Latest CD releases reviewed

Personal File Columbia/Legacy ***

Recorded in splendid isolation, with just his guitar for comfort, the 49 tracks on this double CD have been touted as the real personal side of Johnny Cash. For any anorak, Personal File is an essential collection from a time in Cash's life (circa 1973) when, in the comfort and glow of his five-year-old marriage to June Carter Cash, he had the space to look back over his formative influences, from childhood to church, from wild gigs to love's sweet resolution, and record them with plaintive conviction. But it is just a specific time in his life. There is none of the grizzled experience of his later "American" recordings, though these simple songs of well-worn sentimentality, religious zeal and honest emotion reflect the various strains of this complex man's life. www.legacyrecordings.com Joe Breen

Rolas de Aztlan Smithsonian Folkways ***

The Chicano Movement and the United Farm Workers seem like something from a very distant time now, but in the 1960s and '70s these activists, led by Cesar Chavez, fought a very public struggle aimed at giving Mexican people justice and fairness in their traditional homeland of Aztlán, now part of the south-west corner of the US. These were some of the songs of the movement, a combination of beards, berets and ringing acoustic guitars, dated perhaps, but still carrying passion and conviction. As ever with Smithsonian Folkways, the production and presentation is first class. If you lean towards liberal economics then pass on by; if not, then feel the stirrings of a genuine people's movement. www.folkways.si.edu/ Joe Breen