It’s one of the best-known fairy tales in American music: in the early 1990s, Johnny Cash meets producer Rick Rubin, who helps him reinvent himself to the point of resurrecting him for the general public. The Man in Black reaches old age more valued than ever and offers a repertoire as emotional as it is astonishing. However, little was known that Cash had other plans for himself if he had not crossed paths with the skilled producer, who had previously led a small revolution in hip hop with his work with the Beastie Boys and within the Def Jam Recordings label.
In 1993, a year before publishing the famous American Recordings, the album with which the producer would find a formula of instrumental crudeness subject to the powerful cavernous voice of the singer of country, Cash had begun recording some songs on his own at LSI Studios in Nashville, owned by his son-in-law, Mike Daniels. They were songs he had been writing over the last few years and with which he hoped to get off the ground. Rick Rubin came along and those compositions, most of them unfinished, were put away in a drawer. John Carter Cash, son of the American music legend, has opened that drawer and, after years of work and collaborations, has put together an album: Songwriter (Universal), a work of 11 songs that has just been released and shows an artist in full possession of his abilities.
Songwriter It is an important testimony because, beyond its symbolic value, it says a lot about the decision Cash made. Without a doubt, the musician was able to see that his work with Rubin offered him a much more renewed and overwhelming version of himself. American Recordings, Composed of his own songs and versions of original songs by Tom Waits, Kris Kristofferson and Leonard Cohen, it elevated the figure of the outlaw from ‘I Walk the Line’ to the category of the great crooner old and wise, like an oracle of an America that is always contradictory, wounded by its founding sins and in perpetual search of the white whale. American Recordings He inaugurated a series of records that would lead him to earn the definitive blessings of specialized critics, including music critics. indie, whose audience welcomed him with open arms as one of the few bastions to be venerated, if only because his deep, melancholic and dark voice was like listening to the voice of some kind of divinity from the tablets of the Old Testament.
The album is bringing out all the signs that marked him before his celebrated reinvention on American Recordings
The recovered album is therefore a lesser work than anything Cash left behind since his association with Rubin. And yet, Songwriter unfolds before the listener as an interesting path, rich in tracks that defined him. Under the production of David Ferguson, the album brings out all the signs that marked him before his celebrated reinvention in American Recordings. It’s like a summary of Cash up to 1994. There are compositions with a jumping and unstoppable rhythm, driven by Dave Roe’s bass, so typical of those fifties on Sun Records, such as ‘Well Alright’, ‘Soldier Boy’ or ‘Sing It Pretty Sue’, revised after having been recorded in 1962. There are also ballads. country like ‘Have You Ever Been to Little Rock?’ or ‘She Sang Sweet Baby James’. And another with a delicious twist swing like ‘I Love You Tonite’, a love letter to his wife, June Carter. It lacks some of his gospel side, although, on the contrary, his attitude can be appreciated outlaw anointed with a spiritual on the opening ‘Hello Out There’, where guitarist Marty Stuart leaves his stupendous mark. Stuart and Roe are musicians who used to accompany Cash and recorded with him in those days, but to complete the unfinished work of Songwriter Cash’s son has recruited others to the so-called Cash Cabin — a cramped space in Tennessee where the musician wrote, recorded and relaxed spades important ones like Dan Auerbach, from The Black Keys, who leaves a blues solo on ‘Spotlight’; and Vince Gill, who lends his voice on ‘Poor Valley Girl’.
His wife, June Carter, was so worried about her husband that one day she told him that he had to stop and think because he was more disoriented than ever.
The sessions of Songwriter The events of 1993 were almost over. At that time, Cash was almost hopeless. He had been publishing albums that had little impact for more than a decade and his audience was dwindling every year. His decline had led him to fight with his record company, Mercury, the current publisher of this album. The Man in Black did not know how to revive his career after a journey through the desert that had no end. Even some millionaires managed to convince him for a project that never materialized: they wanted to build a kind of Disneyland in Nashville. country, a theme park for the whole family where the jewel in the crown was a theatre with a capacity for almost 3,000 people bearing his name and where Cash would play every week. At that time, the musician barely filled 600-seat venues. His wife, June Carter, was so worried about her husband that one day she told him that he had to stop and think because he was more disoriented than ever.
Cash stopped and started recording a series of songs that, today, form Songwriter, the disc that shows the profile of one of the greats outlaw, the famous generation of outlaws of country who, in the seventies, challenged the rules of Nashville and faced the powerful cowboy industry. Only Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson are still standing, who is still tireless at 91 years old with non-stop tours and releasing albums every year, the last one, The Border, published last spring, an elegant emotional testimony to the mythical America. The same America to which Johnny Cash left an unparalleled testament. Because, if the series of American Recordings have been able to join in recent years The Music: Forever Words (2021) —an album with writings and letters found after his death and sung by artists such as Alison Krauss, Chris Cornell, Willie Nelson, Elvis Costello, John Mellencamp or T Bone Burnett— or The List (2009) —an album in which his daughter Rosanne Cash recorded her father’s favorite songs in his later years—, now it’s time to add Songwriter. The latest resurrection of a figure that grows with the passage of time.
Johnny Cash
Songwriter
Universal
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