Johnny Cash With Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins: Video From 1977 Christmas Special

Today The Johnny Cash Christmas Special from 1976 and '77 hit stores on DVD via Shout! Factory, marking the first time in thirty years the two shows will be readily available. The '77 program, which was taped at Nashville's famed Grand Ole Opry, features Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison — one of whom didn't get the memo about the white suit — joining Cash for "This Train Is Bound for Glory" as part of a tribute to Elvis Presley. Click above to check it out.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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