Johnny Cash 40th Birthday Show

On 26th February 1972, country icon Johnny Cash celebrated his 40th birthday, and did so with a full-blown jamboree at Amsterdam's 13,000 capacity RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre. The show featured an all-star line-up, with other country legends making appearances, both alone and alongside Johnny. With Cash's own band The Tennessee Three providing the backing throughout , Carl Perkins opened the show followed by The Carter Family - with, of course, wife June Carter - and the The Statler Brothers also appeared, the quartet who had opened for Johnny Cash on his TV show, which had run from 1969 to 1971. By 1972, Johnny Cash was firmly steeped in his "man in black" persona, standing out from the typical "rhinestone cowboy" image that was common in country at the time. The recording featured here contains Cash's entire performance from the evening in question and features a rich mix of material from his already extensive back catalogue; indeed many Cash classics are included, such as 'Man In Black', 'I Walk The Line', 'Folsom Prison Blues' and 'Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down'. With Carl Perkins joining Cash for 'I Walk The Line', and June Carter taking the stage too for the rest of the set, which includes a sterling version of 'Jackson', the song with which the couple won a Grammy Award in 1967. They repeated this feat in 1971 with the following number of the night, Tim Hardin's 'If I Were A Carpenter'. As the evening progresses, the entire ensemble returns for a series of spirituals, including an exceptional version of 'Children Go Where I Send Thee'. Without a doubt one of Johnny Cash's best shows of the decade, this magnificent performance is available here on CD for the first time.