I started this series of reviews with a confession, I love box sets. Even though I already owned all six of these Johnny Cash albums on LP, I still bought the box set. The plan was to then give my son and daughter-in-law the LPs that I didn’t keep. And, I’ll confess here that while country music isn’t necessarily my favorite genre, there is some country music that I really enjoy. By the way, Becky is from Nashville, and her folks were big country music fans, so yes, I have been to the Grand Ole Opry more than once.
In the early ’90s, Johnny Cash signed with Rick Rubin’s American label and began releasing the American Recordings series of albums. As much as I love all of Cash’s music, five of these albums are by far and away my favorites. The Rolling Stone said, “The American Records were stark, stripped-down, mostly acoustic meditations on the more apocalyptic side of Cash’s persona.” Cash covered Beck, Nick Cave, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Soundgarden, Danzig, and, of course, Nine Inch Nails. The albums wonderfully capture Cash’s famous baritone as powerfully as ever but with much more feeling. With these albums, Cash surely lived up to his reputation as the “Man In Black,” not that anyone really doubted this.
About these albums
As I said, I love these recordings, but none of them except for Unchained, American II are really country music albums. They are much more on the dark side of folk music. The emotion of Cash just drips out into the room. This is some of the most powerful music I have ever experienced. American Recordings II is a little less emotionally powerful, but it is equally as good. Add to this, these recordings sound as good as the music, and you have a small miracle, almost like finding out that dessert isn’t fatting and is actually healthy.
Two of these albums were released posthumously. It is easy to hear in Cash’s voice that he is aging and his health is failing as he goes from the first to the last two of these great albums. If you know anything about his life, you probably know that he was devoted to his wife, June Carter Cash, and her death brought real emotion and sorrow to some of these recordings.
Just thinking about some of the songs on these LPs makes me want to listen. There’s “Delia’s Gone,” “Why Me Lord?,” “Bird on a Wire,” “Solitary Man,” “Wayfaring Stranger,” “The Man Comes Around,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “Desperado,” “I’m so Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Streets of Laredo,” “Ain’t No Grave,” “Satisfied Mind” and “Aloha Oe.” That’s just about a list of half of my favorites, and I don’t know a single song on the six albums that I don’t enjoy every time I listen to them.
So now we have this great music in a single box set. As I said, I already owned all six of these albums, and let me say there is really no need to buy these new pressings, unless, like me, you really like box sets. I should also say if you don’t have these or have only one or two of the LPs, the box set would be a great way to go. You might even end up combining them like I have. So, let me take a moment to compare the six albums.
Album I – American Recordings
For American Recordings, the first album of the set, I preferred the English pressing that I already owned. They were both very good, but the new pressing just wasn’t as alive. This is an incredible album with great folk songs. He covers songs from Leonard Cohen, Glenn Danzig, Nick Lowe and Tom Waits. Then, there is Cash’s own work with traditional folk songs like “Delia’s Gone” and “Redemption” that set this recording apart. This is simply incredible music and both pressings of this album sound great.
Album II – Unchained
On American II – Unchained, my preference was just the opposite; I much preferred the new pressing in the box set. It was incredibly alive, and the scale and tone were magnificent. While this is my least favorite of the six albums, I still enjoy it.
American III: Solitary Man
Then we come to American III: Solitary Ma, and again, I preferred the new pressing. It was overall quieter and more alive sounding. This album bridges the music of the first two albums with the next three albums where it becomes more obvious that Cash is beginning to think about his own mortality.
American IV: The Man Comes Around
American IV: The Man Comes Around is a double LP and an exceptionally powerful album. This is the album where Cash is dealing with the thoughts of his mortality. His voice is still strong but with some obvious sounds of aging and illness at times. Here, the Lost Highway pressing that I already had is best; in fact, this was the biggest difference I heard in the whole box set. The new pressing was too subdued and lacked the emotional energy I was used to with the Lost Highway pressing.
American V: A Hundred Highways
American V: A Hundred Highways and American VI: Ain’t No Grave are the hardest of the six albums to hear the differences in the pressings, but in the end I found the new pressing from the box set to have more body, better tonal color and they are every bit as alive sounding as the older pressings. American V: A Hundred Highways was Cash’s 93rd album overall, and it was released posthumously on July 4, 2006. This the first of two posthumous albums released by Rick Rubin who produced the American series.
By the time this album was recorded, Cash was wheelchair-bound, nearly blind and close to the end of his life. A Hundred Highways feels like the final words of a man staring death in the face. The snarling brawn and good humor of the earlier American recordings are long gone. This album makes it obvious that those weren’t the secrets of Cash’s art. Even with his voice and body failing, it comes through that the glory of Cash’s records was the dignity and gravity he imparted to every aspect of life.
American VI: Ain’t No Grave
The second of the posthumous releases was American VI: Ain’t No Grave, which was released on February 26, 2010. This would have been Cash’s 78th birthday. In many ways, this albums sums up how Cash wanted to face death with the sentiment that no grave could hold him down and that death has no sting. Combined with remembering the good times of life, this album seems to show us how a man of faith and dignity handled death.
Concluding thoughts
This 7-LP, 6-album Johnny Cash American Recordings I-VI Box Set is beautifully presented, and everything about it is simple and classy. The LPs are pressed on 180g vinyl. They are cut from the original masters under the strict supervision of Rick Rubin and pressed at QRP. I found four of the six in the box set to be better than the versions I already owned, so I’m very glad that I bought it; but I did end up mixing in the two older albums that I like more. I gave the six albums that I did not put in the box set to my son and daughter-in-law. Most of all, this is great music, and I loved the long afternoon and evening I spent comparing these LPs.
