Johnny Cash Is Coming to Town/Boom Chicka Boom (CD - 2003)

Personnel includes: Johnny Cash (vocals, acoustic guitar); Marty Stuart (acoustic & electric guitars, mandolin); Jack Clement (acoustic guitar, dobro, jews harp, kazoo); Joey Miskulin (guitar, keyboards, acoustic bass); Jim Soldi (acoustic & electric guitars); Mike Elliott (acoustic guitar); Pete Wade, Bob Wootton (electric guitar); Lloyd Green (pedal steel guitar); Stuart Duncan, Mark O'Connor, Vassar Clements (fiddle); Jack Hale Jr., Bob Lewin Paco (harmonica); (horns, keyboards); Charles Cochran (piano, keyboards); Earl Ball, Pig Robbins (piano); Roy Huskey, Jr. (acoustic bass); Jimmy Tittle, Joe Allen, Michael Rhodes (electric bass); W.S. Holland (drums); Kenny Malone (percussion).

Recorded at the Cowboy Arms and Recording Spa and Stargem Recording Studios, Nashville, and Bradley's Barn, Mt. Juliet, Tennessee.

All tracks have been digitally remastered.

Personnel: Johnny Cash (acoustic guitar); Jim Soldi (vocals, guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar); Marty Stuart (vocals, guitar, acoustic guitar, mandolin); Joey Miskulin (vocals, guitar, keyboards, acoustic bass); Jimmy Tittle (vocals, electric bass); Helen Carter, June Carter Cash, Anita Carter, Waylon Jennings, Carlene Carter (vocals); Pete Wade, Bob Wootton (guitar); Jack Clement (acoustic guitar, dobro, kazoo, Jew's harp); Ray Edenton (acoustic guitar); Reggie Young , Billy Sanford (electric guitar); Lloyd Green (steel guitar); Mark OConner, Stuart Duncan, Vassar Clements (fiddle); Jack Hale, Bob Lewin (horns, keyboards); Charles Cochran (piano, keyboards); Earl Poole Ball, Earl Ball, Hargus "Pig" Robbins (piano); Roy Huskey Jr. (acoustic bass); Joe Allen, Michael Rhodes (electric bass); W.S. Holland (drums); Kenny Malone (percussion); The Jordanaires (background vocals).

Liner Note Author: John Lomax III.

Recording information: Bradley's Barn, Mt. Juliet, TN; Stargem Recording Studio, Nashville, TN; The Cowboy Arms Hotel And Recording Spa.

Photographers: Alan Messer; Slick Lawson.

Johnny Cash's 1987 debut for Mercury--after his ignominious departure from Columbia a year previously--reunited him with fellow old-timer Jack Clement, who gives him a polished, yet funky (for Nashville) production. On a set that cements his legend with sturdy country songs like "The Night Hank Williams Came to Town" and the old-school gospel of "My Ship Will Sail," Cash positions himself alongside more contemporary artists like Elvis Costello, whose "The Big Light" opens the album. While JOHNNY CASH IS COMING TO TOWN is sonically a world away from his Columbia debut nearly 30 years earlier, the artist's lyrical preoccupations--life, love, and religion--remain much the same. Two years later, BOOM CHICKA BOOM found him reunited with his signature sound (though Luther Perkins had died in 1968, his primitive picking is faithfully recreated here) in a stripped-down production that includes the complex, Costello-penned "Hidden Shame" as well as Cash's simple, charming "I Love You, Love You," which sounds like it could have been written during his days at Sun. minimize