In 1994, Johnny Cash stumbled out of decades of pill addiction and musical obscurity to summon some of his career’s finest work – all through an unlikely pairing with Rick Rubin, who produced albums for the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC.
Cash sat down with an acoustic guitar and sang free of the Nashville glitz, the corny arrangements and clodhopper rhythms that cluttered his earlier albums.
Listening to “American Recordings” and the three follow-ups it inspired, you saw straight into Johnny’s heart: his defiance, love for the downtrodden and simple, backwoods faith.
That is the Johnny Cash celebrated on “UnEarthed,” the five-CD, 79-song box set that Lost Highway Records released Tuesday, two months after Cash’s death.
None of his steely Man in Black anthems appear: no “Ring of Fire,” no “I Walk the Line,” no “A Boy Named Sue.”
Instead, this collection includes Cash croaking “Hurt,” a bleak addiction confessional written by Nine Inch Nails, like a final gasp.
It dips heavily into Cash’s gospel songs, including an entire disc called “My Mother’s Hymn Book.” It is hard to think of any song that could be more poignant on a Cash collection, so soon after his death, than the hopeful hymn “Never Grow Old.”
But this set shows its real value with a string of oddball duets and cover songs. Johnny Cash’s impact grows even vaster when you consider the variety of artists who worshipped him: gloom-rocker Nick Cave, tortured-soul pop tart Fiona Apple and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
“UnEarthed” opens with “Long Black Veil,” a ballad sung from the perspective of a dead man, betrayed by the lover who secretly visits his grave.
Cash first sang it in the ’60s, but on the albums, it sounded just like “Orange Blossom Special” with its hokey harmonica and boom-chicka-boom beat. On the new box set, he performs it alone, accompanied only by the strum of an acoustic guitar – far more fitting for such a haunting song. It’s hard to hear Cash moan “the night winds wail” over a harmonica.
The stripped-down quality continues throughout, especially in Cash’s gospel songs.
“I’m Gonna Try To Be That Way,” tells the story of a man who compares himself to Jesus and decides to follow the example of the man who “knew how to live right, tried to be a light.” On the old albums, show-tune trumpets are blaring all through this epiphany – irrelevant filler.
“If I Gave My Soul” from “UnEarthed” pares away everything but Cash and his guitar, and it sounds appropriately ragged.
Along with the odd matchups, “UnEarthed” has a half-dozen duets that make perfect and blissful sense: Willie Nelson, Carl Perkins . . .
Cash’s most fitting partner, though, is Joe Strummer, founder of the Clash, who died unexpectedly late last year. Though a generation younger and a genre apart, Strummer wrote the same kind of righteous, fist-shaking “conscious” music that made Cash so respected.
“UnEarthed” includes their duet “Redemption Song,” one of Bob Marley’s folkish departures from reggae. This song is a gem just for Cash’s imitation of Jamaican dialect: “Old pirates, yes, they rob I, sold I to the merchant ships . . .”
Hearing Cash and Strummer together, though, is a precious treat. This is no celebrity pairing. Both of them mean every word they sing.
Cash covers dozens of songs on this collection. Some, like “Bridge Over Troubled Water” or “You Are My Sunshine,” may have been thrown in for novelty’s sake.
But it is nicer to imagine Johnny picking through a list of his favorites, culling the songs of six decades and finding the ones that fit inside the pockets of his black suit jacket.
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(c) 2003, Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
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AP-NY-11-26-03 1407EST
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