Original Album Classics Hello, I'M Johnny CashMan In BlackThe Joh Nny Cash Show

The three albums were recorded at a time when Johnny Cash had his career in high gear and was engaged in what he produced. The late 60s and the early 70s are a kind of middle renaissance for Cash fans with a wide range and great sense of openness to new directions, similar to what occurred after Mr. Cash began his long association with Columbia early in his career and to what occurred when Mr. Cash rejuvenated his career with Rick Rubin and American Records later in his career. I paricularly enjoyed hearing music from these albums that has not been available to me in any form since sometime in the 70s or early 80s when I could no longer obtain or listen to the early 70s stuff. Buying an album on CD that was recorded forty years ago and essentially lost for about thirty of those years is special.

I bought this package primarily for the CD "Hello I'm Johnny Cash," which contains one of my favorite songs, "Sing a Traveling Song," composed by his late teenaged nephew. I was also thrilled to be turned on to "The Devil to Pay." And, of course, I could listen to "If I Was a Carpenter" all day.There is another CD of the same name, but it is probably not the one you are looking for. It is sold separately on Amazon, so be wary although the reviews should guide you.The other two CDs are great too, though one of them contains arguably Cash's worst song ever, a creepy duet with Billy Graham. It's called "The Preacher Said, 'Jesus Said'" on the Man in Black album. The third disc is a live set from The Johnny Cash, and it features a pair of "Come Along and Ride This Train" medleys.

I bought this to get the Hello, I'm Johnny Cash CD. For me, it was the best in the set. Purchasing this was a bargain for me since I did not want to purchase the recently released Columbia Records box set (of 60+ CDs and very expensive).The sound quality was not the best. Sometimes it seems Johnny's voice was lost in the mix. Still, I won't complain since I paid less than $20 for 3 albums that I did not previously own and are not that easy to get elsewhere.I will never tire of hearing Johnny sing.

This album in my opinion is one of Cash's finest and has some hard to find tracks like Southwind and the incomparable If I Were A Carpenter, one of two duets with June Carter Cash. Pure guitar sounds and the sweet background vocals and harmonies of The Carter Family help bring it to life. If you have a chance get this CD before it's gone. You won't regret it and it makes a fine addition to any Johnny Cash collection.

Everything arrived on time and as advertised. Another great set of Johnny Cash music.

I bought this for my Mom. She loved it!

Excellent songs from the legendary Man in Black! A 3 CD set at a great value! So glad to find this, after purchasing the original album over 40 years ago, which I still have in my collection!

So its a sampling of 5 complete Johnny C records, which is fine in its own right, but the bonus here is the original art, the neat little carboard sleves, and the swell little box. Not to mention great sound quality, and BONUS TRACKS on each disc, which are listed on the back of the main box, but not on the individual packages sleves. .

A name springs to mind during this period of Johnny Cash's career: namely Bob Dylan.Hello and Man In Black showcase Dylan's influence, though not his tunes, as Cash goes down a tremendously folk-rock based journey. You can tell that Nashville Skyline was also recorded around this time-frame.Hello still features an amazing rockabilly number, Blistered. I also understand that Cash co-wrote See Ruby Fall with his rockabilly buddy, Roy Orbison. It is a pure honky-tonk number in the manner of what Jerry Lee Lewis was cutting at the time. Orbison, at the same time on MGM, released a Hank Williams covers album, so that influence may have rubbed off.To Beat The Devil, Devil to Pay, Sing A Travelling Song, all have that Nashville Skyline country-rock/folk vibe that Dylan was working on. To Beat The Devil was written by Kris Kristofferson, and also appears on his first album.The Johnny Cash Show is excellent too, but I prefer the issues of the TV show from two years' ago. Sunday Morning Comin Down is the great track from this album, which like Hello was produced by Bob Johnson, the same guy that did Highway 61, Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Hardin, and Nashville Skyline for Dylan. He also produced Bookends for Simon & Garfunkel, and the first two Leonard Cohen albums. Again, the Dylan influence is apparent, but what is also apparent is the seeds sown for Cash's career failure. The over-produced orchestrations of Bill Walker are a foreshadowing of some of Cash's awful recordings from the mid 70s onwards.Man In Black though is the zenith before the long-dying fall, and before the Rubin produced resurrection. It features spiritual numbers, but they are not as cloying, or as sugary as his later gospel recordings. Look For Me is just the right side of spiritual without being over-zealous, with a Dylanesque influence too. The Preacher Said Jesus Said is far better than a later effort about Billy Graham, Oral Roberts etc, nor is it as clumsy as Matthew 24.Secondly, we have the re-write of Dylan's Chimes of Freedom that is Man In Black: a re-write in the good sense. This is Cash's manifesto filtered through the Dylanesque sensibility of the age. Vietnam Talkin Blues shows that, as a country singer, Cash's politics were never clear-cut, never right-wing, in no way an Okie from Muskogee figure, though Ragged Old Flag and Sold Out of Flag Poles later would beg to differ.In short, all three albums are excellent, but it wouldn't be long before the long dying trajectory began.

One fantastic album , 'Hello, I'm Johnny Cash, and two OK albums, never released before on CD. I bought them to replace worn out vinyls, so I knew what I was getting anyway. 'Hello' is probably one of his best albums from the Columbia era, with some really great songs on it.'Man In Black', despite the reference to Billy Graham being featured on it, does not completely consist of religious songs, but does have more than the normal number for a Cash album on it (2/3). It also has some excellent songs, like 'Orphan Of The Road', 'Ned Kelly', 'If Not For Love', etc., and two songs aimed primarily at the American Market on their Viet Nam war.'The JC Show' comprises extracts from a number of the TV shows, strung together. Some good, rare JC songs are featured in the two 'Ride This Train' medleys, which is a bonus as the shows usually featured only one of these medleys. Sound quality on this album, both vinyl and CD, was generally poor, with the mix also overladen with unnecessary strings, and the album was far too short, at under 30 minutes. It would have been so easy to include some bonus 'Show' tracks to compensate.But for me 'box' set (only a card sleeve, really) was an excellent buy, adding 3 more CDs to my replacements for the vinyl collection.Amazon have also done a good job in making MP3s available on many more of the Columbia albums at a reasonable price (but I bet they fail to brovide downloads of covers and backs for those of us who need them for a CD!) Best of these MP3s in my view is 'Any Old Wind That Blows'.

I can't add much more to what's already been said by other reviewers about the music on the THREE albums in this set. I've been waiting for such a release for a while now as I've had two of them on vinyl since the early seventies. The only slight critisism I would make is that, given the short playing time of each individual album, another could have been added, putting four on two CDs. "A Thing Called Love" from '72 would have been a good one to add.Anyway, if someone from Sony reads this, let's have some more 1970s albums in this format. There's quite a few more which Cash fans will be familiar with and which I'm sure we all would welcome as a change from the endless re-hashed compilations.

This is triple album of some of Johnny`s earlier releases, going back some years. I have been looking for several of the tracks on the albums for some time to replace old vinyl LP`s and they are very hard to find. This is a welcome addition to my collection. I would recomend this to any fan of Johnny`s, particulaly anyone who prefers his older more traditional country style.

This was 3 classic Johnny Cash Cds which I owned on cassette many many years ago and now reissued on CD. The price was very reasonable and the CDs have been played non stop since they arrived