth of tapes -- whatever passed through (Cash's) hands," says Gregg Geller, the veteran catalog executive who produced the forthcoming set. "There were literally thousands of tapes that we plowed through. ... There are several hundred guitar-vocal demos along the line of ('Personal File'). I would hasten to add that this is the cream."
The cream is quite dazzling indeed. One "Personal File" disc is secular material, while the second comprises inspirational songs. The former disc includes songs originally recorded by Johnny Horton, the Louvin Brothers, Doug Kershaw, John Prine and Lefty Frizzell, among others; it concludes with "It Takes One to Know Me," a love song penned by Cash's stepdaughter Carlene Carter.
There also are such ancient parlor tunes as "Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes" and "I'll Take You Home Kathleen" ("I think at some point he must have considered doing an album because there are so many old-fashioned songs," Geller says) and even a recitation of Robert W. Service's Klondike poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee" ("It blew me away -- not exactly a song, but it fits right in," he says).
The sacred songs, which range from traditional gospel numbers to self-penned material, are especially intense. Geller notes: "It's almost as though he adopted a more reserved and formal approach when he knew he was recording. (Here) his singing is different -- it's more open-throated and unfiltered. There's less inhibition."
The producer says that the music was organized into an album fairly easily: "It felt like it put itself together -- it was almost like a hand was guiding me. I wanted it to feel like you were sitting in the room with him."
Geller says he is still in the process of sifting the mountain of House of Cash archival recordings to plot another release for next year. He is approaching the question of what to release carefully. "I wouldn't want to overdo it," he says. "I'd only want to put out stuff as special as 'Personal File.' That said, there is other stuff as special."
He believes that an appetite for Cash's musical legacy will be sustained for some time, adding, "It's like Ral Donner sang: 'You don't know what you've got until you lose it.' "
April 20, 2006
Cash's 'Personal File' ready for eager public
By Chris Morris
Two new titles by top contemporary country acts, Rascal Flatts' "Me and My Gang" and Toby Keith's "White Trash With Money," slugged it out for No. 1 on the Billboard 200 this week. But elsewhere on the chart, Johnny Cash continued to abide.
"The Legend of Johnny Cash," the multilabel career retrospective devoted to the late country icon, rests at No. 24 this week; the package, issued late last year, has sold more nearly 1.6 million copies. Cash's catalog remains on fire: "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison" has scanned more than 200,000 units since the fall and is still a fixture in Amazon.com's top 10, while last year's boxed set "The Legend" has moved 125,000 units to date.
Expect a new wave of interest in Cash next month: On May 23, Columbia/Legacy will release "Personal File," a two-CD set of previously unheard solo material, recorded by Cash from 1973-80 and culled from the musician's studio vaults.
The material on "Personal File" came to light when John Carter Cash, son of Johnny and June Carter Cash, was clearing out his father's House of Cash studio in Hendersonville, Tenn., in late 2004.
"It's a lifetime's worth of tapes -- whatever passed through (Cash's) hands," says Gregg Geller, the veteran catalog executive who produced the forthcoming set. "There were literally thousands of tapes that we plowed through. ... There are several hundred guitar-vocal demos along the line of ('Personal File'). I would hasten to add that this is the cream."
The cream is quite dazzling indeed. One "Personal File" disc is secular material, while the second comprises inspirational songs. The former disc includes songs originally recorded by Johnny Horton, the Louvin Brothers, Doug Kershaw, John Prine and Lefty Frizzell, among others; it concludes with "It Takes One to Know Me," a love song penned by Cash's stepdaughter Carlene Carter.
There also are such ancient parlor tunes as "Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes" and "I'll Take You Home Kathleen" ("I think at some point he must have considered doing an album because there are so many old-fashioned songs," Geller says) and even a recitation of Robert W. Service's Klondike poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee" ("It blew me away -- not exactly a song, but it fits right in," he says).
The sacred songs, which range from traditional gospel numbers to self-penned material, are especially intense. Geller notes: "It's almost as though he adopted a more reserved and formal approach when he knew he was recording. (Here) his singing is different -- it's more open-throated and unfiltered. There's less inhibition."
The producer says that the music was organized into an album fairly easily: "It felt like it put itself together -- it was almost like a hand was guiding me. I wanted it to feel like you were sitting in the room with him."
Geller says he is still in the process of sifting the mountain of House of Cash archival recordings to plot another release for next year. He is approaching the question of what to release carefully. "I wouldn't want to overdo it," he says. "I'd only want to put out stuff as special as 'Personal File.' That said, there is other stuff as special."
He believes that an appetite for Cash's musical legacy will be sustained for some time, adding, "It's like Ral Donner sang: 'You don't know what you've got until you lose it.' "
