This 3 CD box is a must-have for all music fans. It's not country music - actually it's just music which sounds country. Two of these records - Bitter Tears and Blood, Sweat & Tears - are among Cash's first concept albums. Bitter Tears is an album sung from an Indian's perspective - song by song Cash is revealing the nature and feelings of America's most oppressed minority (which once wasn't a minority) - the Native Americans. The album was co-written by an Indian, Peter LaFarge, author of such hits as "The Ballad of Ira Hayes", or sadly ironic and rare pearls as "Custer". Blood, Sweat & Tears provides us with another concept - songs of a hard working man. Cash tells us stories about poor, hard working people, but avoids adding too much sugar. These are touching tales such as "The Legend of John Henry's Hammer" - a nearly 9 minutes long story of a hammer-swinger, or "Casey Jones", the "good engineer to be laying dead". The albums are among the first concept albums in music history, and that's why they also might be worth listening to. The third album - The Ring of Fire - is a collection of Cash's early hits from his early Columbia years, and includes such gems as "The Ring of Fire" or "Bonanza", and - occompanied by those two concept albums - gives us a larger view at the first 5 years of Cash at Columbia, and at the music that - from our 21st century view - was beyond its time. A must-have!