Johnny Cash "Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar" CD/SACD PRE-ORDER

Catalog number IR-SCD24, UPC:680270758179 

Retail $30.

SHIPS LATE SEPTEMBER 2026

Intervention Records continues its Sun Records Hi-Fi Series—featuring classic titles from the Memphis label, remastered from original master tapes in the Sun vaults—with a brilliant new MONO Hybrid CD/SACD of Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar!

This iconic album, features “I Walk The Line,” “Cry, Cry, Cry,” and “Folsom Prison Blues,” 3 extra tracks not on the vinyl release and restored artwork featuring new liner notes. “I never imagined that I’d hear the iconic voice of Johnny Cash on Intervention Records!” said Shane Buettner, Intervention Records’ founder. “And I don’t think music fans around the world have ever heard Johnny’s voice, or Sam Phillips’ famous Sun Studio sound, as clearly and definitively as they will on this new mono remaster. This is as close you can get to a time machine back to Memphis in the 1950s!”

Originally issued in the fall of 1957—the first long-player for Sam Phillips’ Sun Records—Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar! showcases the stripped-down sound that would make the future Man in Black one of the most enduring and respected musicians of the 20th century. Backed only by his “Tennessee Two” (Luther Perkins on lead guitar and Marshall Grant on upright bass) and augmented by Phillips’ signature studio
slapback that gave Cash’s “boom-chicka-boom” sound its kick, Hot and Blue Guitar! is the album that introduced many to Cash’s sonorous baritone.

This CD/SACD features Cash’s first three single A-sides for Sun, all self-penned: “Cry, Cry, Cry,” (a No. 14 country chart hit), “So Doggone Lonesome” (which peaked at No. 4 on the country charts) and Cash’s signature original “I Walk The Line.” The latter was a No. 1 country smash for six non-consecutive weeks in the summer of 1956 before crossing over into the Top 20 of Billboard’s pop charts. Additional standouts include Cash’s renditions of fare like “The Wreck Of The Old 97” and “Rock Island Line,” as well as a fourth original song, “Folsom Prison Blues”—which would top the country charts more than a decade later when Cash performed it as part of his landmark 1968 live album At Folsom Prison. 

Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar! is the second title in Intervention’s Sun Records Hi-Fi Series, offering exquisite pressings of definitive country and rock material from the label’s storied discography.

It follows the debut release in the series (and Sun’s second LP), Dance Album of Carl Perkins. The 1957 album served as a defining introduction to Perkins’ pioneering rockabilly songbook, including the standards “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Matchbox,” and “Honey Don’t.” (“Blue Suede Shoes,” later covered by Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and countless others, celebrates the 70th anniversary of its release in 2026.) Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar! was sourced from flat transfers of ¼” monaural master reels sourced from the Sun Records archive, which compiled the label’s original 7” single masters. This exhaustive research process resulted in the best-sounding tape version of each of the 12 songs on the original album, and the best available sources for the extra tracks.

Kevin Gray at CoHEARent Audio mastered the original repertoire tracks, offering crystal-clear audio fidelity that sacrifices none of the spark of the original recordings. The entirety of the original repertoire of 12 songs, and 2 of the 3 extra tracks are mastered directly from Sun’s original analog master tapes to DSD. The only existing source for the “Cry, Cry, Cry” Alternate Take is 16/44 digital but we felt its inclusion crucial for artistic and historical merit.

Gus Skinas at the Super Audio Center prepared Kevin Gray’s mastered DSD files for the original repertoire, and mastered the extra tracks in the DSD domain using Gray’s mastering notes as a guide.

IR’s Tom Vadakan beautifully restored the album art, and our CD/SACD features a link to full liners notes by noted Sun Records historian and two-time Grammy Award winner Colin Escott. His liner notes offer rich context on Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar!, from recording to packaging, and how the album planted the seeds for Cash’s singular career, spanning more than half a century. “[Hot and Blue Guitar] was…a summary of Johnny Cash’s roots and his story so far,” he writes. “The breadth of his song choices gave some idea of what awaited us in the years and decades ahead.”