Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
(81 customer reviews) 170 of 173 people found the following review helpful
An Epitaph of Tremendous Importance...,
December 21, 2003 Roger Robinson "latcho_drom" (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Unearthed (Audio CD)
I cannot give enough praise to the performances on this collection of (mostly) unreleased material. Cash is astounding. I found many of these songs to be more diverse and impressive than much of what was found on the last two American Recordings releases. I can think of no more fitting farewell from (and for) the Man In Black than this. How much of it didn't end up on an album is beyond my comprehension.
The Re-Recordings:
There are quite a few legendary Cash gems given new life and intensity in this set. Among them is the classic mourner "Long Black Veil," the endearing "Flesh And Blood," and twin mining/coal town songs of "Dark As Dungeon" and "The L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore." There are others and, honestly, each one is as good (if not more straight-forward and hard-hitting) as the originals.
The Covers:
While I felt that American Recordings IV: When The Man Comes Around contained too many covers of uber-popular songs ("In My Life,"...Read more
96 of 97 people found the following review helpful
Not merely a boxed set: a treasure chest for Cash fans,
January 10, 2004 Bill R. Moore (New York, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Unearthed (Audio CD)
To put it quite plainly, Unearthed is essential for anyone who loved the last 10 years of Johnny Cash's recording career - his years with producer Rick Rubin on American Recordings, which many, including this humble reviewer, consider the best years of Cash's long and storied career. This set features not merely the best of the rest of those recordings, but the rest of the best. While some of them are not fully realized, there are many genuine revelations contained within. It boggles the mind how some of them did not make the original albums; some could have worked interchangeably, some are unquestionably better, while some, perhaps, simply did not fit the mood of the album. In any case, this boxed set, thoughtfully, has not been sequenced randomly: each of the first three discs is thematic and corresponds to a specific American album(s); the fourth, My Mother's Hymn Book, is a never-before-released gospel album; and the final disc is a Best Of for Cash on American records. As such,...Read more
38 of 38 people found the following review helpful
The Legacy of a Great Artist and a Powerful Partnership,
January 19, 2004 Juan Mobili (Valley Cottage, NY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Unearthed (Audio CD)
Unearthed is a treasure chest of Cash's movingly sung, austerely rich marvels of American music. Although a handful were written by Cash himself, his artistic weight and keen capacity to interpret the songs of others, makes this 5-CD set the stunning legacy of a man who is an icon the history of Earth's music -to call it "country," "contemporary" or "American," although accurate would not do justice to the universal power of his work. What is still more astonishing to me is that these five CDs never fall into the common, tired batch of outakes and discarded mishaps that we are so used to seeing record companies put out, on behalf of other musical legends, nor is it the "sure-thing" approach of gathering classics and re-selling them with the excuse of having being remastered -which so often is impossible to justify or hardly an improvement. No, this is five CDs of authentic greatness, the late work of a man who was beginning to say goodbye to life but was not done with honoring his...Read more
