JOHNNY CASH, JUNE CARTER CASH, ROSANNE CASH,
Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison/at San Quentin 
Sony Legacy
*****Duets Sony Legacy Black Cadillac Capitol

We are going through something of a Cashfest, what with the biopic (see review, page 8), these much amended reissues, and Rosanne Cash's remarkable album inspired by the deaths in quick succession of her stepmother, her father and her own mother.

Rosanne Cash's Black Cadillac is the private side of the public grief. She sings of her conception as the "love before life" and her father's death as "love after life". It is the complex story of a small girl watching the Black Cadillac pulling away, of a difficult childhood, of a profound, though not unconditional, love for a man the world knew as an icon but she knew differently. And she does this with some of the finest songs she has put together for a long time, a haunting mix of country, folk, rockabilly and the sophisticated ballads and pop she has constructed with husband and producer John Levanthal.

Set against Rosanne's sweeping personal reflections, the two live "prison" albums are frozen moments in time. Folsom in 1968 was the riskier undertaking, and sounds it. Cash was nervous, edgy, but we can hear him grow from the palpable tension in the room. In Jackson, his duet with the then June Carter is simply one of the great moments in music. Electrifying.

A year later, the success of Folsom Prison behind him and his Christianity renewed, Cash is much more in control, his voice more measured, but though the performances are better on one level they lack the raucous, nervous energy of Folsom. Duets features a selection of Cash's variable studio work with June, she always playing a supporting role as in life. Yet without her Cash would have self-destructed. In the end she went first, in May 2003, followed by Cash that September. Two years later his first wife, Vivian Liberto Cash Distin, passed away quietly without fanfare. Rosanne remembers all three equally.

www.rosannecash.com; www.legacyrecordings.com