June Carter Cash: Press On : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Daughter of the Carter family's Mother Maybelle, wife to Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash documents her rich life in music on the gloriously homespun Press On. Among the album's thirteen tracks are treasures originally recorded by the Carters in the Twenties and Thirties; folk tunes Cash performed with her mother and sisters in the Forties and Fifties; her own compositions, including "Ring of Fire" and some up-tempo numbers she cut on her last solo album (1975's Appalachian Pride, produced by the Man in Black); a hymnlike ballad sung with her husband, with whom she scored hit duets in the Sixties; and a wacky ode to Quentin Tarantino. "I Used to Be Somebody" wistfully looks back on her days hanging with James Dean at the Actors Studio, as well as her kinships with Elvis Presley, Hank Williams and Patsy Cline. Producers J.J. Blair and son John Carter Cash capture, verite-style, Cash's earthy vocals, chiming autoharp, kooky asides, little flubs and infectious laugh, as well as the players' delicious acoustic licks (standouts include extraordinary guitarist-dobroist Norman Blake and mandolinist Marty Stuart). It's the next best thing to crashing a Sunday-afternoon jam session held by the first family of country music. (RS 813)

HOLLY GEORGE-WARREN