Johnny Cash
“God’s Gonna Cut You Down” from American V

Either I’m growing more jaded music-wise or I’m just not trying hard enough to find new music. Scratch that second one, I just did some checking and I don’t think it’s for lack of trying so maybe I’m jaded.

I’ve downloaded and listened to no less than twenty albums since my last Single of the Week post, everything from Gnarls Barkley to Xiu Xiu. I’ve found some decent albums and while there are songs that I think are good, no one song has stood out. The common factor in most of the prior singles that I’ve posted about is that they have some kind of hook or melody that winds up playing on repeat in my head. You’d think with that much source material it wouldn’t be hard to find a hook but it has been.

That changed today with a discovery on the new Johnny Cash album. Johnny and I go way back as my Dad was a fan so I heard his stuff as a young child. His boom-chicka-boom rhythms and molasses voice worked themselves into my growing brain so deep that they’ll never come out. Consequently, I’ll give any new album of his plenty of opportunity to make an impression.

He manages to get my attention with “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” by triggering a memory of a song that captured my psyche back in ‘99. Moby sampled an old traditional song called “Run on for a Long Time” by Bill Landford and the Lanfordaires to make his track “Run On” from the album Play. The Landford track contains the lyric “go and tell that lonesome liar, go tell that midnight rider, tell the gamblin’ ramblin’ backslider…”. Johnny’s version of “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” which is also an old traditional song contains a very similiar lyric that goes “go and tell that long tongue liar, go and tell the midnight rider, tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter…”.

I think both songs are just slightly different takes on the same old traditional but it’s a traditional for a reason. It’s got that hook and I can’t shake it loose.

Honorable mention goes to Gnarls Barkley for pairing sixties soul to modern day electronics and production on “Crazy”.

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