Since Johnny Cash's death in September 2003, there have been four posthumous albums of his songs. One might think that, two decades on, all his major recordings had been issued. But over and again, new material keeps cropping up.
Now, the country star's son John Carter Cash has discovered unreleased demo recordings from 1993, all put together in a new album, "Songwriter."
It starts the 11 songs with "Hello Out There," instantaneously setting the atmosphere, and you can almost believe that the "Man in Black" is greeting us from the great beyond. The sound is unmistakeably Johnny Cash. In the early 1990s, his rough whiskey baritone voice was still going strong, even though his career had begun to weaken a bit.
Cash was not under contract with any record label then, and so he had no contractual obligations to adhere to as, over the decades, he would make demo recordings of his own compositions. Shortly after such sessions he began to work with star producer Rick Rubin on the now iconic "American Recordings" series which revived his career. With the exception of two songs, none of the demo recordings had ever been used - until now.
A few years back, his son produced an album titled "Out Among The Stars" using material from sessions going back to the 1980s. Now, Carter Cash has done the same with "Songwriter," dissecting the recordings and reducing them to just voice and guitar.
"We just went rudimentary," John Carter Cash told the entertainment industry publication Variety. "We went straight to the roots, as far as the sound, and tried not to overly enhance it. We built as if dad was in the room."
Then, he invited old friends of his father and other musicians to his home studio "Cash Cabin" in Hendersonville, Tennessee, to put the finishing touches on the songs: guitarist Marty Stuart, bass player Dave Roe (before his death a year ago) and drummer Pete Abbott. These were joined by, among others, Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys and 22-time Grammy Award winner, country star and Eagles musician Vince Gill. A high-calibre team by any standard.
"Songwriter" brings back to life Cash's style of the 1950s and 1960s and some later phases of his career. The classic, unique Johnny Cash sound isn't just down to the unmistakeable voice.
Carter Cash brought in David Ferguson as co-producer, the same "Fergie" who worked with Johnny Cash for more than 30 years and had been sound engineer for Rick Rubin in the American Recording sessions.
"Between the both of us, Fergie and I have spent thousands of hours with dad in the recording studio," John Carter Cash told Variety. "So we just tried to act like he was there: WWJCD (what would Johnny Cash do), right?"
Unlike Rubin's rather weighty, melancholic and sometimes dour recordings, "Songwriter" is light-hearted and whimsical. The 11 songs are full of heart and with a touch of humour - for example, when Cash sings ambiguously in "Well Alright" about meeting a woman in a launderette, which eventually turns into a marriage. In the ballad titled "I Love You Tonite," he asks, "Will we make the millennium?" To which comes the answer: "Well, we might. I love you tonight."
Posthumous productions are not uncontroversial. Some people argue that material which the artist himself did not publish, should not later on be thrown onto the market. But others are happy that, years after the death of a beloved artist, they can still hear new music.
In the case of "Songwriter" the situation is more that the songs were not published back in the day because recording companies had shown no interest and had not expected to make any money from them. Back then - before Johnny Cash's surprising comeback - a classic album like this would probably not have attracted much attention. Things are different today, of course.
Johnny Cash was an outstanding songwriter and musician. When, after so many years, almost a dozen largely unheard songs of this quality are still being released, we can listen to them with a clear conscience - or otherwise simply ignore them.
Either way, leaving these songs on the shelf would have been a waste.
