4/5 (cheapo off-brand knockoff but) WORTH EVERY PENNY of $10! Interesting Archival Performances
  by Bryan E. Leed (Dayton, OH USA)
IN CONCERT SERIES: JOHNNY CASH is a cheapie, off-brand DVD with material of questionable copyright, but it is nevertheless pretty interesting and insightful for fans who are wondering about Johnny Cash's work from the late 1950s era.

In less than 30 minutes it plays through all of the 10 songs listed.

"I Was There When It Happened" is the highlight song for me. This is the Gospel song shown in the biography movie WALK THE LINE, which Johnny and his band practice and audition with for Sam Phillips, (who rejects them for playing such a famous, safe tune). So it is interesting to see the actual band after seeing the movie actors do the song.

"I Got Stripes" is another great song, done live. Johnny does the background, novelty comments himself, on this song. This song was played in the WALK THE LINE movie, also, when Johnny is drugged up, onstage, and kick out the footlights before collapsing on stage. It is one of my all-time favorite Johnny Cash tunes.

It is hard to imagine, but Johnny gets high pitched screaming from the audience (like a Beatles concert) for such folk tunes as "Pickin' Time", "Suppertime" and "Frankie and Johnny." These are tunes which sound dull on old albums, compared to Johnny's mega-hit singles, but apparently the fans of the 1950s knew and loved these forgotten tunes!

The strangest performance is "Heartbreak Hotel," which is not really a song performance, but rather a comedy impersonation of Elvis impersonators. They only do one verse and chorus, barely, and Johnny really makes a fool of himself. It is surprising, though, how fast he can straighten out his hair and clothes, immediately after the comedy bit, to look like he's all primped up to start the concert again.

"Big River" and "Five Feet High and Rising" are from TV appearances on a sound stage, without an audience, and these are very good performances. It doesn't look like lip-syncing, but the performance is very polished and error free, especially for such old TV footage.

The cheapo, off-brand Passport Video company put a transparent logo in the bottom right of the screen, which you will forget it is there, but it is always there. Pretty tacky. The DVD menu is pretty sloppy, saying it has a bonus biography, but it is really a bonus of FIVE MINUTES TO LIVE, which was Johnny's attempt to mimic the success of Elvis had in the movies. It is a bomb of a film, and disappointing to see Johnny play such a mean-spirited bad guy, but it is also a curiosity item, in which Johnny plays a main character and criminal.

This DVD is all b/w, and sometimes the focus looks soft, but the live close-ups are very reasonable and you forget about the old quality while watching, and it all probably never looked that good to begin with, anyway, since it came from lo-tech 1950s TV broadcasts. If this material is available from a better manufacturer, I don't know about it yet. (Though there is a $30 DVD set of Johnny Cash at Town Hall for sale on [...], which I suspect is at least one source for this DVD). So until I get better DVD versions of the material on this IN CONCERT SERIES: JOHNNY CASH DVD, then this DVD will be entertaining enough, especially for just $10.

The best Johnny Cash DVD that I have, so far, is LIVE IN DENMARK 1971, which I can highly recommend.