#72 "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" by Johnny Cash

I feel like it's become a bit cliche to like Johnny Cash. In the past decade, for one reason or another, he's become a real rebel icon. He was lost in the wilderness for quite some time, but some interesting records with producer Rick Rubin and a popular and award-winning bio-pic of his life made Johnny Cash part of the mainstream again. Shoot... even my mom claims to love him!

I'm not saying that Johnny Cash wasn't good. He was cool. He was angry. His voice was so recognizable. He was "The Man in Black"... more of a character than an actual man. He sang outlaw ballads about murder and revenge. He staged some really great concerts at a few maximum security prisons that furthered his legend. There are an awful lot of bad Johnny Cash recordings though. Everyone thinks of "Folsom Prison Blues," "Ring of Fire," and "I Walk the Line," but there was a lot of crap in the late 70's and 80's. A lot of music was bad during that time, but Cash's was filtered through that awful Nashville cheese that made it even worse. To me, those albums he did with Rubin starting around 1994 brought Cash to what he should be remembered for: an iconic storyteller with a chilling voice and a simple guitar.

"The American Recordings" that were supervised and produced by Rick Rubin are really powerful. They're an interesting assortment of originals, gospels, and unique covers of songs by everyone from Sting to Danzig to Leonard Cohen to Nine Inch Nails to U2 and Tom Petty. I don't know what possessed Rubin to suggest some of the songs he did, but Cash's renditions of many of them are simply haunting. His cover of Nine Inch Nails "Hurt" will stop your heart.

One of my favorites is Cash's cover of "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." Though originally written by folk singer Ewan MacColl in 1957, the song was popularized in 1972 by disco queen Roberta Flack. Cash's version always strikes me as a late homage to his wife June Carter, who would die just a few years after this recording. Their love was well-documented and the lyrics to this song, though not written by Cash, sound like they could've been a tribute to the woman who had meant so much to him. Some of the lines are just beautiful. I particulary like "The first time ever I kissed your mouth, I felt the earth move in my hands." Cash's delivery is so powerful. The emotion is literally tangible. When my grandfather passed away a few years ago, after over sixty years of marriage to my grandmother, I thought of this song so much. There is no doubt that he felt this way about her. I wanted to make a powerpoint of their lives together using this, but I don't think anyone would've been able to sit through it. For the scary, bellowing "Man in Black" figure that Johnny Cash was, he could really delivery the soft stuff when he needed to.

"First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" is from the album "American Recordings IV: The Man Comes Around." To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.