In 1990, Mercury Records released a Johnny Cash single with “Goin’ by the Book” on the A-side and “Beans for Breakfast” on the B-side. The single carried the catalog number Mercury 878 292–7. A year later the B-side showed up again on Cash’s final Mercury album.
Written by Cash, produced by Clement
Cash wrote “Beans for Breakfast” by himself, and it carries his legal name, John R. Cash, as the songwriting credit. The A-side came from another writer, Butch Chester Lester. Both sides of the single were produced by Jack Clement, ℗ 1990 PolyGram Records, Inc., which was the parent company of Mercury at the time.
Clement and Cash went back a long way. Pairing them on this record placed a new Cash song inside the late-period Mercury catalog, the stretch of his career that came between his long run at Columbia, where he made records such as the 1975 album Look at Them Beans, and the later part of his life.
The single and the album
The A-side, “Goin’ by the Book,” reached number 69 on U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs. No separate chart placing exists for “Beans for Breakfast,” which traveled as the flip side.
The Mystery of Life came out in 1991. Johnny Cash’s official site dates the track to March 01, 1991. The album was the 77th overall album by country singer Johnny Cash, released in 1991, and his last for Mercury Records. Its songs are culled from both recent sessions and from leftovers from Cash’s first Mercury session in 1986 for the album *Johnny Cash is Coming to Town*.
On that album, “Beans for Breakfast” is track five and runs 3:18. “Goin’ by the Book” follows it as track six, so the single’s two songs sit side by side on the LP in reverse order.
Later releases
The song outlasted the Mercury era. It appeared on Wanted Man, a compilation released in 1994, where it is track six and runs 3:17. That set also includes Bob Dylan’s “Wanted Man” and a remake of “Ballad of a Teenage Queen” taken from the 1988 album Water from the Wells of Home. In 2006, the song reached a new audience when “I’m an Easy Rider” and “Beans for Breakfast” were used in the soundtrack to the video game *Scarface: The World Is Yours*.