On November 13 Shout! Factory will release two special DVDs just in time for the holiday season. The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1976 and The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1977 are the first releases to come out of the exclusive agreement between Shout! Factory and the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum, which allows Shout! Factory to release DVDs taken from television shows archived in the Museum and representing many of country music’s all-time top artists. These DVDs will mark the first time in 30 years that these Christmas specials have been seen.
Johnny and June Carter Cash went to their homes in Bon Aqua, and Hendersonville, Tennessee to tape The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1976. After opening the show, Johnny takes guest Tony Orlando for a ride around his property, teasing him about country versus city life, and promising that “
June makes the best snake and potatoes around.” In addition to several stellar performances, including “
Christmas As I Knew It,” the special includes a medley of songs from Stephen Foster, “
a man from the North,”
Cash says, “
who wrote such great things about the South.” The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1976, which originally aired December 6, 1976, on CBS, also features special guests Roy Clark, Merle Travis, Barbara Mandrell, and Billy Graham.
The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1977 includes an all-star tribute to Elvis Presley, who had passed away two months prior. Taped at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry House, fellow Sun Records labelmates and rockabilly pioneers Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison join Cash on “This Train Is Bound For Glory” in memory of Presley, whose affinity for such sacred music was well known. In addition to a selection of Christmas songs, many hit singles are performed on this special, including Perkins’s “Blue Suede Shoes,” Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman,” and Lewis’s 1957 Sun smash “Whole Lot Of Shakin’ Going On.” Cash goes on to recall a life-changing holiday season he experienced while stationed in Germany in the early 1950s. “I was lonesome, homesick and had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” he explains. “But one day I walked four miles through the snow to a little pawn shop where there was a guitar in the window with a five-dollar price tag.”
In recent years, Shout! Factory has cultivated a deeper relationship with the country music community, releasing country titles such as Solomon Burke’s Nashville, Jessi Colter’s Out Of The Ashes, and John Prine Live On Soundstage 1980. On September 4, Shout! Factory released a collection of home movies from former Museum Artist-In-Residence Cowboy Jack Clement (a longtime friend of Johnny Cash) titled Shakespeare Was a Big George Jones Fan.
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