More than 30 years after it was originally recorded, a lost Johnny Cash record featuring never-before heard tracks will soon hit airwaves. The record, entitled Out Among The Stars is due to be released next March.
The Associated Press reports the Cash estate decided to release the album when Cash’s son John Carter Cash and archivists at Legacy Recordings found the material last year, 9 years after the legendary singer’s death.
“They never threw anything away,” said the younger Cash of his father and mother June Carter. “They had an archive that had everything in it from the original audio tapes from The Johnny Cash Show to random things like a camel saddle, a gift from the prince of Saudi Arabia.”
The music on Out Among the Stars is taken from various sessions with country music producer Billy Sherrill recorded between 1981 and 1984, a time when country music was moving towards a pop sensibility. Sherrill was one of the main architects behind the shift in the genre and John Carter Cash says this was at odds with his father’s independent-minded ways.
“Nashville at the time was in a completely different place,” he said. “It was the `Urban Cowboy’ phase. It was pop country, and dad was not that. I think him working with Billy was sort of an effort by the record company to put him more in the circle of Music Row and see what could happen at the heart of that machine.”
Columbia Records never released the recordings and subsequently dropped Cash from the label in 1986, but his ever faithful son has now pushed for the release of the 12 tracks on which he says Johnny Cash’s voice is in its prime “He’s pitch perfect. It’s seldom where there’s more than one vocal take. They’re a live take and they’re perfect.”
Out Among The Stars will now be available internationally from 25th March next year. The album features re-recordings with Johnny Cash’s friend and former band member Marty Stuart, as well as never-before heard duets between Cash and his wife June Carter.
