Johnny Cash
Christmas with Johnny Cash

(Columbia/Legacy)

The concept of a holiday album from Johnny Cash is certainly an intriguing one. Despite several attempts, however, the idea proved to be better than its execution. Unfortunately, the recently released compilation Christmas with Johnny Cash doesn’t fare very well either. The collection culls material from three of his holiday outings (The Christmas Spirit, Classic Christmas, and The Johnny Cash Family Christmas) while adding a previously unreleased rehearsal from The Johnny Cash Show that features the Man in Black delivering a spoken-word piece titled Christmas As I Knew It. The big problem with nearly all of the tracks is that Cash tries too hard to deliver the songs in a stately, majestic style better suited to crooners like Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole. The result is uncomfortably jarring, sounds superficial, and just doesn’t work.