Does American music get much better than this? No. Cash's twangy Sun sides represent the purist distillation of his art: the mournful, unadorned nasally voice bathed in perfectly timed tape delay backed by the “Tennessee Two.” Could there be a White Stripes without Johnny Cash? Not likely. His influence was enormous, yet no one dared to imitate Johnny Cash, so singular was his musical persona.

I turned 50 when the car manufacturer Saab turned 50, so I celebrated my half century, by treating myself to a day at the Skip Barber racing school held in conjunction with Saab's 50th anniversary celebration/annual Saab club convention, which took place that summer (1997) at the beautiful Waterville Valley Ski Resort-no dogs allowed.

The title track is not twice as good as Desmond's surprise jazz “hit” “Take Five,” immortalized on the Time Out album recorded with his regular band mates in the Brubeck quartet, but it has its own serpentine charm, and having Jim Hall comping on guitar instead of Brubeck on piano gives the track a far different, more delicate texture.

The Concord catalog is filled with great sounding recordings made by top tier artists in the later phases of their careers. There's nothing wrong with that. It's to label founder and producer Carl E. Jefferson's credit that he had a jazz label vision and saw it through at a time when jazz was on the decline commercially.