Career-Spanning THE ESSENTIAL ROSANNE CASH Arrives in Stores May 24, 2011

Includes collaborations with Bruce Springsteen and Nickel Creek's Chris Thile from this year's Grammy Award®-nominated album, The List

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Legacy Recordings

Apr 05, 2011, 10:00 ET

NEW YORK, April 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Spanning the years from her 1978 self-titled debut up through her most recent Grammy Award®-nominated album The List, THE ESSENTIAL ROSANNE CASH lives up to its title and then some. The 36-song, double-CD will be available at all physical and digital retail outlets starting May 24th through Columbia/Legacy, a division of SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT.

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Co-produced by Cash and Legacy veteran Gregg Geller, THE ESSENTIAL ROSANNE CASH now stands as the only collection to draw from her entire career. The set starts with a track from her Germany-only debut LP on Ariola (1978), then moves through her career-defining decade and a half at Columbia (1979 to 1995), and concludes with her recent years at Capitol/EMI.

Rosanne's Columbia years yielded seven studio albums. Rodney Crowell, to whom Rosanne was married from 1979 to 1992, produced (or co-produced) the first five Columbia albums. (The exception was Rhythm & Romance, whose main producer was David Malloy.) Rodney has also written the liner notes for THE ESSENTIAL ROSANNE CASH. Rosanne was the main producer of Interiors, her sixth Columbia album. She then co-produced her next album, The Wheel, with John Leventhal, whom she married in 1995. Leventhal has produced all of Rosanne's albums since then, with the exception of 2006's Black Cadillac, which he co-produced with Bill Bottrell.

At Columbia, Rosanne notched an impressive 22 Country chart singles under her own name, 17 of which are on THE ESSENTIAL ROSANNE CASH. Included (for the first time in any collection) are every one of her 11 hits to reach #1, from her first consecutive triplet of "Seven Year Ache," "My Baby Thinks He's A Train," and "Blue Moon With Heartache" (all from the 1981 album, Seven Year Ache), up through her 1989 cover of the Beatles' "I Don't Want To Spoil The Party."

Other #1 highlights at Columbia include 1985's "I Don't Know Why You Don't Want Me," her Grammy Award® winner for Best Female Country Vocal; and the record-setting four consecutive #1 hits from King's Record Shop, spanning 1987-88: "The Way We Make A Broken Heart" (written by John Hiatt), "Tennessee Flat Top Box" (a Johnny Cash classic), "If You Change Your Mind," and John Stewart's "Runaway Train." Studio credits for her Columbia years include such respected names as Ricky Skaggs, Albert Lee, Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill, Marc O'Connor, Edgar Meyer, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, and many others.

THE ESSENTIAL ROSANNE CASH generously devotes the second half of Disc Two to her productive time at Capitol/EMI, as she graduated from the Country singles chart scene to deliver four introspective studio albums. Among the nine cuts is "September When It Comes," recorded in 2002 as a duet with Johnny, their voices captured together in amber the year before his death in 2003. The track was one of the focal points of the Grammy Award® nominated Black Cadillac, released in 2006, Rosanne's first new album in three years. That time encompassed the death of Johnny (September 2003), June Carter Cash (May 2003), and Rosanne's mother Vivian Liberto (May 2005). Black Cadillac is well-represented by the title track and "The World Unseen" (both written by Rosanne); and by "September When It Comes" and "House On The Lake," both co-written with John Leventhal.

The final two tracks on THE ESSENTIAL ROSANNE CASH are from The List, an album derived from a list of 100 American standards that Johnny wrote down and gave to Rosanne when she was 18 years old, and which she returned to more than three decades later. Her duet with Bruce Springsteen (on Don Gibson's 1961 "Sea Of Heartbreak") and a collaboration with Nickel Creek's Chris Thile (on Mickey Newbury's "Sweet Memories," formerly only available on a version of The List sold exclusively at Borders) are examples of why The List earned this year's Grammy Award® nomination for Best Americana Album; and the Americana Association's Award for Album Of The Year.

