Customer Reviews

American Recordings

5 star:		(94)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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 else but Cash can convincingly sing the lyric "I pray you don't look at me/I pray I don't look back"?

It took a lot of courage for Cash to do this album. Think about it: Columbia Records had dropped him years before. Now here he was, making a recording not with his band, but with only his voice and his guitar. With one man and one guitar, there's not much you can hide. If the music is true and honest, it'll come through. If it's not, that'll come through too. But the result is true, naked, honest, courageous music. It doesn't get any better than this. Johnny Cash lays it all on the line like no one else ever has...and probably never will.

DISC TIME: 41:52

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 IS Johnny Cash' American Recordings. I have cried to this album many times, esp. to Like A Soldier, and The Beast In Me. Accepting one's own contradictions is the key to loving yourself. Johnny's album helped me to do this. It is the most important sound recording I own. Do yourself a favor and buy it.

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 older acts who created it in favour of the Hat of the Day, remembering them only in time for a hypocritical display when they die.

For a while, a few years ago, it looked as if that was going to be the way that Johnny Cash was going -- the majors seemed less and less interested in him, and he pretty much only got airplay on nostalgia-oriented programs.

And then he and Rick Rubin electrified the music world with this album, which cut a swathe across all genres and brought Cash back to the forefront.

This album was incredible when released, and it's still amazing now.

The weakest tracks on it are "Bird on a Wire" and "Man Who Couldn't Cry", which don't really suit Cash's delivery -- and they are Very Good.

"Le the Train Blow the Whistle (When I'm Gone)" and "Down by the Train", both using the classic mataphor of the train as a transition, are both strong meditations on life, death and redemption.

But it's "Drive On" that i find myself coming back to, and it's "Drive On" to which i had the entire lyric memorised without trying within a few days of buying the CD; a song that speaks to me as strongly as Richard Thompson's "Wall of Death", that resonates so strongly with my own memories and emotions.

Cash got himself in trouble with the Country Establishment in the latter 60's/early 70's for daring to suggest that, perhaps, the war in Viet Nam might not be the best idea. But it was Cash (and June Carter Cash), not the Nashville Hawks who were all for the war from the safety of a recording studio, who went to 'Nam on their own dime and lived there in a trailer on an American base and entertained the troops on their way to the front and visited them in thehospital on their way back...

And twenty-five years later, Cash distilled what he saw and heard from those grunts into this one song, with its chilling repetition of the front-line soldier's mantra - "It don't mean nothin'." -- in a song that speaks to the ambivalence that America still feels toward that war and toward those of us (even REMFs like myself) who served in it.

It's The Man In Black still acting as our conscience, still reminding us that there are things that aren't right that we need to fix.

And still looking forward to that day that his faith told him was coming -- that day, maybe far far away, when "things are brighter"...

I hope angel wings come in black, though.

Johnny Cash's three albums (so far!) for Rick Rubin's maverick record company deserve a massive tome dedicated to analyzing the significance of the man's achievement at this late a day in his career. Although Johnny Cash has almost always been a restless creative spirit that has continued to produce great work decade after decade, before this 1994 album hit music stores he was thought of as a has-been and irrelevant to a younger generation that had its own new, vital music by the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Beck, REM, etc.

While later albums such as Water From The Wells Of Home as well as his immortal Sun singles & late 60's/early 70's material kept Cash from being completely forgotten, his star had dimmed considerably. Looking back, it is suprising that his American Recordings album wasn't initially derided as desperate. For someone of Johnny Cash's stature to cover Thirteen & rewrite the Blind Willie McTell classic 'Delia' to include a verse about automatic weapons is a very risky venture. Obviously, it paid off far better than anyone had a right to imagine.

The opening track, Delia's Gone, is one of two magnificent recent takes on the chestnut. One year earlier, Bob Dylan (not coincidentally, one of the handful of living artists in Cash's league) made it the defining track on his excellent World Gone Wrong cover album. But where his would not have sounded out of place on a Harry Smith anthology, Johnny Cash's is resolutely of the moment. It's a hard-worn performance, like Dylan's, but it goes one better by also being sidesplittingly funny. Where Dylan uses it to bemoan an impossibly screwed up universe, The Man In Black can't help but laugh at it all. And why not? Even at his most political, or reaffirming his faith & devotion to Christianity, Johnny Cash has always been a remarkably unjudgemental and unflappable soul.

