At the outset of the 1990s, the Man in Black, who had released several albums that were commercial and critical failures. His longstanding relationship with Columbia Records, who he'd signed with way back in 1958, had fizzled, and it seemed that all that lay ahead of him was a legacy of box sets and compilation albums.
Yet a chance conversation with a producer from far outside Cash's usual circles changed the entire trajectory of his career for the better. Rick Rubin, best known for founding Def Jam Records, had seen Cash perform at Bob Dylan's birthday party in 1992 and wanted to help the down-on-his-luck country star change up his sound and get back into the saddle.
Quick Links
Johnny Cash's American Recordings Revitalized His Career
It Was The Brand New Start He Needed
Johnny Cash's early career was built around him serving as the frontman of a band, whether it was with the Tennessee Two (or Three) back in the 1950s or the increasingly complex backing groups that Columbia Records had saddled him with in the '70s and '80s. Yet Rick Rubin, in a major change from how producers had worked with Cash in the past, simply asked the star how he wanted to record, and so Cash instead performed the entirety of American Recordings solo, accompanied only by his guitar and recorded entirely in his own home.
Cash's career, like many country singers, was built on singing standards and covers alongside original work, but American Recordings took a very different tack on that approach; Rick Rubin commissioned songs from rock legends Tom Waits ("Down There By The Train") and Glenn Danzig ("Thirteen") in order to provide Cash with new material. Cash also covered songs by Kris Kristofferson ("Why Me Lord"), Leonard Cohen ("Bird on a Wire"), and Loudon Wainwright III ("The Man Who Couldn't Cry").
American Recordings was exactly the change of pace Cash needed artistically, and was the album no one in 1994 knew they had been waiting for. Critical reviews were overwhelmingly positive, and the album charted higher than anything Cash had released since the 1970s. It not only led to Cash being relevant again, but served as the foundation of an institution; Cash went on to record three more albums in the American Recordings series before his death in 2003, and there were enough songs remaining for two more albums to be released posthumously.
American Recordings Is One Of Johnny Cash's Best Albums
And It Always Will Be
There's so much to love about American Recordings, even if you aren't a fan of country music. It's an overwhelmingly earnest album, full of a beautiful sense of mortality that's completely at odds with the overproduced, overworked releases that Columbia Records had squeezed out of Cash at the end of his contract.
While the initial fire of his earliest hits like "Folsom Prison Blues" doesn't burn quite as brightly forty years later, the warm glow of the embers is still more than enough. American Recordings is an album steeped in Cash's disillusionment with the music industry, a conscious refuting of decades of bureaucracy in favor of Cash at his purest, artistically.
The 10 Best Uses Of Johnny Cash Songs In Movies
Legendary country musician Johnny Cash's poignant, soulful songs have enhanced many movies from his biopic Walk the Line to Kill Bill and Logan.
As a longtime fan of Johnny Cash, I certainly adore much of his early work, but there's no question that American Recordings is one of his greatest works - and that it's only eclipsed by the subsequent albums in the series. Some musicians hit the scene like a shooting star and burn away just as quickly, but Johnny Cash started strong and only got stronger, and left a piece of his bare soul for us to marvel at in the music he left behind.
