Continuing their Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum Archive Series, Shout! Factory has released The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1979, which features a return to Nashville for the country star's annual filmed Christmas special (after the failed experiment of filming the 1978 special in Hollywood). Guest stars this go around are on the light side again, with singer/songwriter Tom T. Hall and Anne Murray performing several songs (and of course, Johnny's wife, June Carter Cash showing up, as well), while bizarre addition Andy Kaufman keeps turning up, basically making a mockery (in that beautifully sweet way of his) of the entire event. Luckily, those looking for more songs after the skimpy 1978 special will be happy with the heftier 16-song playlist here, although again, for a special with the word, "Christmas," in it, only three songs specifically devoted to the holiday seems a curious choice.

Unfortunately, Johnny's first song, (Ghost) Riders in the Sky, the Stan Jones standard, is obviously lip-synched - and not particularly well - which may account for Cash's over-empathic physical interpretation of the song (Cash had a recording of this song published in 1979; I would suspect that's the recording he's lip-synching here). Perhaps he thought if he really overemphasized his movements on stage, it would cover up the synching, which it may very well have for the people in the auditorium - but not for the viewers at home, watching the huge close-ups on their TVs. After this misstep, Johnny interprets his own song, Five Feet High and Rising, which was inspired by his memories as a boy of the terrific Arkansas floods of 1937. In a nod to his previous Christmas specials (except the 1978 one) which featured location footage of some Cash trip, here, his father Ray Cash and his older brother Roy Cash, inspect the old Cash homestead in Dyess, Arkansas, with the footage interspersed with the song, as the men and other residents of Dyess remember the calamitous floods. What any of this has to do with Christmas is anybody's guess, but regardless of the appropriateness of this segment's inclusion in a Christmas special, it doesn't work from a technical standpoint, either, with Johnny awkwardly jumping in with a stanza or two of song in-between the location footage. The effect is jarring and abrupt.

By this point, my hopes for The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1979 were beginning to wane...a feeling not at all helped by the appearance of Anne "Snowbird" Murray. To my taste, the musical equivalent of drawing a picture of a snow drift on a white piece of paper...with a white crayon, Murray gets a chance to emote her number one smash hit, You Needed Me (a more lugubrious piece of treacle I have never heard), before joining Johnny on the special's first actual Christmas song, That Christmasy Feeling (which was co-written by Johnny's brother, Tommy). Thankfully, Kaufman comes and briefly interrupts them with his shtick about wanting to sing his own song (a set up for his later Elvis impersonation). Murray is about as successful bantering with Kaufman as she is singing, so fortunately, she disappears until the end of the special. All is forgiven, though, when The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1979 comes beautifully back to life with Johnny's mesmerizing spoken interpretation of Edna St. Vincent Millay's heartbreaking poem, The Ballad of The Harp Weaver, performed in honor of his mother, Carrie Cash, whom Johnny introduces, sitting in the audience. Although I didn't care for the drawings that illustrated his dramatic reading, Johnny's performance is so richly textured and heartfelt that the intrusive (and not altogether artistically successful) drawings can quickly be forgotten. It's a stunning moment in the special, fitting in nicely with Cash's life-long interest in, and advocacy for, the poor and the downtrodden.

Tom T. Hall now takes the stage, singing his hit, That's Why You Have to Be You, before Johnny joins him for a fun medley of other Hall hits, including Country Is, Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine, The Year That Clayton Delaney Died, I Love, and a reprise of Country Is. Kaufman again interrupts the men (Hall looks truly put out, while Cash doesn't seem quite too sure what to make of Kaufman), requesting a song, only to return again as Santa when June and Johnny are ready to sing If I Were a Carpenter. June, who evidently had a hell of a sense of humor, is clearly delighted by Kaufman's antics - she gets it. Johnny may have been another matter. He alternately looks bemused then annoyed, at one time even looking like he's ready to throw down with Kaufman. Whether this is part of the gag or not - and who could ever tell with Kaufman? - it's amusing to see Kaufman come out as Latka/Santa, and, prompted by June, say, "Pass the salt," instead of "Ho, ho, ho."