It took several listens for me to come to terms with Cash on Danzig. Not because I couldn't buy it, but because I had to take the extra time to absorb how genius I thought it to be. AR, Unchained & AR III will, in my humble opinion, come to be viewed by later generations as this great, great artists' crowing achievement. Nowhere else in his catalogue does he so perfectly & generously reveal how many boundaries he has crossed with his music and that no matter the song or the writer, if it is good Johnny Cash can bring it home. More than any other country artist, he enjoys popularity among a wide demographic. Young and old. Black and white. Rich and poor. Gay and straight. An important factor in this is how he has, very quitely, built up such an eclectic body of work. A body of work with conscience, conviction, integrity and the humor not to take such things too seriously.

I could go on about the individual performances; all gold. Down There By The Train, Why Me Lord?, The Man Who Couldn't Cry, O Bury Me Not.....all of which deserve their own individual chapters in that aforementioned book. But, if you are reading this, chances are you are a member of the choir. Which is to say,
you love great music. There will never be another Johnny Cash. Just like there will never be another Miles Davis or another Dorothy Parker. Just be glad we were lucky enough to get them the first time around!

Forget the fact that this album revitalized Johnny Cash's career and brought him to the doorsteps of the alternative rock crowd....The only thing one needs to know is that it is an absolute masterwork. Few artists can manage to sound as powerful and immortal as Cash does here, especially considering that every track was recorded sparsely with only the man, his soul-commanding voice, and his guitar. There is a stunning amount of emotional depth that comes from Cash's harsh baritone as it conveys an underlying sense of warmth and hard-earned knowledge. Listening to Johnny Cash is like getting an education from an age-old scholar.

From the gangster folk of "Delia's Gone" to the gospel leanings of "Redemption" to the grinningly sarcastic "The Man Who Couldn't Cry," The Man In Black sheds any doubt that he is anything less than a musical deity. Cash takes many songs penned by the likes of Glenn Danzig, Leonard Cohen, Nick Lowe, and Tom Waits and makes them sound as if they'd been written by him all along. Praise is also due to Rick Rubin for casting Cash in such naked light and keeping this collection unplugged and singular in purpose and integrity. Although the following albums in the American Recordings quadrilogy were notably strong, this one still resonates the strongest. There is simply an untouchable ragged beauty to this disc and it serves as a fitting reminder of how indespensable and luminous Johnny Cash was as a musical artist. AMERICAN RECORDINGS is an essential part of any music collection, country/western or otherwise. The man may be gone now, but we will always have this subtle tour de force to remember him by.

Growing up in Oklahoma, I developed, as you can well imagine, a justifiably inherent dislike for anything labeled "country music." This, unfortunately, kept me away from the music of Johnny Cash for years. I now sincerely regret what I have missed. I finally decided to try out the man's music after constantly hearing about him through many of the artists I most love and admire: Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, and Tom Waits (all of whom Cash has covered), among others. Needless to say, I am truly glad I decided to take the plunge. Though certain aspects of the music - Cash's twang, some of the subject matter, "A Cowboy's Prayer" - may well fall under the realm of country, the man's music - on this album is particular - is far too broad and diverse to be considered anything but Americana. With nothing to get in the way of his voice and guitar, Cash here gives us 13 great performances without any window dressing - just pure, brutal, honest, real music delivered in Cash's powerful and unmistakable baritone, "the most male voice in Christendom", as Bono put it, in one of his rare on-target quotations. In several great originals - the opening murder ballads Delia's Gone; the bleak, stubborn Let The Train Blow The Whistle; and the mournful, longing Like A Soldier, among others - Cash shows his talent as a songwriter and performer. That said, the highlights of the album, for me, are the covers. Cash proves that he his, perhaps, the best interpreter in the music business with deft covers of artists as startingly diverse as Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Danzig, Loudon Wainright III, Kris Kristofferson, and Nick Lowe. It is amazing that, as Cash was on the plus side of 60 when this album was recorded, his voices sounds just as good as - indeed, arguably better than - it ever did before. A truly worthy album that I reccommend to fans of any type of music.

