Songs of Our Soil

“Songs of Our Soil” is the sixth album by the country music pioneer Johnny Cash, released on July 6, 1959.

Although most of the songs involve dying, this pseudo-concept album doesn’t strictly follow a specific theme the whole way through. Rather, it’s a collection of a dozen songs that generally are on the folkier side of Cash’s repertoire. We can find the theme of death in many of the tracks, such as “The Man on the Hill”, “Hank and Joe and Me”, “Clementine”, “My Grandfather’s Clock”, “Don’t Step on Mother’s Roses” and “The Caretaker”, a story of a cemetery caretaker wondering who will mourn for him when his time comes.

By his own admission, Cash was becoming “fascinated” by death during this time, especially due to his growing amphetamine dependence.