American Recordings (Reis)

It was a completely unexpected move. In 1994, country music legend Johnny Cash agrees to cut an album produced by rap producer Rick Rubin for Rubin's American Recordings label. The result: The first of four priceless recordings that rival anything else from Cash's outstanding body of work.

The collection includes old songs, new songs, songs written by Cash, and songs written by others. Cash's music has always been marked by great storytelling and honesty, but this recording takes the Man in Black's storytelling and honesty to a whole other level. When you listen to "The Beast in Me," you hear the raw honesty in Cash's voice and you know that he's lived every word of Nick Lowe's lyrics. "Drive On" addresses one of Cash's most passionate topics: the trails and tribulations of Vietnam veterans returning home and the people who don't understand them. "Thirteen" is a dark, brutally exposed portrayal of a life gone wrong, one that has never been on track and never will be. Who...Read more

I listen to every and all kinds of music. Until I went to college, that was true for all genres except country. I liked the western stuff my dad played, but I didn't think it was the same. But I had been playing guitar for several years and I was looking for folk music I could play. Then two things happened. 1) I saw the video for Delia's Gone while flipping through cable channels. I was drawn to it, and then 2) I saw the five star review it got in Rolling stone magazine, so I gambled my 14 bucks, or whatever. My life was changed. In the early 90's, while Kurt Cobain screamed about the world that didn't pick him for kickball in gym class, or Eddie Vedder sang about, well, whatever, Johnny Cash sang about real people who felt guilt and regret, not ironic resentment/jealousy. The voice was like listening to an old testament prophet. His words seem to be more than emotion, they seem to be truth. It's often said that God speaks to us like a still, quiet voice. This...Read more

Facing a landing in the balcony staircase in the Roxy Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, there is (or was, i haven't been there in a while) an almost life-size, autographed poster of the cover of this album, an amazing photo which has always reminded me of one of the less amiable prophets from the Old Testament just before he told some particularly egregious sinners where to head in.

And the "prophet" image is appropriate for Cash; sometimes in the sense of "a prophet without honour in his own country", as Cash has fallen from favour with the country music establishment more than once...

On their CD "Old Dogs", Waylon, Mel Tillis, Jerry Reed and Bobby Bare engaged in a joyful chomp at the hand that doesn't feed older country stars so well any more in a song by Shel Silverstein called "(Nashville is) Rough on the Livin' (But Surely Speaks Well of the Dead)", an indictment of the way in which the country music industry has tended to cast aside the...Read more