Album of Unheard Johnny Cash Songs On The Way
Johnny Cash is 20 years gone, but we haven’t heard the last from the Man in Black just yet. Announced earlier this week, a cache of 11 demo tracks recorded in 1993 when Cash was between his final country label deal and signing with producer Rick Rubin, he walked into the LSI Studios in Nashville to record eleven solo written songs he’d accumulated over the years.
Cash recorded the songs to help out his son-in-law Mike Daniels who owned the studio with Cash’s daughter Rosy. The demos ended up getting lost in time, but they were recently unearthed, and stripped back to just Cash’s voice and his acoustic guitar. Then with Cash’s son John Carter Cash and David “Fergie” Ferguson acting as producers, a select group of musicians were invited into the Cash Cabin Studios in Hendersonville to record what is now simply being titled Songwriter.
To be released on June 28th via Mercury Nashville, Songwriter will feature Johnny Cash collaborators Marty Stuart, late bassist Dave Roe, along with drummer Pete Abott and others bringing these original Johnny Cash songs to life. Stuart was part of Cash’s Tennessee Three from 1980 to 1986. Dave Roe toured with cash for nearly a decade starting in the early ’90s. Pete Abbott of Average White Band fame was also brought into to complete the original Cash Tennessee Three sound.
Also appearing on the album will be Waylon Jennings, who passed away in 2002 himself, but provided harmony vocals on two of the songs (“I Love You Tonite” and “Like A Soldier”) during the original recording sessions. Vince Gill also records harmonies on the song “Poor Valley Girl,” and Dan Auerbach of The Back Keys plays a guitar solo on the song “Spotlight,” making Songwriter a star-studded affair.
“Nobody plays Cash better than Marty Stuart, and Dave Roe of course played with dad for many years,” says John Carter Cash. “The musicians that came in were just tracking with dad, you know, recording with dad, just as, in the case of Marty and Dave, they had many times before, so they knew his energies, his movements, and they let him be the guide. It was just playing with Johnny once again, and that’s what it was. That was the energy of the creation.”
The sessions also included Russ Pahl on steel guitar and other instruments, Mike Rojas on keys, Sam Bacco on percussion, and “Handsome” Harry Stinson from Marty Stuart’s Fabulous Superlatives on select songs. Anna Cristina Cash also sings background vocals.
“We just went rudimentary,” said John Carter of the production approach. “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. That’s what we tried to do. Between the both of us, Fergie and I have spent thousands of hours with dad in the recording studio, so we just tried to act like he was there: WWJCD, right?”
The songs themselves are said to range from sentimental and spiritual moments, to tales of family and survival, and just a dash of humor like Cash was known for. You hear that humor in the first single from the album called “Well Alright,” which takes place in a laundromat. And most importantly, Johnny Cash’s voice that had aged into a stand-in for the Almighty graces all 11 tracks.
But as John Carter Cash emphasizes, it’s really the writing of Songwriter that takes center stage. “I wanted it to be songs that mostly people hadn’t heard and that paid close attention to who he was as a songwriter and who he was as an American voice. One of my most important focuses in the past 10 years is to make sure that history, as best that I can possibly, is to give history the opportunity to notice him as the great writer he is. Bob Dylan says he’s one of the greatest writers of all of American written music and I agree. I want to put that in the forefront.”
Songwriter is now available for pre-order.
JOHNNY CASH – SONGWRITER TRACK LIST
1. Hello Out There
2. Spotlight
3. Drive On
4. I Love You Tonite
5. Have You Ever Been to Little Rock?
6. Well Alright
7. She Sang Sweet Baby James
8. Poor Valley Girl
9. Soldier Boy
10.Sing It Pretty Sue
11. Like A Soldier
April 27, 2024 @ 7:51 am
This is absolutely wonderful. I was scared to hit play but I was pleasantly surprised. I just saw Marty and his Superlatives and they are unbelievable live.
April 27, 2024 @ 7:52 am
Versions of “Like a Soldier” and “Drive On” appeared on American Recordings. “Sing It Pretty Sue” goes way back to his early Columbia years. The others I have either not heard before or have forgotten about. I’m really looking forward to this.
April 27, 2024 @ 8:21 am
I’m excited to hear this. I’m probably in the minority but I seem to like the late 70’s-80’s era cash the best. He added some steel guitar to his music around then.
April 28, 2024 @ 9:35 am
What albums would you recommend from this period?
April 27, 2024 @ 8:48 am
Man, I’m so glad they found those. Can’t wait.
April 27, 2024 @ 8:51 am
I heard “Well Alright” and thought it was peak Cash. Very pleasantly surprised about this release and can’t wait for the whole thing.
April 27, 2024 @ 9:03 am
Trig, this comment may be a bit off topic but still related to your article. You mentioned Johnny’s daughter Rosy being married to Mike Daniels and I didn’t recall Rosanne Cash ever being referred to as Rosy, nor being married to Daniels. I did a quick search and found out Rosy (sometimes spelled Rosie) is June’s daughter, Johnny’s stepdaughter, not to be confused with Rosanne. I know they were all family but it had me confused. I knew Rosanne had been married to Rodney Crowell and is now married to John Leventhal.
I laughed after listening to “Well Alright” what I’ll now refer to as the laundromat song. Thanks for another great article.
April 27, 2024 @ 10:44 am
It was because of Johnny Cash many years ago I got into country music and he has remained my favourite. This is a nice surprise and one I am looking forward to.
