Pop Music Review : Johnny Cash at Cerritos: Riveting ‘Recordings’

Think of Johnny Cash’s concert Thursday as a feature presentation with a preview of coming attractions.

It was two hours’ worth of the Man in Black’s business-almost-as-usual show with wife June Carter and the Carter Family at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, the first of two nights at the facility.

But it is Cash’s new solo album, “American Recordings,” that has given his career its biggest artistic and sales boost in a decade or more. The combination made for an unusually diverse audience, with young and old, too-hip and couldn’t-care-less, sitting side by side.

It also spiced up what is a strong country show to begin with. The major difference between Thursday’s performance and the ones Cash and the Carter clan have been doing for years is that he included six songs from the new album. They were performed as he recorded them: just his own acoustic guitar supporting that towering oak tree of a bass voice.

The new songs, about sinners, inner demons and the quest for redemption, proved as riveting in concert as on record. Some tension, however, was dissipated by the revolving stage in the Cerritos Center’s in-the-round configuration, which made Cash a moving visual target rather than the fixed center of attention.

Cash is expected to add a December or January date in Los Angeles to a brief solo tour devoted to the “American Recordings” material.

The remainder of the 34-song show consisted of the signature numbers that have won him a place in both the Country Music and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame, several duets with June and a gospel finale with the full entourage.