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Johnny Cash vs. the Grave: I Think We all Know How This One is Gonna Turn Out

The second posthumous release in the American series, and allegedly the final of the bunch, Johnny Cash’s American VI: Ain’t No Grave (Lost Highway) is a record to which it is impossible to listen without thinking of the artist in question, and more specifically, his death. Cash’s frail crooning “voice from beyond the grave” is arguably at its least potent, and were he have to survived longer than he did, it’s doubtful American VI would exist in the form it does now. Hell, even if it had the same song choice, there’s no way those songs would have the edge they do because of the circumstances of the album’s issue.

The point is this: American VI: Ain’t No Grave is a dead man’s album. It sounds like a dead man’s album. Listening to it, I almost feel like I’m intruding on something that should be preserved for the family.

But that’s got to be the idea, right? Johnny Cash knew the score when he was recording his last sessions (from which American V: A Hundred Highways was also derived posthumously), and he knew the form this album would take. On that level, it’s kind of like a joke, all the death references, as though, infirm and weakened from the diabetes-related illnesses, he turned to producer Rick Rubin and said, “This one’ll really get ‘em, ha ha.” After a five-decade career of raising hell even unto having his video for the American IV: The Man Comes Around single “Hurt” (a Nine Inch Nails cover) banned from the Country Music Television channel, who would really be surprised if that was the case?

In either case, Cash’s voice and personality are obviously central to American VI: Ain’t No Grave, from the opening title track to the Sheryl Crow cover “Redemption Day” — a surprising album highlight — and down until the closing duo of peacenik anthem “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream” and “Aloha Oe,” made famous by Cash’s one-time contemporary, Elvis Presley.

American VI probably won’t be a standout in the Johnny Cash catalog. That is, a thousand years from now when scholars in Cash Studies look back on his body of work, this allegedly final studio release (there are bound to be outtake releases, alternate versions, etc., right?) probably won’t  be the record on which his legacy is founded. Nonetheless, for fans of his music coming at it from either the country angle or any of the other genres that have appropriated Cash-appreciation over the years, rock included, it’s a necessary piece to the increasingly grim American puzzle, now supposedly completed.

And while it’s true that, taken on its own merits, American VI probably doesn’t stand up even to the album it immediately follows, its sense of anticlimax is reasonable. There was no way this collection, with just one Cash original and tracks that sound as though they’ve had enough cosmetic surgery to prevent them from closing their eyes, was going to be the fantasy-fulfilling piece of pop literature that other albums in the series have been.  If anything, we’re basically lucky to have it at all, let alone with highlights like “A Satisfied Mind” or the Kris Kristofferson cover “For the Good Times.” I mean, really. It’s Johnny Cash. You take what you can get, and if that’s American VI: Ain’t No Grave, which will likely never be heard by anyone (those without a clue notwithstanding) who doesn’t immediately think of Cash’s death even more than how worth listening to these songs are or aren’t, so be it.

Johnny Cash on MySpace

Lost Highway Records

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2 Responses to “Johnny Cash vs. the Grave: I Think We all Know How This One is Gonna Turn Out”

  1. Paul says:

    sweet, comments are fixed.

    This record sounds like it is John singing to his grand kids. I like it, not as much as the rest of the series.

  2. Chris West says:

    I checked this out last night and it’s a great record.

    Calling it a “dead man’s album” is so true. You really get the impression he’s just signing off.

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