I want to make one thing clear right off the bat. This is by no means a definitive list of underrated Johnny Cash songs. Johnny Cash recorded more songs than there are ants on a Tennessee ant hill. (That’s a John Sebastian lyric – but it’s OK because Johnny covered a John Sebastian song. It’s a great duet with his wife June Carter Cash called “Darling Companion,” from his Live in Denmark album. But I digress.)
The point is that Johnny Cash wrote about a million songs, and covered about twice that many by artists he admired. He left an extraordinary collection of material, some of which was still being discovered long after his death. He began as a country/rockabilly singer but eventually found his way to virtually every genre of music there is, from gospel to reggae, bluegrass to punk.
If the song had a beat he liked and a lyric he could get excited about, Johnny Cash recorded it. No one ever said “no” when Johnny asked permission, at least not toward the end. Nick Cave, who will be showing up in a few moments, said it best: “It doesn’t matter what anyone says. Johnny Cash recorded my song.”
Johnny Cash songs that are extremely underrated
It didn’t matter the genre. When Johnny Cash sang a song, he made it a Johnny Cash song. Now that doesn’t mean they were always great recordings. Johnny had a very long career and he was subject to highs and lows, like any artist. There is some painful pop in the 1980s, complete with de rigueur synthesizers. Synth and Johnny – not the best match. But so much of what he did was transcendent. From rollicking R&B to deeply profound meditations on eternity, Johnny could sing about man’s highest ideals and basest desires, and make them both immediate.
Most of all, Johnny Cash had a deep and abiding concern for his fellow man – first made apparent in his ground-breaking live Prison albums – which would run through virtually every song he sang. He seemingly recorded with everybody. He was, and continues to be, an inspiration to generations of musicians. So I wouldn’t dare bill these as his greatest “underrated” songs. Tomorrow, I might have a totally different list. I only know that these are ten really good songs that represent a wide swath of a limitless career. If you don’t already know some of them, you might like giving them a listen.
“TRAIN OF LOVE” (1956)
Johnny Cash began his recording career for Sam Phillips at Sun Records in 1955. He was backed by the Tennessee Two – Luther Perkins on guitar and Marshall Grant on bass. They were a hit on the country charts from the very beginning, with the double-sided “I Walk the Line” and “Get Rhythm” climbing to number one in early 1956. They were followed in the top spot by “There You Go.”
The next single, initially the B-side of “There You Go,” didn’t fare quite as well, only making it to number seven. But that song, “Train of Love,” is just as representative of Cash’s early talent. Perkins' thumping guitar (more on that soon) set the unmistakable rhythm that became a hallmark of Cash’s early hits. It was very well suited to the train metaphors that Johnny loved so much because it did sound like a train. A lot of Johnny’s early love songs dealt with betrayal. Here, Johnny is waiting with other eager lovers for the train of love to arrive – “but everybody’s baby but mine’s coming home.”
“ROCK ISLAND LINE” (1957)
By the time Johnny recorded “Rock Island Line,” the American folk classic had already been performed by the giants of American roots music from Lead Belly to Woody Guthrie. That didn’t stop 25 year-old Johnny from putting his own spin on it, writing several new verses. He used it as the lead-off track on his first full studio album.
Though you may not agree with my assessment, I think Johnny does here what Tina Turner would later do in her famous version of “Proud Mary.” He starts off nice and slow. Johnny often used spoken intros to his songs, which he does here, and even as he transitions into the lyric, his voice is slow and easy. Then he hits the chorus and he shows that this laid-back country crooner could rock as fast as anyone out there.
Thirty years later, on his famous cover of “I’ve Been Everywhere," Johnny surprised a lot of people by just how fast he spit out lyrics. If you had ever heard his version of “Rock Island Line,” there would have been no surprise at all. Johnny may not have written the original version of this song, but he did add the perfect lyric ‘’ “Well, the engineer said before he died – That there were two more drinks that he’d like to try – The doctor 'What could that be?' – “A hot cup of coffee and cold glass of tea.”
“LUTHER PLAYED THE BOOGIE WOOGIE” (1959)
“Luther Played the Boogie Woogie” was released as a single by Sun early in 1959, and then released on a compilation album later that year. By the time it came out, Johnny and the Tennessee Two had already left Sun for Columbia Records.
Luther, of course, was Luther Perkins, who played a Fender Esquire and provided a lot of the bounce in Johnny’s early songs. Johnny liked singing songs about performing. He would score hits later with his recording of Jack Clements’s “The One On The Right,” and Carl Perkins’ “Daddy Sang Bass.” “Luther…” is the most fun of them all. It is “The One On The Right” without the politics (though it is a riotously funny song), and “Daddy Sang Bass” without the religion. It is pure boogie-woogie.
“25 MINUTES TO GO” (1965/68)
Johnny Cash wasn’t the first singer to perform songs about the incarcerated. There is a long tradition of condemned-man songs in American folk music. So when he recorded Shel Silverstein’s “25 Minutes to Go” – about a man awaiting his execution – on his 1965 album Johnny Cash Sings Ballads of the True West it wasn’t exactly extraordinary. But when he recorded it again, three years later on his live At Folsom Prison album – well, that’s a different story.
