Reviewed by Dave Brassington

As far as I know this is the very first DVD devoted solely to Johnny Cash's gospel music. Hosted by Dan Rather, a Christian minister who knew Johnny for many years, it chronicles Johnny's life more accurately than anything else I can recollect. Beginning with his humble Arkansas routs, it starts with how he wrote "Five Feet High And Rising" from memories of a real life flood effecting their cotton farm. Original band member Marshall Grant then relates how initially Sam Philips rejected Johnny for his Sun Records label, but following Cash's insistence he took him on to record country music but would only allow him to do a few gospel songs as he said they would not sell! June comes into the picture in the early 1960s as an artist in her own right, and this era is depicted in many poignant pictures of how Cash descended into terrible drug dependency despite continuing to be a big commercial success. How Johnny survived through the intervention of the good Lord and a good woman is well chronicled. With his career back on track in the late 1960s Johnny emerged to terrific success with his prison albums, and here we have "He Turned The Water Into Wine", recorded in San Quentin which I found very moving bearing in mind that most of the inmates were there for very serious crimes. Johnny and June's son, John Carter Cash, also features strongly telling how Johnny progressed spiritually in the 1970s, we get some gospel clips from his TV shows and then a remarkable interview with Johnny and June as to why they went to Israel to make the Gospel Road film. Probably the most moving segment is the final years dealing with his decline into ill health, his musical renaissance with the American recordings and the rather unexpected death of June which left him devastated. The final scenes of him recording in a wheelchair and being interviewed by Larry King on CNN are very powerful.

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