• Essential Johnny Cash P/V/G Book - An Honest Review

  
  As reviewed by Clint Greene on 4/25/2011

  I bought this book from GC after having looked on Amazon for a book that contained all of his "hits" and more... I couldn't find a better one than this one! All of the songs are listed in the GC description (above) and are generally ordered alphabetically by title making them easy to find. Interestingly, "Give My Love To Rose" is placed before "Folsom Prison Blues", but this may be for space reasons so that the song pages can be layed out more appropriately. All songs are also listed by page number in the Table of Contents. All songs list the original composer/writer (not always Johnny Cash) and appear to be in the correct key (as originally written). I would typically be able to play my Johnny Cash CD and play right along using this book (I play bass). The lyrics and arrangements of the verse/chorus/bridges are accurate and the music is written in the typical 3 stacked clef notation--vocal (treble clef) on top, and the piano (treble clef + bass clef) immediately below--with the chord notation for each measure listed above (for acoustic guitar). This book is a great resource for someone desiring to learn these songs, and I even found it very useful for me as a bass player (using both the chord notation and the piano bass clef to generate the notes I'd play). Maybe even more interesting than the music, is the collection of black and white photos in the front of the book. These are divided into 2 sections--young Johnny Cash (even one as a very young boy) with his slicked back pompadour and guitar in various live shots and studio shots with other artists (even Elvis!); and the section of "older" Johnny Cash when he had his resurgence late in his career. Dividing the 2 sections of photos is a selected album discography listing the record label, year, and song list which I found a great resource. Even the Table of Contents of this book is a great source of information, as it lists the composer/arranger, chart position, recording date, and album for each song included in the book! One note: Several of the songs have the music/chords listed only for the first verse or two, with the additional verses only listed in lyric form (no music). I would assume that this was done to save space since many of his songs are simply arranged and lend themselves to this format, but I found it a bit strange since the book is so complete in all other aspects. Although it doesn't include any of his gospel/Christian songs, this is a great resource for anyone wanting to learn Johnny's more famous (and many not-so-famous) songs. A solid 5 out of 5 stars.

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