Johnny Cash Is A Friend Of Mine

Johnny Cash was a formative influence on the music of outlaw country artist David Allan Coe. Throughout Coe’s career, he crossed paths with Cash often enough to be given a belt buckle by Cash with this album’s title emblazoned on it. Cash was the original country bad-boy, and his hard-hitting ethos informs much of Coe’s rebellious work, so its only fitting that Coe recorded this tribute to the Man in Black.

The disc opens with Coe talk-singing the relatively obscure “One Piece at a Time,” a humorous “Boy Named Sue”-style number. After that, though, its straight into a program of signature Cash tunes. “Ballad of a Teenage Queen” and “I Walk the Line” feature arrangements that sticks close to the Cash/Tennessee Two mode, but Coe gives “Get Rhythm” a Waylon Jennings-ish feel, and Coe adds his own unique country-rock spin to “Folsom Prison Blues,” a tune into which his own jail experiences undoubtedly give him particular insight.

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Thom Jurek says:

January 1, 2015 at 7:35 pm

Johnny Cash was a formative influence on the music of outlaw country artist David Allan Coe. Throughout Coe’s career, he crossed paths with Cash often enough to be given a belt buckle by Cash with this album’s title emblazoned on it. Cash was the original country bad-boy, and his hard-hitting ethos informs much of Coe’s rebellious work, so its only fitting that Coe recorded this tribute to the Man in Black.

The disc opens with Coe talk-singing the relatively obscure “One Piece at a Time,” a humorous “Boy Named Sue”-style number. After that, though, its straight into a program of signature Cash tunes. “Ballad of a Teenage Queen” and “I Walk the Line” feature arrangements that sticks close to the Cash/Tennessee Two mode, but Coe gives “Get Rhythm” a Waylon Jennings-ish feel, and Coe adds his own unique country-rock spin to “Folsom Prison Blues,” a tune into which his own jail experiences undoubtedly give him particular insight.

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