Starting with an ingratiating 1955 radio performance, broadcast the same day that Cash and the Tennessee Two (guitarist Luther Perkins, upright bassist Marshall Grant) recorded their first Sun Records single, Bootleg II follows the untutored country boy from Memphis to Nashville to international fame. Cash fundamentalists can savor 11 haunting Sun demos, while others will marvel at the 13 unreleased or underheard ’60s tracks that sweeten his primeval baritone with strings, choirs, and reverb. Like Cash’s entire catalog, the range of material is peerlessly broad, arguing that the man was a genre unto himself.
