Orange Blossom Special

One of Johnny Cash’s landmark albums, *Orange Blossom Special* has something for just about anyone in his diverse audience. Its mix of country, folk, and gospel was ahead of its time and remains fresh. “It Ain’t Me Babe” (rendered as a sarcastic duet with June Carter Cash and accented with mariachi-style horns), “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” (sung with baritone earnestness to a tic-tac beat), and “Mama, You Been On My Mind” (with an oddly successful vocal syncopation and spiced by saxophone) find Cash creatively interpreting Bob Dylan material. Cash’s sense of social justice comes through on “All of God’s Children Ain’t Free,” while his rock-solid faith is made plain by “Amen.” Rollicking train songs (the title track), poetic invocations of the West (“You Wild Colorado”), haunting country parables (“The Long Black Veil”), and moody frontier ballads (“When It’s Springtime in Alaska”) add further color to this eclectic release. Johnny holds it all together with a commanding presence that’s by turns somber, tender, playful, and ornery. *Orange Blossom Special* belongs in any Cash fan’s collection.

Even if the best and most popular songs on this 1965 album are the ones most likely to show up on greatest-hits compilations ("The Long Black Veil, "Orange Blossom Special," "It Ain't Me Babe"), it certainly rates as one of Cash's finer non-greatest-hits releases. If nothing else, it would have historical importance for the inclusion of three Bob Dylan covers, at a time when Dylan was just starting to get heavily covered by pop musicians (and not often covered by country ones). "It Ain't Me Babe," with duet vocals by June Carter, was the most notable of them, although hearing it these days, some may be taken aback by the mariachi horns. Ditto for "Mama, You Been on My Mind" (which Dylan himself had not released when Cash recorded it), where it's startling to hear Boots Randolph's yakety sax come in for a bit. "The Long Black Veil," though, is an ageless classic, and the title cut one of his best train-oriented songs. The rest of the album is respectable and diverse, if not as outstanding, and includes the stark Cash original "You Wild Colorado," more duet vocals from Carter on the Johnny Horton cover "When It's Springtime in Alaska," a bouncy rendition of the Carter Family's "Wildwood Flower," the spiritual "Amen," and, less successfully, a sentimental reading of "Danny Boy.