Consumer Guide Album

June Carter Cash: Keep on the Sunny Side: Her Life in Music [Columbia/Legacy, 2005]
In a union that, typically for Cash, began in sin and lasted nearly half a century, June Carter Cash was her husband's rock. As you might expect of the co-composer of "Ring of Fire," she was that rare thing, an interesting saint: fiery, feisty, creative, proactive. She was not, however, a major country singer. Her voice often wavers, and there's too much Jesus in her--the scarily antiurban "Appalachian Pride" is the kind of tract her husband regularly made comprehensible, and although Cash eclipsed all but one of his Sun labelmates, Jerry Lee and his bad sister Linda Gail's version of John & June's signature "Jackson" is rowdier and more convincing. That said, this two-CD selection is a triumph of the compiler's craft, listenable throughout and delightful early on--June was the kind of cute kid you just know will turn out well. [Blender: 3]