The Man in Black is reaching out to fans from beyond the grave.
Next month Johnny Cash not only becomes the focus of an all-star concert, but also a just-announced five-CD box set featuring Cash's music and memories.
Titled Cash Unearthed and due out November 25 from American Recordings/Lost Highway, the set contains 79 tracks recorded over the past 10 years, including 64 never-before-heard recordings from the singer who died last month at age 71 of diabetes complications.
Produced by Rick Rubin, who launched Cash's comeback effort in 1994, the music was culled from recording sessions for 1994's American Recordings, 1996's Unchained, 2000's American III: Solitary Man and last year's American IV: The Man Comes Around.
"The last 10 years with American [Recordings] have been the glory days for me," Cash said in a September 2002 interview with the Associated Press.
The first three discs, respectively subtitled Who's Gonna Cry, Trouble in Mind and Redemption Songs, include Cash's rendition of Steve Earle's "Devil's Right Hand," Roy Orbison's "Down the Line" and Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" and "Pocahontas."
Disc four, titled My Mother's Hymn Book, has a more spiritual bent. The 15 solo acoustic songs performed stem from Cash's mother Carrie's book of hymns she taught him as a child.
The fifth CD features a variety of hits from Cash's Grammy-winning collaborations with Rubin, including "Solitary Man," and his recent remake of Nine Inch Nail's "Hurt," a winner at this year's MTV Video Music Awards.
Other material unearthed includes some of Cash's unreleased duets, including Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" with Joe Strummer, Cat Steven's "Father and Son" with Fiona Apple, Chuck Berry's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" with Carl Perkins, "Cindy" with Nick Cave, and "Like a Soldier" with Willie Nelson.
Unearthed also contains a hefty clothbound book featuring one of the singer's final interviews, in which he and Rubin discuss creating such a monumental body of work with a track-by-track discussion of each song. (Rubin and Cash had been working on his next release, tentatively titled American V, just before Cash's death.) The interview also includes comments from daughter Roseanne Cash, son John Carter Cash, Tom Petty and more.
Fans will get to hear more of Cash's musical brethren wax nostalgic when Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Steve Earle, Hank Williams Jr., Jack Clement, Larry Gatlin, Sheryl Crow and Roseanne Cash gather on November 10 for a tribute concert.
In addition, a new biography of Cash, Johnny Cash--He Walked the Line, by Garth Campbell, is due out next month and a biopic titled Walk the Line, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, is due out next year.
Posted by MK Magazine at October 24, 2003 09:00 PM