Johnny Cash - My Mother's Hymn Book

A Very Worthwhile Collection

I am not normally a huge fan of hymns. I love contemporary Christian music, but also enjoy the occasional hymn.

This particular collection is great. The selected songs are mostly classics in this genre. They are sung by an American cultural icon who had a significant spiritual journey himself. They were recorded close to the end of his life. These also have a common theme: Looking forward to eternal life after leaving this one. He had indicated that this was his favorite of the numerous albums that he recorded.

These songs came from Johnny's mother's cherished hymn book. He had grown up hearing her play these often. For anyone who grew up listening to and singing hymns, many of these will likely be quite familiar.

Although Cash's voice on these songs is weaker than it had once been, one can easily tell that he had his whole heart into the message here.

I would certainly recommend this album. Another great hymn collection that I would strongly endorse is Jars of Clay - Redemption Songs. April 12, 2008

One of Johnny Cash's Best Albums of His Entire Career!

Johnny Cash has released many Gospel albums and compilations during his half century career. MY MOTHER'S HYMN BOOK is easily his best album of Gospel tunes that is still in print and still readily available on CD, recorded and released all at once, (not part of any compilation album).

MY MOTHER'S HYMN BOOK by Johnny Cash is a great album to listen to, whether you like Johnny Cash, or Gospel music, or both. The quiet, voice and acoustic guitar only sparseness seems very personal and expressive. Cash loved doing Gospel music, and you can tell that his heart and soul is in this album of beloved church songs which he learned as a child, literally learning them out of the library of songs in his mother's well worn book of hymns.

MY MOTHER'S HYMN BOOK is calm and quiet listening that is great for calm and quiet Sunday afternoons and contemplation. The musical performances are good to great, and so is the lyrical content.

The b/w CD booklet has personal comments written by Johnny Cash for every song on this album, so that is very interesting.

At the AMERICAN record label, they often had Johnny Cash record tons of music very cheaply and economically, by just recording him singing and strumming his guitar, without any added instruments nor other musicians. MY MOTHER'S HYMN BOOK is the best and most consistent of the albums recorded and released this way. His last album of newly recorded music, 100 HIGHWAYS is pretty much entirely in the same performance format, but is not mostly Gospel in content, though it is very interesting as his last recordings. American V: A Hundred Highways

GOSPEL GLORY by Johnny Cash is my single favorite Gospel compilation by Johnny Cash, because of the high percentage of famous Christian standards that sound very contemporary in their recording style. Gospel Glory

But GOSPEL GLORY can be topped by the Johnny Cash Gospel compilation CD called JUST AS I AM, which contains all but one of the recordings on GOSPEL GLORY, and then also doubles the song count with other Gospel songs from his career. Just as I Am

CASH: ULTIMATE GOSPEL is a recent 2007 remastering and round up of many rare and out of print Gospel tunes by Johnny! It is almost as good as JUST AS I AM. The fresh remastering of a 2007 re-release makes many of the oldest recordings sound fresh again, and much more enjoyable than the same recordings which appeared on earlier CDs released in the 1990's and earlier. A great CD! Cash: Ultimate Gospel

PERSONAL FILE is a two CD pack of which disc 2 is entirely Gospel tunes, almost as good as MY MOTHER'S HYMN BOOK. It is a compilation of "lost" rehearsal tapes of Johnny just singing and strumming his guitar, just like on MY MOTHER'S HYMN BOOK. The singing is stronger and the guitar playing is a bit more lively, but the songs are not quite as strong as the selections of MY MOTHER'S HYMN BOOK. Personal File

And don't forget to check out Johnny Cash's reading of the entire NEW TESTAMENT on CD, which is very fun for any Johnny Cash listeners and/or Bible lovers! The last CD in the set is just Johnny Cash reading the Book of Revelation in its entirety, as if it is a CD album all by itself! Cool stuff and very inspirational! Johnny Cash Reads the Complete New Testament: Collector's Edition August 9, 2007

My Mother's Hymn Book - - Johnny Cash

Thanks was the one I was looking for. April 29, 2007

What The Man in Black was meant to be

Finally, Johnny Cash finds what he was meant to be. Just his guitar playing, his voice, and a great selection of songs make this a must have. Johnny was a legend and this is his album, what he wanted to do all of his life. Buy this it is wonderful. October 15, 2006

Stark simplicity, sincerity and sacredness...

The 15 songs selected by Johnny not that long before his death all came literally from his mom's favorite hymnal. That is the weakness of the effort, to me, because of a certain lack of variety in content. I agree also with an earlier reviewer who noted that Johnny's guitar work was too subdued here. (Perhaps in his illness, his pickin' suffered more than his vocalizing. While not as strong a voice as he showed on his 1993 American Recordings debut, it really is better than I expected.) Johnny does have some uptempo selections here, and they are the best on the disc. However, in his "Personal File" double-CD set recently released on Sony/Legacy, you get a whole disc of acoustic hymns and spirituals sung in Johnny's 1970's voice. That CD, overall, is much more compelling than this one. True fans will demand to own both, of course. In the "Personal File" effort, you also get a disc of Johnny singing traditional country songs, along with some self-penned tracks and a few 1970's era songs by other artists like Johnny Horton, John Prine and Carlene Carter. The cost of the two CD's of "Personal File" is just a tiny bit more than what you'll pay for "My Mother's Hymn Book" so I highly recommend making that purchase first. His religious disc from "Personal File" has hardly been out of my car CD player since I got it five or six weeks ago, and yet I am not a very religious person. They just grab you. So does "My Mother's Hymn Book" but not as powerfully. July 31, 2006

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