Johnny Cash - With His Hot & Blue Guitar [Blue]

Johnny Cash's first long-player spins on blue vinyl here, the 1957 Sun Records debut that caught the man in black before the legend hardened into myth.

Recorded between 1954 and 1957 and produced by Sam Phillips, With His Hot & Blue Guitar was one of the very first albums Sun ever released, gathering early hit singles alongside the country and gospel songs Cash carried with him to Memphis. The lineup is gloriously lean: Cash on vocals and acoustic rhythm guitar, Luther Perkins on electric lead and Marshall Grant on double bass, the Tennessee Two at their most economical.

That boom-chicka-boom shuffle is the whole engine. "Folsom Prison Blues" still carries its cold-blooded swagger, "I Walk The Line" delivers a vow of devotion almost in a murmur, and "Cry! Cry! Cry!" packs an entire bitter goodbye into two and a half minutes. "Rock Island Line" leans into the railroad songs that ran through so much of his music, all clattering rhythm and lonesome whistle.

Twelve songs, under half an hour, barely a wasted note. Everything Cash became starts right here, and it sounds every bit as plain-spoken and gripping on a spinning blue disc as it once did coming out of a small-town jukebox.