Magnolia Thunderpussy

Reviews:

This is an especially well-titled compilation. Its four CDs cross the strict chronological order of Columbia's 1992 three-disc overview, The Essential Johnny Cash 1955-1983 with the thematic ordering of 2000's three-disc Love/God/Murder. Stir in some cream from the four American Recordings albums (several also collected on yet another box, 2003's five-CD Unearthed), and you have something of a first: a box set inspired by three other box sets.

Pretty legendary, and of course so was Cash, who in late life, and now death, seemed so mythological that it often obscured the man's actual work. The Legend has so little of the irreverence that typified Cash's work as much as his solidity and intensity that it risks making him seem more pompous than he actually was. Each conceptual disc ("Win, Place and Show-the Hits," "Old Favorites and New," "The Great American Songbook" and "Family and Friends") is crammed with great music, but this set masks one of the things that made Cash great: he was every bit at home with hokum as with piety, and he wasn't afraid to mingle them. The Legend is a more balanced overview of his career than the trifurcated Love/God/Murder ever was, but balance was hardly the point of that set of deliberate extremities.

Whether it's more useful than Essential is another matter entirely: hearing Cash's full breadth across three CDs that move in more or less the order he recorded them is both a lot of fun and a real education. And if this box's emphasis is on the stuff that made him that way, it should surely include a couple more songs from the American albums-most notably, where is "Hurt," not just his final hit but one of his finest? Guess we'll have to wait a few years for another box titled The Artist.