April 27, 2024 @ 11:23 am
My take is that most unissued Johnny Cash music from back in the day was never released for a good reason. Listening to the extremely weak “Well Alright” song confirms my contention.
As a life-long Johnny Cash fan I’d love to hear some great Cash music from the vaults. But this album will probably not be that.
I’d rather they release more songs from his 1969-1971 ABC-TV variety show. Cash performed updated versions of his hits and many great old & new songs that he never recorded commercially. He also sang some great duets with his many guest stars. Cash was in the best voice of his career in that era.
Another excellent choice for a digital debut would be the 1975 limited release album Destination Victoria Station. It features some of Cash’s best versions of great train songs.
April 27, 2024 @ 11:30 am
I’m really excited about this album! While I think there’s a reason that he saved “Drive On” and “Like a Soldier” for American Recordings, namely because they fit much better on it and both took on a more serious tone, I’m still really glad to have any new music by Johnny Cash! “Sing it Pretty Sue” is an interesting one for him to redo. I love his later recordings of his older material like on “Classic Cash”. I think I’m most excited for the brand new material though. Really looking forward to hearing it all. It sounds very on par with his other late 80’s and early 90’s material from the sample clips on iTunes!
April 27, 2024 @ 3:04 pm
This is awesome news! It makes you wonder how many other unreleased Johnny Cash productions have been floating around? Wasn’t it also rumored that there was still some material left unreleased from his time with Rick Rubin?
April 27, 2024 @ 3:44 pm
I’m always baffled when a song like “Well Alright” is discovered. Why did he leave such a good song unreleased? Did he forget about it, or what? Anyways, really looking forward to this.
April 29, 2024 @ 8:09 pm
Well I am no Johnny Cash but the other night I opened a lyric book and discovered a song I wrote that I had completely forgotten about. It’s a really good one (in my opinion of my own material) and I am going to play it out on Wednesday! I assume someone as busy as Johnny Cash could easily do the same. That said, he claimed in his autobiography that he never forgot a lyric once he knew it, which is insane if true. But if so maybe it just never fit with the records he was making.
May 1, 2024 @ 2:56 pm
Thanks for your attempt at an explanation and the background on Cash. You’re right, I guess just about anybody who’s engaged in some kind of creative work has had the experience of coming across something they wrote (painted, composed…) years ago that they forgot about and being surprised by how well it had aged with time. Good luck with your concert tonight! I hope the song is a success with your audience!
April 27, 2024 @ 5:02 pm
I think think we’ll alright is a pretty good song. Vintage cash in my opinion. Sing it pretty sue Def has been released, at least a version of it which I doubt is much different from here since it’s a pretty simple straightforward ditty. I look forward to hearing the rest.
April 27, 2024 @ 11:04 pm
Whatever happened to the 300-400 songs that Merle claimed to have stored up?
Cash’s estate seems better at unearthing new material.
In other news, Josh Turner’s new single cooks.
April 29, 2024 @ 5:12 am
That is an outstanding question CK. I’ve been waiting years to hear the Merle vault recordings. How hard could it be to put together an album series out of it? Would generate some great revenue for the family, Ben and his brother could ride the wave and get out there and tour. This deserves an answer and Trig is the guy who could find out.
April 29, 2024 @ 7:12 am
I honestly don’t have anything to report on this, neither the numerous Merle biopics that have been rumored over the years. There doesn’t really seem to be any movement on anything involving the Merle Haggard estate. The last thing that I reported was they were going to open a Merle Haggard Museum on the same property in Nashville with the Johnny Cash Museum, and they instead decided to turn the space into a meat and three restaurant. I’ll see what I can dig up.
April 29, 2024 @ 7:46 pm
I’m excited about the supposed Merle vault because he deliberately squirreled songs away to provide for his family.
Those songs have a higher chance of being good than discarded albums.
April 29, 2024 @ 9:16 am
I also wonder about the recordings that Loretta Lynn did with John Carter Cash?
April 28, 2024 @ 6:23 am
Saw Well Allright pop up Friday and played it without any context of where it came from. Sounds great. Some of Cash’s vocals in later recordings with Def Jam were at a point where you could tell he was fading a bit. He sounds like prime Johnny Cash here. Nice unexpected addition to his catalog.
April 28, 2024 @ 1:50 pm
The local country station does a Sunday throwback show and the DJ played “Well Alright.”
My thoughts? Well, it is alright.
It certainly was humorous at times. That is the aspect of Cash that Rubin essentially scrubbed away in his desire to create Old Testament Johnny. So, I enjoyed hearing it there.
But here is reality. Most “forgotten” tracks are shoved behind the dresser for a reason. It was OK at best and if it was released in 1993, it would be quickly ignored and no one would be praising it in 2024.
1993 was a great year for country music. This song would have been heavily overshadowed by the early 90s stars releasing prime material.
There was a reason that Cash was demoted to the country fair circuit. It happens to mostly every singer unless they die young or retire early.
Maybe the album will be good as “Out Among the Stars” but if the first single is one of the best, don’t use Cash, buy on credit.
April 28, 2024 @ 3:53 pm
Still milking money from the corpse. Most unreleased songs are unreleased for a reason, and clearly the original recordings weren’t good enough to be released (so they weren’t). I do recognize the two songs that made it onto American Recordings. Bringing in musicians to polish up the other tracks comes across as more of a cash-grab than creating “history”. “Well Alright” is okay. Interesting that there are no other snippets from the album in the trailer (is that Jamey Johnson doing the voice over?). It will be interesting to hear the album when it comes out. Hopefully I’m wrong and the other tracks are real treasures.