Blood Sweat and Tears Songwriting Credits by Johnny Cash

Blood, Sweat and Tears is the eighth studio album by Johnny Cash, released in 1963 on Columbia Records and produced by Don Law, a concept album addressing the experience of American working men and women, organized around themes of physical labor, pride, and endurance, and reflecting the folk revival's engagement with working-class subject matter in the early 1960s. Cash wrote or co-wrote several tracks; 'The Legend of John Henry's Hammer', an extended narrative about the mythological steel-driving man, is the album's central piece, running over eight minutes and demonstrating Cash's ability to sustain the folk ballad form across a length that exceeds conventional radio-formatted songwriting. The album also includes 'Busted' (Harlan Howard), which would become one of the most covered country songs of the decade, and 'Casey Jones,' a reinterpretation of the railroad disaster ballad that aligned Cash with the American folk tradition of historical narrative song. Blood, Sweat and Tears reached the top ten on the Billboard Country Albums chart and reflects Cash's consistent engagement with American labor history and the folk documentary tradition that was simultaneously being explored by Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and others on the opposite coast. The album demonstrates the range of Cash's Columbia period: gospel (Hymns), historical narrative (Ride This Train), and labor folk (Blood, Sweat and Tears) all addressed in rapid succession.