It's hard to believe that over half of the songs on this album are actually not written by Cash himself. He takes these songs and commands them; they're damn near definitive readings, if not fully definitive. When Cash does write, the results are amazing. Unsurprisingly, he sticks to Biblical themes ("Redemption") and the dark side of the psyche ("Delia's Gone"). He also tells a bracing Viet vet's story in "Drive On," and that song gives me chills something fierce, it's so honest. But that's just one of the many provocative classics here. Listening to beauties like "Oh Bury Me Not" or "Like A Soldier" makes you feel like this album is a solid, direct link back to the simpler folk/country of the '50s. While almost every band since has taken a concept and toyed with it, Cash stays true to his original plan -- his deep, tremulous voice and his acoustic guitar -- and proves just how moving it can be. I cannot recommend this album enough. (The CD I got also included a 6-page handwritten essay by Cash himself on his roots in music...way back to the time he was 3 years old!)

I've been a fan of Cash since l956, when I first heard "I Walk the Line." I've owned his records on Sun, Columbia, Mercury and now American. This one is a real stunner. Each selection reflects a piece of this complex artist and imperfect but striving to be better man. At the time I write this, there are 34 other reviews available here, and all of them are highly complimentary. His damn voice, his guitar-playing, and his sense of how to do a line or a word in a way that makes you believe he's lived it are unsurpassed. In a 45-year career, there are too many good performances to pick only one album out and say it is the best, but this one comes close. As old as he was when he recorded these songs, he could have still made an impact on country radio if anyone was smart enough to play him. None of the "hat acts" of the 90's can hold the stage with him. Cash is beyond the labels of country, rock, gospel, folk...if there was one artist chosen to symbolize "Americana" it would have to be him. Every few months, I have to hear his voice. Sometimes every few weeks. Been that way for four decades. Still is. May he find better health in 2002 and stay with us a while longer.

Think of this album as a soundtrack for driving down the highway alone, at midnight, with a cup of black coffee in your hand and ghosts and regrets crowding the edge of your vision. "American Recordings" signalled the great Johnny Cash's most recent comeback; the album's title announces not only that he has signed with a new label, but that the songs are essential roots music, true American recordings. In the wake of the grunge movement, Cash's moody bass and laconic delivery sound fresh, even defiant. Many of the songs were contributed by other artists; some, like "Thirteen" make Cash sound like the patron saint of Seattle's most profitable alterna-bands while others, like "Oh Bury Me Not" are unabashed in their sentimentality, but somehow always understated. But even other artists' contributions sound like they were written specifically for this icon of country. Cash's voice says he's seen it all and done most of it -- he makes anything sound plausible, from the southern-gospel-meets-southern-gothic of "Down There By the Train" and "Redemption" to the bitter humor of "The Man Who Wouldn't Cry." I have been a fan of Johnny Cash's work since long before it was cool to admit such tastes, and if you like Cash, you'll love this album. And if you've never listened to Johnny Cash (or only heard his version of "Rusty Cage" on your local college station), this album offers a great introducition. "American Recordings" is almost a review of Cash's career, spanning murder ballads, social commentary, and songs of marital devotion. The range of material is excellent and Cash looms over this dark landscape, giving voice to jealousy, love, resignation, sin and salvation.

This is one of the best records I have. I would place this among recordings that everyone should own. The music is timeless; it is as relevant today, 11 years after being released as it was originally, and probably will be in 50. This record spotlights Cash's personality as a man who is troubled, wise and wholly grounded. There is an appeal to this music as nearly everyone can relate to it in some way, in how it seems almost a part of us all. To not own this record is to deprive one's self of something truly beautiful, ageless and at times, haunting.