Replay: Johnny Cash, Ride This Train, 1960

The country concept album isn't generally regarded as the apex of musical art forms, but if anyone could pull it off, it would be Johnny Cash. His first attempt came in 1960 when he released Ride This Train. The album consists of nine songs profiling the struggles and triumphs of American working men and women, from coal miners and lumberjacks to plantation owners and slaves, with Cash introducing each with a spoken word story.

The album is not exactly edgy, relying as it does on some cheesy sound effects (chugging train sounds, clanking chains) and overly darling sagas. Yet the album is addictive in its way, drawing you in with Cash's trademark baritone and timeless themes about the "heart and muscle of this land."

"Slow Rider" is preceded by Cash speaking as John Wesley Hardin, famed Western outlaw reputed to have killed 40 men. Hardin is full of angst. He wants to stop running and settle down with a job "on the right side of the law," but he can't walk down a street without some "trigger-happy cowpoke" thinking he can outdraw him. The album's highlight is "Going to Memphis," introduced with a narrative about the members of a chain gang who build a big levee on the Mississippi River and who are "whipped like mules" if they get out of line. The song adopts a classic chain-gang rhythm and bobs and weaves more like blues than country.

Perhaps the finest moment on Ride This Train comes near the beginning when Cash pays tribute to the Native Americans who were here first and were pushed off their lands. He intones the mellifluous names of dozens of Indian tribes in the manner of his more recent song "I've Been Everywhere" (now heard in a Comfort Inn television ad) listing city names across the country.

Ride This Train was re-released in 2002 with four bonus tracks that follow the original album's basic theme but lack narrative introductions. The funniest is "Smiling Bill McCall," which tells of a fictional radio host in Nashville and the public's admiration for him. They all assume he's 6 feet tall and the handsomest man in town. But then McCall disappears. He's found on the bank of a creek trying to commit suicide. He says he just can't stand the radio show's theme song anymore. Pleading with the people to let him die, it's revealed that he's actually 4 feet tall. "I'd rather be in the river dead/ than to hear 'em laugh at my bald head," McCall says.

Ride This Train isn't Cash's best work, but collectively it's a fine episode from a distinguished career.--Geoff Schumacher