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Johnny Cash
AMERICAN V: A HUNDRED HIGHWAYS
(American/Universal)
There are CDs that move you. There are CDs that sadden you. And then there are CDs that just bum the hell out of you. We expected American V: A Hundred Highways to fit in the first two categories. But we were surprised to find it did not belong in the latter.
There are a lot of words to describe this set of late country icon Johnny Cash's final recordings, made in the months between the death of wife June Carter in spring 2003 and his own passing that fall.
Listening to Cash gravely intone Springsteen's Further On Up the Road, Gordon Lightfoot's If You Could Read My Mind, Ian Tyson's Four Strong Winds, Hank Sr.'s Evening Train and his own haunting final composition Like the 309, adjectives such as stirring, powerful, transfixing, intimate, earthy and yes, heartbreaking leap to mind.
But depressing doesn't cut it. Some of the credit has to go to Rick Rubin, who completed these tracks following Cash's death. After resurrecting and nurturing the Man in Black's career in its final decade, the producer earned that right. He takes that responsibility seriously here, setting Cash's final public words to rootsy, homespun backdrops that the master would have OKed.
But the real hero in the tale, of course, is Cash. Despite flagging spirits and declining health -- at times, his booming voice is an asthmatic shadow of its former self -- he maintains his dignified bearing and everyman humility.
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And while every lyric on this 42-minute disc -- from the opening "Oh Lord, help me to walk another mile" to the closing, "I'm free from the chain gang now" -- sounds eerily prophetic and tragic, Cash is never maudlin. Rather, he is a man summoning the last of his strength to finish his work and leave this world. And a man ready to accept his fate -- because he's already cheated death with a life lived to the fullest.
Track Listing:
1. Help Me
2. God's Gonna Cut You Down
3. Like The 309 (the last song Johnny wrote & recorded)
4. If You Could Read My Mind
5. Further On Up the Road
6. The Evening Train
7. I Came To Believe
8. Love's Been Good To Me
9. A Legend In My Time
10. Rose Of My Heart
11. Four Strong Winds
12. I'm Free From The Chain Gang Now