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Bitter Tears (Ballads of the American Indian)

Johnny Cash - Bitter Tears (Ballads of the American Indian) Audio CD

A fair review of the Johnny Cash "Bitter Tears (Ballads of the American Indian)" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Johnny Cash reviews here, or go back to the Johnny Cash tabs.

Band: Johnny Cash
Title: Bitter Tears (Ballads of the American Indian)
Rating:

Release Date: 2008-02-01
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: As Long as the Grass Shall Grow 2: Apache Tears 3: Custer 4: Talking Leaves 5: Ballad of Ira Hayes 6: Drums 7: White Girl 8: Vanishing Race

Faboulous album
A touching collection of ballads honoring the American Indian. This has to be one of Johnny Cash's most unique group of songs.

FABULOUS!
I was not disappointed. I love Johnny Cash music and knowing his style and music, bought this CD blind, not previously having heard any of the songs on this cd. It is my favourite CD at the moment. It is great! and a must have for any Johnny Cash fan. The music is, as always, superb and the lyrics, well - stunning. One's heart really goes out to the past injustices done to the American Indians. It is good that these things are not buried, but are remembered, so that they do not happen again. .

AS AMERICA NOW RECOVERS HEART WE NEED TO HEAR THIS ONCE MORE AGAIN
Johnny Cash put this out, back when he was still really the The Man in Black, standing up tall and singing loud for the forgotten, giving voice to the voiceless, singing for those who could not, demanding an audience for all the poor and oppressed, those suffering injustice cast outside the The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet and any hope of attaining the American Dream, Mr. Forty five years ago Mr. Cash defiantly issued this message, as Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society (The American Ways Series) was starting to roll (now fading away), we need to hear this once more again, please, and again.

As Long as The Grass Shall Grow is a sort of proto-rap with a sung chorus joined by some angelic ladies. (Throughout you hear the stripped down guitar and bass with trap drums Mr. Cash used in his early days. This is old time country and folk music, with a message we need now. ) As Long as the Grass Shall Grow remembers the treaty signed by General Washington granting the Seneca eternal right to their land, a land later flooded by the Army Corps of Engineers to make a lake, later a swamp.

Apache Tears sounds like a folk song with just a strummed six string pine top guitar, with chorus moaning wonderfully, and recounts the fate of the Mescalero Apache, their women kidnapped and tortured by US Soldiers, driven off their land, Geronimo's people.

Custer goes towards the sardonically joking early Bob Dylan folk-protest expression (who was just begnining to come out then - so Bob might have got it here first!), again mainly a country proto-rap, or what was then called a talking blues, with Mr. Cash often openly laughing at the jokes involved, the mocking of Custer and the way that victory is characterized in our history books, and this was years before Little Big Man broke the real and complete story to the American public. Johnny sings, "The General, he don't ride well anymore. " Got to hear it.

The Talking Leaves is for me the most touching, both in message and in beautiful sound (that choir, and that arpeggio folk guitar, without other instrumentation!). A spoken poem, it recalls how Sequioa, seeing the printed pages of English scattered on a battleground, developed a phonetic system for the Cherokee people then in the eastern United States, long before the genocidal trail of tears drove them from their land. This song does not consider the later history, but only the pride of this literate tribe. It does not mention how President Jackson defied the US Supreme Court ruling granting the Cherokee their land, telling the Supreme Court to get their own army to enforce it, as he drove the entire nation to the far west on foot. But Jimi Hendrix of Castles Made of Sand, he was mostly Cherokee, and he got his own back again.

The ballad of Ira Hayes is the most powerful, especially now as our soldiers come on home soon, what's left of them mentally, spiritually, physically. Look up the history of Ira Hayes, and his fate, who he was, how he was treated, and where he went. Mr. Cash defied in a full page ad the radio stations to play this his song. We all need to hear it now, not only to know who comes home to us now, but above all, to remember forever who is Ira Hayes. You might just get a partial glimpse in Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima / Flags of Our Fathers (Five-Disc Commemorative Edition). Try this one on Karaoke night. Go ahead. It's on Hits of Johnny Cash, Vol. 2. I defy you to. Better save it for your closer.

Drums rolls out in a usual folk-blues chord pattern over a rumbling Native American drumming heart beat, speaking of the capture of children from their families and their forced re-education in Anglo boarding schools, a sin which continued well into this past century, trying to re-culturate a whole people and erase the old as much as the people themselves had been rubbed out. But, anticipating much of the slogans heard in 1992, (including in 1492-1992: The voice of the victims (Concilium)), Mr. Cash sings "In five hundred years of fighting, not one Indian turned white. " "In our losing we found pride; in your winning you found shame. "

White Girl tells of a man taken up by a white woman and dropped after she taught him the night life, etc. , but then refuses when he offers marriage because he is Native American, of the Pueblo Indians, a woman who wore him like a trophy or Native American jewel, but would not marry him. It is sung and played in that early electric country style, trap drum, low down home flat-picked guitar like Sun Records, and Mr. Cash. What more do you need?

The Vanishing Race is pure Native American chant, and the best singing I ever heard Mr. Cash do. He gets up in the register, and gets it right. It is a ghost dance chant. He sees the wagons coming,and his people vanish like the eagle into space. Hear this. You'll get up in a circle two-stepping.

Now we are well enough to have the great paradigm shift of a great new president (if only the still sick brothers could pull together and do what we need to do to survive as a nation ourselves for once) let us hear this heartbeat of the original inhabitants of this once wide land, and open ourselves to further renewal, peace, cooperation and begging forgiveness, as we need.

Know our history. Hear this disk. It won't take long, and you will want to hear it again. Even with the slight instrumentation, there is an amazing variety of music and sound. This is what it was all about.

Hear this disk.

surprizing!
But one of the greatest I've ever heard. Not what I expected, I thought Johnny Cash included a bit of an Amerindian music's influence but it remains very much a country album. A terrific collection of songs. .

Wonderful
Johnny at his truthful best. I have looked for this album for years,should have known Amazon would have it.

You can see a complete list of all Johnny Cash discography, or go back to the Johnny Cash tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.