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500 Greatest Songs of All Time

30

Johnny Cash, 'I Walk the Line'

Johnny Cash, 'I Walk the Line'
30/500

Writer: Cash
Producer: Sam Phillips
Released: Aug. '56, Sun
22 weeks; No. 17 

Cash began work on this track while he was in Germany with the Air Force, years before he would ever enter a studio. He returned to it after he hit with "Folsom Prison Blues," only to find that the original tape had gotten mangled. But Cash liked the strange sound and added a click-clack rhythm by winding a piece of wax paper through his guitar strings. Phillips then had him speed up the song, originally a ballad, to a driving rumble. "It was different than anything else you had ever heard," Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone. "A voice from the middle of the Earth."

Appears on: The Complete Original Sun Singles (Varese Sarabande)

RELATED:

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• The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time: Johnny Cash

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