The Essential Johnny Cash
It's a great and perhaps impossible challenge to encapsulate the highlights of Johnny Cash's vast musical catalog in a two-CD, 36-song collection like this. Yet, though it barely scratches the surface, 2002'sThe Essential Johnny Cash--part of a series of compilations and reissues celebrating Cash's 70th birthday--does present three-dozen satisfying and balanced snapshots of some of the Man in Black's most memorable work for the Sun, Columbia, and Mercury labels. Above all else, these 36 selections are wonderful reminders of Cash's rustic eclecticism. Cuts range from '50s Sun rockabilly classics like "Hey Porter" and "I Walk the Line" to '60s country-folk gems like "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" and Cash's memorable duet withBob Dylanon Dylan's "Girl from the North Country." Also included are more recent samplings of Cash's celebrated collaborations, including "Highwayman," which he recorded in 1984 withWillie Nelson,Waylon Jennings, andKris Kristoffersonas part of the on-again, off-again supergroup theHighwaymen, and "The Wanderer," a fervent gospel collaboration withU2that appeared on the band's 1993 album,Zooropa.--Bob Allen