max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

#554: emmylou harris & ricky skaggs - hello stranger (live, 1980)

would you rather be a.p. carter or ricky skaggs? there are benefits to both. on the one hand your full name would be alvin pleasant delaney carter, you’d be the patriarch of the carter family, and johnny cash’s father-in-law’s brother, plus you’d be able to write songs like this one. but on the other hand if you’re ricky skaggs you get to play the mandolin, have a mean mustache, and sing harmony with emmylou harris on a.p. carter songs.

#528: derek and the dominos - it’s too late (johnny cash show, 1970)

layla and other assorted love songs is such a frigidly stone-cold classic that its ninth-best song (behind, in order of increasing awesomeness, why does love got to be so sad, keep on growing, nobody knows you when you’re down and out, i looked away, anyday, little wing, layla and of course bell bottom blues) sounds as crisp as any other eric clapton live recording i can recall. it is rotisserie roasted to perfection, and that’s without derek and the dominoes’ slide guitarist duane allman playing along. clapton’s mutton chops even look as good as johnny cash’s pompadour.

#459: june carter with pete seeger and johnny cash - i’m thinking tonight of my blue eyes (1965)

pete seeger’s rainbow quest, basically the best tv show of the century, not only had the rev. gary davis blowing donovan’s mind at a kitchen table, but featured lovestruck johnny cash and june carter before they were married, or had even ended their first marriages.

in an early clip, she talks about losing her teeth in korea and he sings a version i am a pilgrim that makes sweetheart of the rodeo sound pale and pagan. here, even better, june carter takes a special request while pete seeger says: “might say, this song doesn’t have but two or three versus, but it’s a lot of fun to sing, a lot of fun to harmonize on, too. any of you out there, you know, it’s the main reason for this rainbow quest show, not just to show what we can do, but show how you can have a lot of fun yourself making music. and i mean it! i hope that you all out there, young, old, tall, short, fat or thin, quick or slow, no matter what kind or color or shape or person you are, if you like to make music, why, go ahead, don’t let the microphones and loudspeakers faze you. make some yourself.”

“and take your shoes off,” johnny cash says, in his socks.

“that’s right!” pete seeger says. what a guy. “and this would be a good song to try, if you want to.”

#455: bob dylan - it takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry (1965)

UPDATE: VIDEO REMOVED, BUT LISTEN HERE.

bob dylan’s music is so perfect that the only thing you can really say is what george harrison once said, which is “he makes william shakespeare look like billy joel.” another thing you can say is that between 1964 and 1966 he released 25 songs that are so perfect you can listen to any them over old footage of trains and die happy. and that’s not including the songs that are just wildly good but not definitely great, or anything on the times they are a-changin, which was released in 1964 but recorded in the previous autumn.

it’s true, just try it at home: there’s spanish harlem incident, chimes of freedom, to ramona, my back pages, i don’t believe you (she acts like we never have met), ballad in plain d, subterranean homesick blues, she belongs to me, love minus zero/no limit, bob dylan’s 115th dream, mr. tambourine man, gates of eden, it’s alright ma (i’m only bleeding), like a rolling stone, it takes a lot to laugh it takes a train to cry (see above), from a buick 6, ballad of a thin man, queen jane approximately, just like tom thumb’s blues, desolation row, visions of joanna, stuck inside of mobile with the memphis blues again, just like a woman, 4th time around, and of course sad eyed lady of the lowlands.

and if you want to avoid lists you can just repeat what johnny cash said: “i love bob dylan, i really do. i love his early work, i love the first time he plugged in electrically, i love his christian albums, i love his other albums.”

#306: johnny cash - on a monday (i got stripes) (1959)

johnny cash and jokes about bowtied bassists who chew too much bubble gum go together like the dwight d. eisenhower administration and hoedowns at town hall.

#289: johnny cash - big river (1962, grand ole opry)

instead of allowing awful garth brooks (just look at him) to sing awful american pie at obama’s inauguration concert yesterday, the folks in charge should have simply played some johnny cash clips from the early 60s, and if they needed something with more oomph, then pete seeger (who was in attendence) could have just read some good johnny cash quotes, like: “how well i have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. there is a deep wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man.”

#264: odetta (with johnny cash) - black woman / shame and scandal (1969)

odetta died yesterday at age 77. “if only one could be sure that every fifty years a voice and a soul like odetta’s would come along,” maya angelou once said, “the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognize time.” it’s hard to understand a sentence like that until you hear odetta sing next to johnny cash, and make his voice sound like a toy drum by comparison.

#217: ray charles - ring of fire (1970, johnny cash show)

i don’t mind schmaltzy horns when a song is being sung by a man in a powder blue suit—especially if it’s ray charles, and especially if he’s snapping his fingers and banging his legs and whispering the lyrics at points because he’s so into it, and then interupting himself to say, “i tell you baby, that thing went crazy.”