That album is still underappreciated in the greater social context of how art functions in a society. In 1968, nobody but Johnny Cash was going to walk into a prison and give the inmates a first-rate show. in 2024, no one is doing it. He opened that album with his famous early song “Folsom Prison Blues,” and then peppered in several more prison-themed songs along with other hits. The live version of “25 Minutes to Go,” with Johnny responding to the crowd, is an amazing thing to hear. He is angry and funny and desperate in under three minutes.
“BLISTERED” (1969)
“Blistered” was the first single released from Johnny’s 1970 album Hello, I’m Johnny Cash, possibly his greatest studio album. He was fully in synch with his new wife June Carter and her famous country music family. He had Carl Perkins and Norman Blake accompanying him. And he had a fabulous raft of songs. His lovely duet with June “If I Were a Carpenter” was the biggest hit, but the entire album is outstanding.
“Blistered” was written by Billy Edd Wheeler, who had penned Johnny and June’s earlier hit “Jackson,” It showcases the side of Johnny that reveled in earthly desires. One of the great dichotomies at play in Johnny Cash’s repertoire is the conflict between spirit and flesh. He spells out what this song is about with his opening lines – “I got great big blisters on my bloodshot eyes from looking at the long-legged woman up ahead.”
“TO BEAT THE DEVIL” (1969)
I tried to limit myself to just one song per album on this list, but Hello, I’m Johnny Cash is too good. It gets two. "To Beat the Devil" was written by Kris Kristofferson, whose song “Sunday Morning Coming Down” would be a big hit for Johnny the following year.
“To Beat the Devil” is a talking story song about a down-on-his-luck singer who is starving and desperate. He meets an old man in a bar, the same way Robert Johnson met the devil at the crossroads, and a young boy named Johnny met him out fiddling one day. It’s obviously a great theme. You can hear similar territory being covered as recently as Benjy Davis and Ashley McBryde’s beautiful “Gospel Night at the Strip Club” from 2022.
“NO EXPECTATIONS” (1978)
Johnny was not immune from the excesses of overproduction that plagued a lot of country music and reached its zenith in the early ‘70s. The drowning out of songs and voices in an abundance of synths and strings and choirs helped create the outlaw movement that would help rescue the entire genre. But by the end of the decade, Johnny seemed to course correct with a couple of strong albums. “No Expectations” is from Gone Girl, and it revealed yet another side of Johnny Cash.
Johnny had covered some rock and roll before, but this was the Stones. Mick and Keith had written it for their 1968 album Beggars Banquet. The Stones slowed it down and did it as one of their country songs. Johnny sped it up and did it as a rock song. It’s fun to listen to both and choose which you like better. For me, it’s Johnny’s version.
“THE TWENTIETH CENTURY IS ALMOST OVER” (1980/1985)
Johnny recorded this John Prine/Steve Goodman song for his 1980 album Rockabilly Blues. It is a great marriage between songwriter and singer. Then, five years later, the supergroup Highwaymen closed out their debut album with the same song, this time largely performed as a duet between Willie Nelson and Johnny. Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson can be heard singing background.
The more famous story about Johnny and John Prine concerns a different cover. One of Prine’s earliest songs, “Sam Stone,” was ideally aligned with Johnny’s concerns. It was about a veteran who is thrown away by society after he returns from war with a drug addiction. In the chorus, Prine wrote the line “Jesus Christ died for nothing I suppose,” as a final statement on the hopelessness his title character encountered. Johnny could not sing that line. Prine allowed him to rewrite it, removing the reference to Christ. After all, it was Johnny Cash.
“HIGHWAY PATROLMAN/JOHNNY 99” (1983)
Johnny 99 was an album of covers. Johnny sang songs by Eric Von Schmidt, George Jones, and Guy Clark. And two from Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska. Once again, Springsteen’s stark portrait of the guys who got dealt a bad hand is perfectly suited to Johnny’s performance. The title track is a rocking little number about an outlaw and how he got that way, Johnny does it well, but Springsteen’s original is probably a little bit better.
On “Highway Patrolman,” one of Springsteen’s towering songs of sadness and loss, Johnny nails it. So does Bruce. It’s impossible to choose between the two. You can listen to them both and make your own choice. Or don’t bother to choose. Just listen.
“MERCY SEAT” (2000)
35 years earlier, Johnny had recorded the above-mentioned “25 Minutes to Go.” He returned to the theme of a man on death row with this harrowing Nick Cave cover. The humor and the exaggerated bluster of the Shel Silverstein song are nowhere to be found on this one.
There’s a righteous anger that drenches the entire production, and there is also an acceptance of a rather ugly mortality. Johnny delivers it with the intensity of a plain-spoken preacher and achieves something truly remarkable. It is a song about peace and forgiveness that nonetheless positively boils in its anger at the world.
Johnny Cash died three years after the release of “Mercy Seat,” but there has been almost too much new music released after his death to count. This music is usually referred to as “rarities” or “undiscovered.” The tracks may be alternative versions of old songs or brand-new recordings not heard before.
Some of them are excellent, like Johnny’s sweet cover of Rodney Crowell’s “Wildwood in the Pines,” or his angry version of Steve Earle’s “Devil’s Right Hand.” But I think I’ll stop there. Once you start listing underrated Johnny Cash songs, there’s a pretty strong desire to just keep going and going and going.