I'm just a singer of songs.

This is a lyric from a song Johnny Cash recorded called A Singer of Songs which recounts a man looking back on his life, about to meet his maker, coming to the conclusion that he was simply and profoundly just a singer of songs. You can find it on Cash's Unearthed box set. This link is really cool as well. It's NPR's Remembrance of Johnny on the morning he died.

I have been trying to find the time to write this blog all day. I'll have to admit I cheated quite a bit; I cut and pasted a big chunk of commentary off the wiki site. I'm proud to say I knew all of this already, I just found it all already written for me. This is a history lesson on Johnny Cash's final work as an artist on American Recordings. I hope I don't bore you all, but it's the 12th and that's when we pay honor to my prophet, The Man In Black.

In the Eighties Johnny Cash had drifted into musical obscurity. He was dropped from his longtime label Columbia after years of hits and after attaining the status of "living legend." Most of his songs from this period are schmaltzy, overproduced, and devoid of that stark depth contained in Cash's simple and powerful delivery of songs. He had gotten lost in the punk and emerging grunge scenes in a wilderness of corny music that sounded like everything else on the radio-which Johnny Cash had never done. The first pathway out was his collaboration with Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson in the "supergroup" The Highwaymen. Then, in 1993, he sang the vocal on U2's "The Wanderer" for their album Zooropa. Although he was no longer sought after by major labels, Cash was approached by producer Rick Rubin and offered a contract with Rubin's American Recordings label, better known for rap and hard rock than for country music.

Under Rubin's supervision, he recorded the album American Recordings (1994) in his living room, accompanied only by his guitar. The video for the first single, the traditional song "Delia's Gone," was put into rotation on MTV, including a spot on Beavis and Butt-head. The album was hailed by critics and many declared it to be Cash's finest album since the late 1960s, while his versions of songs by more modern artists such as heavy metal band Danzig and Tom Waits helped to bring him a new audience. American Recordings received a Grammy for Contemporary Folk Album of the Year at the 1994 Grammy Awards. Cash wrote that his reception at the 1994 Glastonbury Festival was one of the highlights of his career. This was the beginning of a decade of music industry accolades and surprising commercial success.

For his second album with Rubin, 1996's Unchained, Cash enlisted the accompaniment of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. In addition to many of Cash's own compositions, Unchained contained songs by Soundgarden ("Rusty Cage") and Beck ("Rowboat"), as well as a guest appearance from Flea, bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The album also included a cover of a classic 1962 Hank Snow song called "I've Been Everywhere." Despite being virtually ignored by country music radio and the Nashville establishment, Unchained received a Grammy for Best Country Album.

The album American III: Solitary Man (2000) contained Cash's response to his illness, typified by a version of Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down," as well as a powerful reading of U2's "One." American III: Solitary Man, just like Cash's two previous albums produced by Rick Rubin, was a Grammy winner, taking home the award for the Best Country Male Vocal Performance for Cash's version of the Neil Diamond classic "Solitary Man."


Cash released American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002), consisting partly of original material and partly of covers. The video for "Hurt", a song written by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails in the early-1990s, was nominated in seven categories at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards and won the award for Best Cinematography. In February 2003, mere days before his 71st birthday, Cash won another Grammy for Best Country Male Vocal Performance for "Give My Love To Rose," a song Cash had originally recorded in the late 1950s. The music video for "Hurt," hailed by critics and fans alike as the most personal and moving music video in history, also won a Grammy for Best Short Form Video at the 2004 Grammy Awards.

In 2003, shortly after Johnny's death Rick Rubin released a project he and Johnny had been working on for years; the boxed set Unearthed. The set was a collection of music (4 CDs full) that Johnny had recorded in the ten years on American. This boxed set is amazing and the liner notes which include Cash's comments on each song are even more so.

Before his death Johnny recorded dozens more songs with Rubin. These songs will one day be released on Johnny's final album American V. Rubin is in negotiations now for a new deal and this album as much as any other project he has in his vault is greatly anticipated.