Album Reviews

Johnny Cash’s final album is a tender and moving tribute to the resilience of the human spirit. The power and fascination of folk music is that the story is in the telling not in the technique.

Late in his life, and suffering from physical infirmity, Cash connects through sheer will power, evinced only in the intensity of the communication. With Cash, the process never showed: not in his youth, not on his final recordings. He makes it sound easy, though of course it could not have been early on and especially at the end.

So don’t contemplate getting this with the expectation of experiencing either pain (except for the loss) or that uncomfortable cringing that often accompanies a performance by an over the hill artist.

Cash passed his prime in the 1970’s when he issued album after uninspired album. Producer Rick Rubin rescued Cash from self-inflicted ignominy by rekindling the artistry lying dormant in the self-doubting star through a combination of Rubin’s mysterious and some might say unlikely chemistry with Cash and his nimble, inspired A&R and production choices.

Production for this album began in 2002 the day after American IV: The Man Comes Around was completed. Cash thought that album might be his final one so Rubin suggested he get to work right away on new material. Over the next 8 months, at Rubin’s Los Angeles studio and in Tennessee, with a guitarist “on call” on days Cash was able to perform, he laid down vocals for the album.

June Carter passed away May, 2003 and John followed that September 12th, but in between under the most difficult emotional and physical conditions, work on the album continued. That’s what kept him going, according to Rubin.

Last year Rubin began going through the vocal tracks to make the choices for the album. He then assembled a recording team and the musicians, including Tom Petty cohorts Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell. Though the backing tracks were created after the fact, the production is delicate, supple and in synch with Cash’s vocal performances. The delicacy and reverence in the playing makes clear that an homage was being paid with every note and it helps to produce a supportive, buoyant backdrop for Cash’s vocals.

The song selection and tracking are both flawless and inspiring, combining Cash’s personal failings and religious convictions (Larry Gatlin’s “Help Me,” and his own previously recorded “I Came To Believe”) a new train song (“Like the 309”—a perfect bookend to daughter Roseanne’s “Long Black Cadillac”) and some covers that he makes his own, including Don Gibson’s ironic “I’d Be A Legend In My Time” (Gibson, who also wrote classics like “Sweet Dreams” “Oh, Lonesome Me,” and “I Can’t Stop Loving You” passed away two months after Cash at age 75), Ian Tyson’s “Four Strong Winds,” Springsteen’s “(Further On) Up the Road,” and even Rod McKuen’s “Love’s Been Good To Me.” You can feel the presence of June Carter as he sings Hugh Moffatt’s “Rose Of My Heart.” The album, and the long, eventful recording career of John R. Cash ends with the moving “I’m Free From The Chain Gang Now,” popularized by Jimmie Rodgers, but written by the unlikely sounding team of Lou Herscher and Saul Klein. No more seemingly unlikely than the team of Rick Rubin and Johnny Cash.

No doubt the Lost Highway vinyl LP was cut from a digital master and the pressing quality of the copy I bought is mediocre (it’s got that milky white look and the noise to prove it) but damn if the vinyl’s warmth and spatiality don’t bring Johnny Cash to life in my listening room while the CD puts him “under glass.” I don’t care why, I just know it does.

Rick Rubin thinks American V: A Hundred Highways “... is as strong an album as Johnny ever made.” I agree. It has a depth of soul and an inherent sense of career and life recapitulation that make each track feel 71 years deep. It’s one you’ll come back to many times for years to come.