Johnny Cash
Album:
American V: A Hundred Highways
American/Lost Highway • http://www.johnnycash.com
The American Recordings series sharpened the teeth of Johnny Cash’s legend, which was probably more comfort to his fans than it was to him by the time he came to record A Hundred Highways, the fifth American album. Although he and series producer Rick Rubin had begun recording material for it in 2002, by May 2003 Cash had lost his wife, June Carter Cash, and his own mortality was pressing down heavily.
That weight, which took him in September 2003, can seem like the sword of Damocles over these 12 songs. Of course, Cash’s low, rumbling voice, hangdog demeanor, classically country & western subject matter and even his black attire always transmitted an intimation of the grave. Yet here he often really does communicate a kind of quavering stoicism in the face of his oncoming extinction.
Like its predecessors, A Hundred Highways mixes traditional music with Cash originals (or, in this case, original: “Like the 309” is the last song he ever wrote) and interesting covers. The difference here is how Cash’s increasingly ragged croak draws the listener into an almost unbearable intimacy. It turns Gordon Lightfoot’s awful “If You Could Read My Mind” into a disturbing threat and transforms Springsteen’s dark “Further On (Up the Road)” into a promise of redemption.
Rubin’s production is, as usual, respectful without being reverential; he gives A Hundred Highways the air of a proper valediction. Like Warren Zevon’s The Wind or Joey Ramone’s Don’t Worry About Me, Johnny Cash’s last album is his wish to be remembered fondly. Easily done.
Jon M. Gilbertson is Vital Source's Music Editor. He also freelances for just about every pub in the region that writes about the subject.
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