Johnny Cash Sings The Ballads Of The American Indian: Bitter Tears

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Johnny Cash Sings The Ballads Of The American Indian: Bitter Tears album cover
Album Information

Total Tracks: 8   Total Length: 31:17

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American Indian Ballads

livoniagurl

I've had the record for over 40 years. Glad I can now listen to it on CD any time I want too. Needless to say, I love the record, CD.

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A forgotten classic?

KET

One of Johnny's most personal concept records (as it's been said he was part-Cherokee), Bitter Tears was pretty much ignored by radio and even by Columbia's promotional department, prompting the singer to take out ads himself in support of the album. But more than that, Cash is illuminating a part of America which is often swept under the rug: the country's racist attitudes towards its original inhabitants. Powerful song tales such as "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" and "As Long As the Grass Shall Grow" linger on and haunt one's memory long after the music stops playing. Highly recommended!

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Though on the surface Bitter Tears is just another installment in the seemingly endless series of Americana albums that Johnny Cash released in the ’60s, it was a more daring collection than any of its predecessors or successors. Where Cash’s previous Americana albums had previously concentrated on cowboys and Western pioneers, Bitter Tears is all about Native Americans and their trials and tribulations. It isn’t a crass move — it’s a sensitive, clear-eyed take on the unfair treatment of the American Indian that uses traditional folk ballads and newly written songs in the same vein. It’s stark and moving, his best Americana album of the ’60s. – Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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