Johnny Cash's "The Holy Land" is such a personal recording that it should have stayed in his vaults.
Cash mixes many self-penned country/gospel songs with a recorded narrative account of a trip he took with June Carter to the Holy Land.
Cash's narration is passionate and personal, but ultimately it is uninteresting, because he ends up sounding more like a tour guide than a spiritually enlightened artist.
As for the music, most of it is unsatisfactory.
Songs like "Land of Israel" and "God Is Not Dead" have a really dated sound and a forced sense of religious politics.
The two standout tracks on the album are the big hit "Daddy Sang Bass" (written by Carl Perkins) and "Nazarene," a religious song that could have fit next to "Greystone Chapel" on Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison.
It should be noted that the original vinyl copies of The Holy Land included a really cool 3-D image on the cover, a la the Rolling Stones' At Their Satanic Majesties Request.
| Title/Composers | Performer | Listen | Time | Size | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Daddy Sang BassCarl Perkins | Johnny Cash | Play | 02:21 | 5 MB | 12 MB |
| 2 mins | 5 MB | |||||
| 2 mins | 12 MB | |||||
| Artist | Job | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Charlie Bragg | Engineer |
| 2 | Al Casey | Guitar |
| 3 | Johnny Cash | Composer, Primary Artist, Vocals |
| 4 | Lew DeWitt | Composer |
| 5 | Bob Johnson | Producer |
| 6 | Carl Perkins | Composer |
| 7 | Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith | Composer |
| Quality | Format | Encoding | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | MP3 | 320kps 44.1kHz | MP3 is an audio coding format which uses a form of lossy data compression. The highest bitrate of this format is 320kbps (kbit/s). MP3 Digital audio takes less amount of space (up to 90% reduction in size) and the quality is not as good as the original one. |