Johnny Cash, Personal File (Columbia/Legacy)

 

This two-disc set of solo tracks recorded by Johnny Cash at home in the ’70s, has the feel of a big deal, but it’s most significant as evidence that Cash was a more complex person than his Man in Black image suggested. For every hard-nosed murder ballad, crime story and tortured love lyric, there’s a song like “My Mother Was a Lady” and “The Engineer’s Dying Child.” While Dylan’s taste in folk songs ran to the wild and strange that Harry Smith documented on The Anthology of American Folk Music, Cash often chose the conventional and homiletic, often picking songs that tie up neatly into clear, unmistakable messages.

 

The quiet dignity in Cash’s performance, though, makes the songs interesting. It also blurs the distinction between folk songs, pieces by Carlene Carter, Doug Kershaw and Rodney Crowell, and his own contributions. He makes the songs sound as if they’ve always existed, and that growing old surrounded by a large, spiritual family is the only worthwhile thing in life. And who knows? Maybe that was the only thing he wanted, and maybe the man who had those ambitions is the guy inside the singer of “Folsom Prison Blues” and “I Walk the Line.” He’s not as dynamic, nor does he ripple with danger, but he’s closer to most of us than those singers are.