Johnny Cash

Its tracks recorded across the two-year period of 1971-1973, The Johnny Cash Children's Album would seem to be something of an afterthought, dashed off during downtime at Cash's Hendersonville, TN, home just to keep the singer and his musicians (among them Carl Perkins, then a member of Cash's band, on guitar) busy. But even if Cash was in no hurry to release this collection of novelties and message ballads and his record label paid it little mind (it came out in early 1975 and went more or less unnoticed), it's a fun listen, with a heck of a lot more substance to it than much of the condescending pabulum that's usually passed off as kids' music. Who, after all, could possibly resist the Man in Black, he of the baritone quiver and rebel spirit, indulging in a charming minute and a half of wordplay that does little more than laundry-list a litany of dinosaur facts? And who else but Johnny Cash would think to open such a collection not with a frothy, wholesome singalong but the tale of dirty old "Nasty Dan"? The material ranges from the whimsical (wife June Carter Cash's duet on "I Got a Boy and His Name Is John" is built around one of the couple's typically huffy repartees) to the tearjerker ("Old Shep," the dog ballad that Elvis also cut). Of the 15 first-time-on-CD tracks, four are previously unreleased, but it's a safe bet that most Cash fans never heard the original album the first time around, and while it's hardly an essential component of the Johnny Cash catalog, it's a good-time affair that can be enjoyed, as the cliché goes, by young and old alike. ~ Jeff Tamarkin, All Music Guide