Recording almost all the songs on Songs of Our Soil in one day sets an absurd standard for Johnny Cash and his peers. The Man in Black would somehow keep up with this gruelling output for much of his career, often firing out an album’s worth of material in a singular session. Aside from the opening track, Drink to Me, all of Songs of Our Soil was recorded in a day. An impressive feat, irrespective of the quality, but even better still, thanks to some quality work filtering through. Prolific doesn’t even begin to cover it for what Cash was during the early 1960s. There appeared to be an expectation of bulk order work, this ability to turn around an album in such a small timeframe appeared to be the standard. Just look how quickly some of the earliest albums of The Beatles and Bob Dylan were made. Time is money, after all, and the creative diva, those who needed a new couch in the studio or a cocktail before recording, were not yet in sight of a studio.
Songs of Our Soil is no better or worse because of that efficiency. It helps that Cash had, so early into his career, developed the sound and instrumental touch which would be the staple of his work until his death. You know where you are with Cash. He had a voice like no other and even his worst material, the sloppier parts of the 1980s or the relatively tame and unfitting religious covers, as heard on Hymns by Johnny Cash, sound better with him singing them. Strong work on Drink to Me, but it’s more because of the strength of Cash’s guitar and his identifiable vocals. Five Feet High and Rising is one of the better tracks featured on Songs of Our Soil, a moment which showcases the calm which comes in catastrophe. Cash would master that feeling, the likes of 25 Minutes to Go and Folsom Prison Blues are those cool and collected moments in the face of great danger.
Clinical work from Cash here would set a decades-long standard, but the themes of the album are a real insight into his headspace at the time. Songs of death, playful tones which lay bare the fears of whatever comes next, like Hank and Joe and Me, are surprisingly haggard pieces of work. Sincerity and morbidity blurs on Songs of Our Soil, even the title of the album, the dirt thrown on the coffin, the soil it’s placed in, Cash sounds fearful. He keeps that cool tone he so often maintained, but you can hear his fascination with death overwhelm the album. It makes for solid material, at least. Songs of Our Soil can pull, too, from the confident boom in country music. Marty Robbins had made a splash with Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs and Hank Williams’ style was still affecting Cash. What it means for Cash here is he gets a step closer to the classic sound that would carry his career.
Even with that solidity, there are a few experiments here which hardly feature on other Cash albums. The Great Speckle Bird makes great use of some soft piano playing from Marvin Hughes, and the Nashville sound Cash implements here has Luther Perkins’ electric guitar to thank. Moments of real countrified thrills are found in those latter stages, too, with My Grandfather’s Clock a nice track where the instrumentals are like that of a nursery rhyme. It works, though. Cash has a comfortable style to his work already. Just four albums into his career and he had landed on the instrumental style and vocal brilliance which would feature for decades to come. Crucial to that is how solid a piece of work Songs of Our Soil is. Stock for the discography, proof of the style working for not just the artist, but the audience, too.
