Bob Dylan shared archival video footage of his appearance in 1969 on The Johnny Cash Show. The videos features Dylan performing “Living The Blues” and “I Threw It All Away” on the premiere episode of the television program.

The videos’ release coincides with the release today of Dylan’s Travelin’ Thru, 1967 – 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 15 featuring Johnny Cash. The box set contains recordings Dylan made in Nashville between 1967 and 1969, including his appearance on The Johnny Cash Show. Taped at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium on May 1, 1969, Dylan also performed “Girl From The North Country.” Later broadcast on ABC on June 7, 1969, here’s more on Dylan’s performance:

When The Johnny Cash Show was scheduled to debut in June 1969, the host offered Bob Dylan a guest slot on the first show. In the days before and after The Johnny Cash Show taping, Dylan was working on the album that emerged more than a year later as Self Portrait …

Although only one duet with Johnny Cash (“Girl From The North Country”) appears on Dylan’s original Nashville Skyline album, Cash penned the album’s Grammy Award-winning liner notes. A month after Nashville Skyline was released, Dylan made his first live TV appearance in five years on The Johnny Cash Show …

Watch Dylan performing “Living The Blues,” which appeared on Self Portrait, on The Johnny Cash Show in 1969 below:

Here’s Bob performing “I Threw It All Away,” which was featured on Nashville Skyline, on The Johnny Cash Show in 1969 below:

We’re digging into the Far Out vault to bring you not one, not two but three folk stars as Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan join Johnny Cash for a star-studded show.

On this day in 1969, Johnny Cash welcomed the audience at home to his newly acquired country and western set at the Grand Ole Opry. He was the host of a brand new show and he had some stellar guests lined up in Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Below, we’re taking a trip back in time to that show and showcasing just how brilliant it was.

Johnny Cash may have had a bad boy cowboy-like image, always playing the whisky-swilling, cigarette-smoking outlaw to a tee. But what many people forget is that Cash was a family man as well as ‘The Man in Black’. This was best shown in his charming, network-friendly TV programme ‘The Johnny Cash Show’. Running from 1969 to 1971, the show was Cash’s way of cashing in on the fame that had come his way after the huge success of his two live albums. ABC reportedly offered him an hour-long pilot as “a summer replacement for its Saturday night variety extravaganza The Hollywood Palace.”

Although Cash was offered a large degree of freedom in the creation of the show he still had to keep the network and advertisers happy by hosting some of Hollywood’s royalty, like Bob Hope, Kirk Douglas, and Peggy Lee to name a few. As well as pleasing the West Coast, Cash also had to appeal to the intelligentsia of the East Coast.

It meant that while the show offered up some incredible moments for Johnny Cash fans often involving his wife June Carter, the Carter Family, The Statler Brothers, Carl Perkins, and The Tennessee Three, it also saw Cash welcome some of his most favoured musicians.

For his first show, after giving the audience a bit of Cash swagger, that included the freehweelin’ Bob Dylan and the wonderful Joni Mitchell, it would set a precedent and mark out the show as an integral stop on the promo circuit. Cash and Dylan had been friends since 1964’s Newport Folk Festival and Mitchell’s contribution had similarly not gone unnoticed by the country legend.

He welcomed the former for a performance of his songs ‘I Threw It All Away’ and ‘Livin’ the Blues’ and asked Mitchell to perform her classic track ‘Both Sides Now’. The show’s finale is perhaps the best-remembered moment of the programme as Cash and Dylan sit down to sing ‘The Girl from The North Country’ as a perfect duet.

The track would again be featured in Cash’s duet with Mitchell when he invited her back to perform just a year later. To this day, Johnny Cash’s opening show on this day in 1969, remains one of the grandest meetings of folk singers you’re ever likely to see.

You can watch the full episode below and see this first-ever episode of The Johnny Cash Show.

Initially billed as “a lively new way to enjoy the summer!” The Johnny Cash Show had a somewhat rocky two-year run, occasionally running afoul of nervous network executives when, for example, Cash refused to censor the word “stoned” from Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and brought on Pete Seeger, despite the furor his anti-war views caused elsewhere. Ever the iconoclast, Cash was also ever the consummate entertainer. After watching the first episode of his show, you might agree that Cash and friends could have carried the hour even without his famous guests. Cash opens with a spirited “Ring of Fire” and also plays “Folsom Prison Blues,” “The Wall,” and “Greystone Chapel.” And above, watch Johnny and June sing a sweet duet of Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe.”