Coming out to do his solo number, Kaufman transforms himself into Elvis, and sings, quite robustly, That's When Your Heartaches Begin. The brilliance of Kaufman was always that underlying suspicion that everything he did was a put-on - even to himself. Was he a great Elvis impersonator? Not particularly, if you match him up to even the average Vegas lounge Elvis, but the incongruity of Kaufman doing a "straight" impersonation-slash-send-up, made this bit priceless, because you could never really pin down if Kaufman was laughing at himself, Elvis, or you. And the perfect example of that is a side shot of Kaufman during this performance, where you can see a woman down in the front row, absolutely paralyzed with laughter. You can tell she loves it when he does his Elvis hip grinding, but is she laughing and applauding because he looks like a goof doing it, or because he's good at doing it, or because he's subtly making fun of Elvis, or because he's genuinely celebrating Elvis? Who knows with Kaufman, and that's why the guy was a genius.

Tom T. Hall returns for a spirited version of Christmas Is, before June, surrounded by the rest of the guests and some school-aged children (including her son, John Carter Cash), digs into Back Up and Push, the Bill Monroe bluegrass classic. Anne Murray returns for a pallid (what else) Christmas Wishes, before Johnny ends the evening with a commanding version of Let There Be Peace On Earth. A decidedly mixed-bag as both a musical variety show (Murray???) and a TV Christmas special (Kaufman is definitely sending all of this up...or is he???), The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1979 is a big improvement over the 1978 special, but one still, most likely, just for the fans to appreciate.

Here are the 12 songs performed by Johnny Cash and his guests for The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1978, in the order of their appearance:

(Ghost) Riders in the Sky
Johnny Cash

Five Feet High and Rising
Johnny Cash

You Needed Me
Anne Murray

That Christmasy Feeling
Johnny Cash and Anne Murray

That's Why You Have to Be You
Tom T. Hall

Country Is
Johnny Cash and Tom T. Hall

Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine
Tom T. Hall

The Year That Clayton Delaney Died
Johnny Cash and Tom T. Hall

I Love
Johnny Cash and Tom T. Hall

Country Is
Johnny Cash and Tom T. Hall

If I Were a Carpenter
Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash

That's When Your Heartaches Begin
Andy Kaufman

Christmas Is
Tom T. Hall

Back Up and Push
June Carter Cash

Christmas Wishes
Anne Murray

Let There Be Peace on Earth
Johnny Cash

The DVD:

The Video:
The full screen, 1.33:1 video image for The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1979 looks quite good for its age, with this shot-on-video TV special from thirty years ago retaining a sometimes sharp picture (a little bit of fuzz is inevitable from these video shoots from thirty years ago) and reasonably accurate colors. Since this was shot in an auditorium, the camera work is a little more controlled than it was in that small TV studio for the previous 1978 special (the lighting, in particular, is much improved here).

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English mono audio track accurately reflects the original broadcast presentation, but really - shouldn't this be remixed in 5.1? There are no subtitles or close-captions.

The Extras:
As with previous Shout! Factory Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum Archive Series DVDs, there's a nice little four-page pamphlet included, with some pictures and background on Cash, including a run-down of the special.

Final Thoughts:
Andy Kaufman completists will no doubt swarm all over this bizarre appearance on his resume, not only to see another version of his Elvis send-up (or tribute?), but also to see the truly strange pairing of Cash and Kaufman together on the same stage (why didn't someone think of them having a duet together???). Johnny is in much better form this time around (although that opening lip-synch is disheartening), but his guests are rather pallid, and the song selection again (as with the '78 special), ain't exactly Christmasy. I suspect hard-core Cash fans will want to at least rent this to see their idol, but the average viewer will find something else to watch this Christmas Eve night besides The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1979.