Name: Easy Rider: The Best Of The Mercury Recordings by Johnny Cash
Brand: Johnny Cash
SKU: 600753897362
Price: 9.9 USD
Availability: OnlineOnly
Rating: 3.5 (168 reviews)

COMPILATION

It's widely acknowledged that Johnny Cash's time at Mercury didn't find the Man in Black at either his commercial or creative peak. Cash moved to the label in 1986, just after he departed his longtime home of Columbia, and he stayed there through 1991, a half-decade stint that resulted in only one Country Top 40 hit (1988's "That Old Wheel," which charted thanks to the momentum of Cash's duet partner, Hank Williams, Jr.) and has subsequently been framed as the wilderness years before he righted himself on Rick Rubin's American Recordings. The 2020 box set The Complete Mercury Albums 1986-1991 and its accompanying single-disc sampler Easy Rider: The Best of the Mercury Recordings provide the first opportunity to challenge this conventional wisdom, a place where it's possible to concentrate on the relative merits of the handful of LPs he recorded for the label. As heard on Easy Rider, this era sounds much better than its reputation suggests. Even the cuts from Classic Cash: Hall of Fame Series, a 1988 collection of re-recordings of his old hits, is livelier than its description suggests, benefitting from Cash sounding spry and invested in the material. That none of these LPs generated hit singles at the time can be chalked up to a matter of age. Cash was on the other side of 50 when he made this music and he'd been a hitmaker for 30 years. He was a known property who couldn't fit into the sound of modern country radio, which happened to be running away from veterans like him in the first place. Which isn't to say he wasn't embraced by modern musicians: Elvis Costello wrote the rousing hangover anthem "The Big Light" for him and U2 had him sing "The Wanderer" on their 1993 Zooropa, a cut that isn't quite in step with the rest of this collection but is nevertheless a welcome addition, since it isn't on any other Cash comp. All these personal and cultural changes doomed Cash's Mercury records to commercial failure, and while the albums still have a distinct gloss endemic to the '80s, each of them has its share of moments, and many of them are here.
© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

1. Waymore's Blues

by Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins

Primary Artist: Johnny Cash
Roy Orbison
Jerry Lee Lewis
Carl Perkins; Main Performer
Composer: Curtis Buck
Will Jennings; Composer
Lyricist: Will Jennings
Curtis Buck; Composer
Producer: Chips Moman; Production
Composer Lyricist: Curtis Buck
Will Jennings; Other

2. We Remember The King

by Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins

Primary Artist: Johnny Cash
Roy Orbison
Jerry Lee Lewis
Carl Perkins; Main Performer
Composer: Paul Kennerley; Composer
Lyricist: Paul Kennerley; Composer
Producer: Chips Moman; Production
Composer Lyricist: Paul Kennerley; Other

Easy Rider: The Best Of The Mercury Recordings

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1. Waymore's Blues

2. We Remember The King

3. The Big Light

4. The Night Hank Williams Came To Town

5. Let Him Roll

6. W. Lee O'Daniel (And The Light Crust Dough Boys)

7. Ballad Of A Teenage Queen

8. The Last Of The Drifters

9. That Old Wheel

10. Get Rhythm

11. Tennessee Flat Top Box

12. Sunday Morning Coming Down

13. Veteran's Day

14. A Backstage Pass

15. Cat's In The Cradle

16. Farmer's Almanac

17. Monteagle Mountain

18. I Shall Be Free

19. I'm An Easy Rider

20. The Greatest Cowboy Of Them All

21. Hey Porter

22. The Mystery Of Life

23. Goin' By The Book

24. The Wanderer

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