Rosanne Cash: The List September 25, 2010

When Rosanne Cash was 18 and on the road with her father, the incomparable country music superstar Johnny Cash, he became alarmed at the number of songs that she didn’t know. As the tour progressed, he developed a list on a legal pad — “100 Essential Country Songs” — and gave it to her with a thinly veiled admonishment that she needed to do her homework. Now, more than 30 years later, Cash has selected a dozen songs from the syllabus presented to her by her father and has recorded her first album of covers, filtered through her own unique, sophisticated perspective. “I think he was alarmed that I might miss something essential about who he was and who I was. He had a deeply intuitive understanding and overview of every critical juncture in Southern music — Appalachian songs, early folk songs, Delta blues, Southern gospel, right up to modern country music,” says Cash. “These songs are as important as the Civil War to who we are as Americans.” The List presents Rosanne Cash like you’ve never heard her before, as she embraces her heritage and sings for the pure love of these songs that have shaped who she is as an artist.

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