Johnny Cash-"A Boy Named Sue"
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Topic: Johnny Cash-"A Boy Named Sue"
Posted By: jimct
Subject: Johnny Cash-"A Boy Named Sue"
Date Posted: 03 June 2008 at 11:35pm
| My commercial 45, which is mono, has a listed time of (3:40) and an actual time of (3:38). I only post this info because the vast majority of current database CD listings for this song fall in the runtime range of between (3:36) and (3:46). |
Replies:
Posted By: TomDiehl1
Date Posted: 04 June 2008 at 8:32am
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Was a stereo commercial 45 ever available for this one? I had a stereo promo of it once upon a time but somehow it left my collection during my college years, either stolen from college or accidentally sold off when i unloaded several boxes of what i thought were NOT part of my personal collection, at a flea market a few summers ago. All promo's ive seen on ebay since then have been mono promos! ------------- Live in stereo. |
Posted By: Paul C
Date Posted: 04 June 2008 at 9:09am
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My U.S. commercial 45 starts with crowd noises but no actual applause. I have the song on two CDs, Good Time Country and Super Hits (the latter a Canadian pressing), which, in addition to having the crowd noises start earlier, have applause dubbed over the commercial 45 intro (or perhaps the 45 had them removed). It is not simply a matter of the different versions fading in at different spots, so for purists the true commercial 45 version cannot be created from either CD. The question is whether there is any CD out there from which it can be created.
A little aside about the song: Cash had never performed the song before and had been given the song only hours before. While performing the song, he was actually reading the words off a piece of paper. |
Posted By: jimct
Date Posted: 04 June 2008 at 9:58am
| Tom, my promo 45 is also mono, and it has the exact same, listed (3:40), actual (3:38) timing parameters as I've just reported for my commercial 45. And, as Paul C mentions, both my stock & promo 45 copies do begin with a second or two of "mellow, quiet, expectant background crowd noise", but no actual applause, before the song's first guitar note. Paul's question here is a good one, though, and makes me wonder whether or not this exact intro could be unique to the original mono 45 or not. FYI, the artist name on my commercial 45 is predictably shown as "Johnny Cash", but for both "A Boy Named Sue" and its flip side, "San Quentin", for some reason his name is shown as "J. Cash" on my promo 45. I think I vaguely remember hearing on his TV show, back when I was a kid, that during his own time spent in prison, back in the 50's, I believe, that's how the prison personnel had referred to him, and this was perhaps an "homage" of sorts, to his own time spent locked up, being that "A Boy Named Sue" was recorded at San Quentin prison and all, but I'm not at all positive about this. Or, given the novelty nature of this release, it could simply be that Columbia was trying to make this particular promo 45 relase by him somehow stand out to radio, from his many other previous 45 releases. Since, for the past 5 years or so (1964-1969), the vast majority of his radio airplay had come from Country-formatted stations, not Top 40 stations. |
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 04 June 2008 at 11:01am
| Here's a thought...if you paste the opening guitar from the uncensored version on to the censored version, would that work? |
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 04 June 2008 at 11:12am
| reason I suggested the above, the uncensored version does not have applause dubbed over the intro of the song. I pasted the intro in and the file runs 3:38. |
Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 04 June 2008 at 5:43pm
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My promo is in stereo, but otherwise sounds like the same version described as the mono 45.
As you can see, the only "J. Cash" is the writer credit on "San Quentin". 
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Posted By: MCT1
Date Posted: 05 June 2008 at 8:45am
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According to wikipedia, Cash's full birth name was "J.R. Cash" (just initials, no first/middle names). When he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1950, he was told that he couldn't sign on with just a first initial, he needed a first name. So he put down "John R. Cash" as his name. That doesn't really shed any light about why Columbia listed him as "J. Cash" on this 45, but it was, in a sense, his real first and last name.
Incidentally, wikipedia claims that Cash never actually spent time in prison, despite his "outlaw" image. He was arrested a number of times on various misdemeanor charges, but never received a prison sentence per se, and never spent any significant amount of time in jail. All of the above is with the usual caveats about wikipedia. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cash |