Complete Mercury Albums 1986-1991

Johnny Cash

Released on 26/06/2020 by Mercury Nashville
Main artists: Johnny Cash
Genre: Country

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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 is 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. The box expands upon the original five records for Mercury by adding a bunch of bonus tracks, plus a full album's worth of alternate mixes of the 1988 covers collection Classic Cash: Hall of Fame Series and the 1986 collaborative set Class of 55, where he was joined by fellow Sun Records survivors Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Roy Orbison for a set of new songs written in the style of the oldies. Class of 55 opens this chronological set on a shaky note, thanks to freeze-dried Chips Moman production that steers each of these greats toward their worst instincts. It's one of the worst LPs credited to any of the four, and having it open the set suggests that Cash's Mercury stint is as bad as its rep, but 1987's Johnny Cash Is Coming to Town is a better yardstick to gauge this era by. Produced by Jack Clements, Coming to Town opens with a careening version of Elvis Costello's "The Big Light" and then proceeds to run through covers, cornball novelties, sincere ballads, and story songs. It's a dynamic, entertaining record and Cash returned to its formula often on Mercury to admittedly varied but often entertaining results. Clement also helmed 1988's Water from the Wells of Home, a record that gets weighed down by its cameos, but the guests can also conjure some unexpected delights, such as Paul McCartney's appearance on "New Moon Over Jamaica." Producer Bob Moore kept 1990's Boom Chicka Boom tight and focused. The 1991 set The Mystery of Life comprised cobbled-together leftovers from Johnny Cash Is Coming to Town and sessions for a new album that didn't quite come to fruition; it's uneven but has more than its share of moments, including a new version of Bob Dylan's "Wanted Man." Listened to collectively, these records sound much better than their reputation suggests. Even Classic Cash: Hall of Fame Series, a 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 Cash in the first place. 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 Comes to Town and Boom Chicka Boom are strong records in their own right.
© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

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Complete Mercury Albums 1986-1991

Johnny Cash

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