Johnny Cash Sings the Ballads of the True West is a 1965 Columbia Records double LP (C2S 838) and one of the most ambitious concept albums of Cash's Columbia tenure. The twenty-track set presents the mythology and history of the American Old West across a gatefold album with interspersed spoken-word narration by Cash himself, drawing from the cowboy ballad tradition — outlaw heroes, trail drives, frontier violence, and the ghost of manifest destiny. Cash had prepared by immersing himself in Western history and spending time near the Arizona desert, bringing a conviction to the material that separated it from the Hollywood singing-cowboy genre. The album prefigured his similar concept work with the American Indian (Bitter Tears) and the working poor (Blood, Sweat and Tears).
Tracklist
- 1 Hiawatha's Vision 2:25
- 2 The Road to Kaintuck 2:43
- 3 The Shifting, Whispering Sands, Pt. I 2:53
- 4 Narration 1 1:15
- 5 The Ballad of Boot Hill 2:33
- 6 I Ride an Old Paint 2:57
- 7 Narration 2 0:31
- 8 Hardin Wouldn't Run 3:47
- 9 Narration 3 0:50
- 10 Mister Garfield 3:46
- 11 The Streets of Laredo 3:39
- 12 Narration 4 0:24
- 13 Johnny Reb 2:27
- 14 A Letter from Home 2:33
- 15 Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie alt version 2:26
- 16 Mean as Hell 3:07
- 17 Sam Hall 3:16
- 18 25 Minutes to Go 3:12
- 19 The Blizzard 3:52
- 20 Narration 5 0:39
- 21 Sweet Betsy from Pike 3:17
- 22 Green Grow the Lilacs 2:46
- 23 Narration 6 1:00
- 24 Stampede 2:59
- 25 The Shifting, Whispering Sands, Pt. II 2:29
- 26 Reflections 2:46
