Rosanne Cash: Strong songs by her and her father

It was clear from the start during Rosanne Cash's performance Sunday night that the singer-songwriter is in a terrific place, career-wise - able to embrace her rich musical legacy as country icon Johnny Cash's daughter, while acknowledging her own three decades as a musical force.

Cash - who performed with her five-member band at Collingswood's Scottish Rite Auditorium - kept the focus of the smoothly paced 90-minute show squarely on her most recent album, The List, which pays tribute to country music history through classic songs that her father considered invaluable for her to learn.

From the finger-snapping opener, "I'm Moving On," Cash's expressive voice seemed especially strong in the acoustically pristine setting, which was filled to near-capacity. She proceeded to play three-quarters of the songs from The List, adding new energy to many of the mid-tempo numbers, like "Miss the Mississippi and You" and "500 Miles," which led off with some gospel-infused organ.

The plentiful highlights included Cash's plaintive vocals on the Carter family classic "Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow," and a scorching guitar solo by Cash's husband and producer, John Leventhal, which seriously ramped up the rock quotient of "Motherless Children."

Cash, 54, brought the crowd to its feet with her chillingly poignant interpretation of "Long Black Veil," a country hit for Lefty Frizzell in 1959 and again for Cash's father nearly a decade later. Told from the perspective of a man wrongly executed because he was unwilling to provide an alibi for a murder that occurred while he was romancing his best friend's wife, it's the "perfect country song," Cash said - rife with murder, drama, and a protagonist with integrity.

Cash's rendition of Bobbie Gentry's sparse "Ode to Billie Joe" held just the right vocal edge to steer it away from campiness, while her cover of dad Johnny's 1961 hit "Tennessee Flat Top Box" (which became her own chart-topper in 1988) seemed as earnest as it was playful.

Cash, who frequently played acoustic guitar during the show, finally got around to playing some of her own material. She began with her 1981 breakthrough "Seven Year Ache" before returning for an encore that featured another two of her songs, early '80s torch-and-twang ballad "Blue Moon With Heartache," and an especially exhilarating version of "The Wheel."