Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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48 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pick this album to remember the man and his music, 13 Sep 2003
Johnny Cash died today, less than four months after his beloved wife, June Carter Cash. He was one of the most influential and imposing figures in country music, with his deep, resonant baritone and his spare, percussive guitar. Cash never did sound like Nashville, which explains part of the animosity that existed between the two. The greatness of Johnny Cash was that the Man in Black combined the emotional honesty of folk music and the rebellion of rock 'n' roll with the weariness inherent in country music. The question of the day is what Johnny Cash album should you listen to in order to appreciate the full measure of the man and his music. A greatest hits collection seems the obvious choice and it is hard not to think of "Ring of Fire," "I Walk the Line," "A Boy Named Sue," and other classic Cash songs on a day like today. But I want to make an argument for "American Recordings."This 1994 album won the Grammy Award for Contemporary Folk recording, and so I freely admit that my choice might have something to do with my affection for authentic folk music and my usual avoidance of country music. The album was responsible for Cash's final reemergence as a major figure in contemporary American music and if you do not know the story the key parts are that Cash signed with Rick Rubin's American Recordings. Rubin had produced Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys but topped himself by having Carter record mostly his own songs accompanied only by himself on a guitar. For those of us familiar with the recordings of America's troubadour Woody Guthrie or the early New York City recordings of Bob Dylan, this approach makes perfect sense. This is Johnny Cash stripped down to the essentials and they are pretty impressive. This is proven with the opening track, "Delia's Gone," which is probably the best known track from the album since it was a music video that introduced Cash on MTV to the alternative-grunge generation. There are several choice covers on which Cash ruins the songs for their creators by making them their own, such as Nick Lowe's "The Beast in Me," Kris Kristofferson's "Why Me Lord?", Leonard Cohen's "Bird on a Wire," and Tom Waits' "Down There by the Train." But the original songs are the real gems here, including "Redemption" and "Like a Soldier." The two live tracks recorded at L.A.'s Viper Room seem unnecessary, but that is how a lot of people first heard Cash sing, so it is hard to question it as unappropriate. Besides, Cash does his own liner notes. If you have never heard "American Recordings," the first of four solid albums Cash recorded with Rubin, then this is as good as time as any. As the Man in Black could have told you himself, better late than never.
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rebirth and Revelation., 8 May 2006
Perhaps the best analogy i can use to describe the impact these American Recordings had on Johnny Cash admirers, is to try and imagine how the disciples must have felt upon dicovering the stone had been rolled away and the tomb was empty.Sure we all knew what Johnny Cash stood for, what he sounded like and what he sung about, but even so these songs were and still are, a revelation.An artistic rebirth virtually without comparison.
Stripped down to only his guitar and that wonderful deep voice, Cash commands a presence so powerful and stirring these songs are carved in granite for witnesses to marvel at many, many years from now.
And the songs themselves, whether from his own pen, or from those of others, all now become Johnny Cash songs.It almost doesn't matter the talents behind such classics as "Why Me Lord" or "Bird On The Wire", the composers give way to the singer, because it's the way Johnny Cash gives a voice to the infatuated murderer in "Delia's Gone", or to the Vietnam veteran in "Drive On", or to his own deepest fears in "The Beast In Me", or to his own highest beliefs in "Redemption" or "Down There By The Train", or to his own long, troubled life in "Like A Soldier" or "Let The Train Blow The Whistle", that make this album a deeply honest journey into the artists own sucesses and failings.But one that connects to all those willing to listen for in doing so he speaks for all the little parts in whole of us that make up the whole, neither fully good or completely bad.Cash had the unique gift of being able to take you to the very gates of hell with one song, but always offer up the chance of redemption with the next.
So if you have any interest in Johnny Cash, in music, or just in what makes us who we are, then buy this album, buy the other American Recordings in the series, buy the "Unearthed" boxset, just so you can say you saw and heard the legendary Man in Black walk and talk it like only he could, for the very final time.
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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stark, simple, and beautiful, 22 Nov 2003
Stripped back to only guitar and Cash's inimitable baritone, we are reminded of the Man in Black's genius. Indeed this recording heralded not just a revival of Cash's musical fortunes, but in the autumn of his life I believe he entered his finest phase as an artist. With this and the following three albums with American Records and Rick Rubin, Cash drew on the experience of his explosive life to deliver music of an unmatchable emotional power. 'Delia's Gone' is a fitting successor of 'Folsom Prison Blues', giving even the most irredeemable criminal a voice; 'The Beast in Me', 'Why Me Lord' and 'Redemption' speak of Cash's own struggles with his demons and his eventual salvation; 'Drive On' and 'Let The Train Blow The Whistle' burn with Cash's macho swagger;'The Man Who Couldn't Cry' is just plain hilarious. A unique musical experience transcending genre, this is the artist unadorned as genius. Like Cash himself, this is elegantly simple, bleakly compelling, and untimately inspirational and transfiguring. The perfect intoduction to the greatest figure in modern music, who though greatly missed, still exerts a powerful presence.
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