Rosanne Cash – Right or Wrong/Seven Year Ache

Rosanne Cash was 25 years old, with only an obscure German release to her credit, when she released her first real solo album in 1980. Right Or Wrong and its follow-up, 1981’s Seven Year Ache, would establish her as a rising country music star; like most of Cash’s early work for Columbia, both records were out of print before being recently resurrected by Australian indie label Raven and reissued, with nominal bonus tracks, on one CD.

In retrospect, both albums are remarkable for both a surfeit of wonderful songs (Cash’s hit cover of Asleep At The Wheel’s “My Baby Thinks He’s A Train”, her own gorgeous “Blue Moon With Heartache”, the Bobby Bare duet “No Memories Hangin’ Round”) and the goopiness of their production. It may not have seemed remarkable by early ’80s neo-traditionalist country standards, but the strenuously polished air, the oohhing-and-aahhing backup singers and the string arrangements can’t help but make both albums — Right Or Wrong in particular — seem almost anthropologically quaint.

If nothing else, the discs demonstrate Cash’s growing skill as an interpreter. While the best song here is an original (the sublimely arch, and comparatively spare, title track to “Seven Year Ache” is one of the best songs about a wandering lover ever put to tape), her cover of Tom Petty’s “Hometown Blues” surpasses his, and her version of Merle Haggard’s “You Don’t Have Very Far To Go” is definitive.

The bonus tracks (both covers) are more of a mixed bag: She essays the Beatles’ “Not A Second Time” with ease, but an awkward, anachronistic duet with Johnny Cash and the Everly Brothers on “Ballad Of A Teenage Queen” is more novel than actually good.