Johnny Cash - The Anthology

Documentary profile of the late singer whose troubled life brought a new edge to country and western songs

This is a profile, with performance, of one of the most colourful characters in the popular music world. When he died in 2003, aged 71, Johnny Cash received rather more tributes than a country and western singer might expect. The subjects of his songs (he recorded 70 albums) were standard C&W fare: homely narratives of poor white Midwest folk trying to ride the railroad of life without buying a ticket.

But Cash could bring a ring of authenticity to the lyrics he gruffly half-sang. In his celebrated prison concerts and songs about penitentiaries San Quentin and Folsom Prison Blues for instance - he knew what he was talking about. For Cash was something of a firebrand (literally: he was once fined $85, 000 for starting a forest fire) and spent time in prison (only three days, in fact though he also received suspended sentences for drug trafficking) as well as having experienced drug addiction.

He'd also worked in a car factory, though we have no evidence to suggest that he smuggled out car parts to try and assemble a car stolen in instalments, as in his song One Piece at a Time. And he was not the bearer of an embarrassingly female name, as was the unfortunate narrator of his half-comic song A Boy Named Sue. That was his biggest hit, and a reminder of the school-of-hard-knocks humour that was part of the Cash appeal.