THE ESSENTIAL ROSANNE CASH is a landmark collection. It chronicles more than half her lifetime spent in the recording studio and as a touring performer. All the while, she balanced her life at home as wife and mother – for the first decade in Nashville and Los Angeles, for the past 20 years as a familiar face in New York City. Her life story is the subject of Composed (Penguin, 2010), a widely-praised memoir that serves as the perfect complement to THE ESSENTIAL ROSANNE CASH.

"I burrowed my way into the middle of a writer's life," she notes of her life in New York, as the author of numerous books, short stories, and magazine and newspaper articles, "a life that has crystallized with authenticity, yet whose horizons ever expand. I know the nature of the 'river with a voice,' and the songs that are the 'rhythm of my bloodstream.' The rhythm, the river, the history, the city and the voice are like water and oxygen to me: they are the essentials."

*THE ESSENTIAL ROSANNE CASH*
(Columbia/Legacy 88697 82710 2)

Disc One:
1. Can I Still Believe In You (A)
2. Baby, Better Start Turnin' Em Down (B)
3. No Memories Hangin' Round (B, duet with Bobby Bare, #17 Country)
4. Seven Year Ache (C, #1 Country; #22 Pop)
5. Blue Moon With Heartache (C, #1 Country; #104 Pop)
6. My Baby Thinks He's A Train (C, #1 Country)
7. It Hasn't Happened Yet (D, #14 Country)
8. I Wonder (D, #8 Country)
9. If It Weren't For Him (E, duet with Vince Gill, #10 Country)
10. I Don't Know Why You Don't Want Me (F, #1 Country)
11. Never Be You (F, #1 Country)
12. Hold On (F, #5 Country)
13. Runaway Train (G, #1 Country)
14. The Way We Make A Broken Heart (G, #1 Country)
15. If You Change Your Mind (G, #1 Country)
16. It's Such A Small World (H, duet with Rodney Crowell, #1 Country)
17. Tennessee Flat Top Box (G, #1 Country)
18. I Don't Want To Spoil The Party (I, #1 Country)

Disc Two:
1. The Real Me (G)
2. On The Surface (J, #69 Country)
3. What We Really Want (J, #39 Country)
4. I Want A Cure (J)
5. Mirror Image (J)
6. The Wheel (K)
7. Seventh Avenue (K)
8. Sleeping In Paris (K)
9. A Lover Is Forever (live) (L)
10. Western Wall (M)
11. September When It Comes (N, featuring Johnny Cash)
12. Black Cadillac (O)
13. House On The Lake (O)
14. The World Unseen (O)
15. The Good Intent (O)
16. 500 Miles (P)
17. Sea Of Heartbreak (P, featuring Bruce Springsteen)
18. Sweet Memories (P, featuring Chris Thile)

Albums index:
A – from Rosanne Cash (Ariola 50053, released 1978)
B – from Right or Wrong (Columbia 36155, released 1979)
C – from Seven Year Ache (Columbia 36965, released March 1981)
D – from Somewhere In The Stars (Columbia 37570, released June 1982)
E – from The Things That Matter by Vince Gill (RCA Victor 5348, released 1985)
F – from Rhythm And Romance (Columbia 39463, released June 1985)
G – from King's Record Shop (Columbia 40777, released July 1987)
H – from Diamonds & Dirt by Rodney Crowell (Columbia 44076, released April 1988)
I – from Hits 1979-1989 (Columbia 45054, released February 1989
J – from Interiors (Columbia 46079, released October 1990)
K – from The Wheel (Columbia 52729, released January 1993)
L – from Retrospective (Columbia 67321, released November 1995)
M – from 10 Song Demo (Capitol 32390, released April 1996)
N – from Rules Of Travel (Capitol 37757, released March 2003)
O – from Black Cadillac (Capitol 48738, released January 2006)
P – from The List (Manhattan 84804, released October 2009)

Notes:
All albums by Rosanne Cash except (E) and (H) as indicated.
All albums indicate U.S. release except (A), previously released in Germany only.