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(More customer reviews)By the mid-1970s, Johnny Cash was a veteran TV performer, and new how to keep a show humming. This seasonal special recalls the roasts and variety shows that were so popular at the time, packed with guests, gags and corny, prepackaged humor... But there's also the obvious sincerity that Johnny and June Carter Cash brought to their holiday cheer...
Filmed in their spacious ranch home, the show is conceived of as a big Christmas party, with their friends coming over for dinner and for a folksy, round-robin "guitar pull," where each guest taking a turn pickin', singing or telling a story. The performers include "Hee Haw" star Roy Clark and pop crooner Tony Orlando, who harmonize with Cash on a long medley of Stephen Foster classics, as well as Johnny's brother Tommy, superpicker Merle Travis (who picks a mean version of "The Cannonball Rag") and Johnny's pastor, Billy Graham, who closes the show with a grim Christmas parable about a rough-and-tumble mining camp that gets civilized through Jesus, but only after all kinds of violent, bloody behavior. (Yikes. What a buzzkill!)
The biggest surprise, though, comes from countrypolitan queen Barbara Mandrell, then at the height of her fame, who Cash remembers as a little girl who played steel guitar when he first met her... And sure enough, she sits down at the pedal steel and plays an impressive version of "Steel Guitar Rag." Who knew?? Although the pacing of the show is clunky, it was in keeping with the standards of live TV at the time, and it's a marvelous time capsule in many ways (especially the fashion: dig those cowboy duds on Tony Orlando!) Cash fans will definitely want to check this one out... students of the 'Seventies as well! (DJ Joe Sixpack - Slipcue)
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