American Recordings

American V: A Hundred Highways The ethical questions surrounding this final album in the American Recordings series are as unavoidable as they are, ultimately, peripheral. While the vocal tracks were recorded in the months just prior to Johnny Cash's passing in September 2003, the arrangements weren't undertak...	American IV: The Man Comes Around On first thought, the idea of the Man in Black recording such covers as "Bridge over Troubled Water," "Danny Boy," and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" might seem odd, even for an artist who's been able to put his personal stamp on just about everything. But American IV: The...	Unchained The first four songs on Unchained come from the songbooks of Beck, Don Gibson, Soundgarden, and Jimmie Rodgers. What might look like absurdly unsupportable eclecticism in other artists, of course, is pretty much standard stuff for Cash. Unchained is hardly standard, though; it's ...	American III: Solitary Man	American III: Solitary Man The simple truth is that Johnny Cash could read the phone book and make it compelling. At times this set sounds like a deathbed recitation rather than a collection of songs, but the man's aura and mystique carry the day. Atop Rick Rubin's spare arrangements, Cash makes every song...
Unchained	At Folsom Prison Johnny Cash had been breaking new ground for a decade when At Folsom Prison suddenly made the world at large take notice. The interaction of a volatile prison population starved for entertainment and a desperately on-form Johnny Cash was electrifying. His somber machismo finally ...	American IV: The Man Comes Around (Bonus DVD) On first thought, the idea of The Man in Black recording such covers as "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "Danny Boy," and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" might seem odd, even for an artist who's been able to put his personal stamp on just about everything. But American IV: The...	Unearthed (5CD) Over the course of five mesmerizing CDs, Unearthed shows us just how Johnny Cash's now-legendary handful of recordings for American Records came to be. Four discs feature previously unreleased tracks from the famed Rick Rubin-produced sessions. Through their inconsistencies and q...	The Essential Johnny Cash It's a great and perhaps impossible challenge to encapsulate the highlights of Johnny Cash's vast musical catalog in a two-CD, 36-song collection like this. Yet, though it barely scratches the surface, 2002's The Essential Johnny Cash--part of a series of compilations and reissue...

buy this on vinyl
This superb album, constituting Johnny's amazing career comeback, sounds much better on vinyl than CD. The word that springs to mind is organic. Don't hesitate in buying it. I'm listening to it as I'm typing this out. It's superbly pressed, better than most "audiophile" releases. This is the way to listen to CASH. Johnny Cash R.I.P.

johnny is value for your cash
just dim the lights open a bottle of wine sit back and just listen, let the music take you over. this album is simply one of his best every track is great with 'the beast in me' being my personal favourite. fantastic value for money. i recommend the american recordings to all johnny cash fans and as an introduction to newcomers just to show you how good the man in black was.

But this CD!
This is an amazing collectino of songs and shows the reason why everyone loves Cash.

New dimensions for an older artist
When a new producer began to work with Johnny Cash toward the end of his career, the result was a wonderful new dimension for an older, established artist. This particular CD is a blend of old JC songs (Delia's Gone) and carefully selected music from other writers ("Bird on a Wire" has a whole dimension beyound the original Leonard Cohen recording of that song as does Kristofferson's "Why Me Lord?"). The songs rang from the dark (Bird on a Wire) to the very light and fun ("Tennessee Stud"). I have several in the series of American Recordings. This is the first and one of the best.

Cash does it again, and again and again...
I suppose there is no need to write another review for a disc originally released over 13 years ago. Considering there have been over 90 reviews of this, the first American Recordings collaboration between Rubin and Cash, it seems a waste of time to write another. With this in mind, much like the minimalist approach to this album, I will do the same with this review. This is simply among the very best albums of any genre, any era since the birth of rock and roll. Nowhere can you find a combination of haunting lyrics with a voice to match and a producer willing to keep his fingers off the controls. It doesn't matter if you are a punk, emo, stoner, hippie, country fan, metalhead, death metal freak or a soccer mom. This is one of the few pieces of American music that can stand the test of time and truly reach any audience. Get this record!!!