The country icon’s posthumously released record is a case

Johnny Cash: Songwriter. Mercury Nashville.

★★★★

Sixty Johnny Cash had reached a career turning point in the early 1990s. Or rather, a downward slope opened up in front of him, to which there was no end in sight.

A generational change was going on in country music, and the veteran, who got shoes from two record companies, didn’t seem to find his place. Whether you are the entertainer of the whole family or still the austere one outlawwho shows the middle finger in the famous concert photo taken in prison.

Now we know that he did better than well. A fading icon brightened into a brilliant legend. The savior of Cash, dressed in black, appeared as the successful producer and publisher of hip-hop and heavy metal Rick Rubina thirtysomething urban hipster.

He didn’t try to reshape Cash, who tarnished his credibility, into something more fashionable and market-driven. Rubin trusted what was central in the stiff “Man in Black”: the human voice, the skill of the interpreter. Rubin told Cash to be himself and do as he pleases.

This is how the six-part album series that only ended with the death of Cash (1932–2003) began American Recordings, with which he saved face and found a new indie audience. Cash was cool.

But what if Cash hadn’t listened to the long-bearded Rubin outside of country circles?

Just released now Songwriteralbum hints at another possibility. Cash recorded its songs in Nashville in early 1993, less than a year before he started the first one American Recordingsin recordings.

The story does not say what the root cause was. Was Cash thinking of fishing for a contract with the songs, or was he doing a favor for the adopted daughter who owned LSI studio and her husband?

All the same Songwriter is a case of a posthumous release, because nine of the eleven songs are now being heard for the first time.

At least as essential is that all the songs are Cash’s own, composed and written. On later Rubin albums, there were always only two or three of them out of a good dozen.

Cash on Songwriterilla still his former self: he sings about love, lives the life of a single parent and speaks ambiguously about a relationship that starts in a laundromat.

They are still more interesting Drive On and Like a Soldier – the two that qualified for the records produced by Rubin. In the latter, the soldier giving an account of the war is Cash himself, albeit as a “veteran” who has returned from drug rehab.

These Songwriter the new versions are also lighter and more “country” produced by Rubin, because Cash’s storytelling is backed by the band, as it is on the whole album. But no one seems to know if this was the ultimate intention.

Produced by the album John Carter Cash and David Ferguson – a son and a credit recording artist – have played the background of the songs completely new with studio musicians and a couple of Cash veterans. The result is more successful than you dared to hope, sophisticatedly respectful.

But the Cash of these songs is not what he was and will be remembered for.