American V: A Hundred Highways

Performer: Johnny Cash
Engineer: David Ferguson
Producer: Rick Rubin; John Carter Cash
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: Personnel: Jonny Polonsky, Matt Sweeney, Mike Campbell , Pat McLaughlin, Randy Scruggs, Smokey Hormel (guitar); Benmont Tench (piano, harpsichord, organ). Additional personnel: Mark Howard, Marty Stuart, Pete Wade. Johnny Cash's final album, AMERICAN V: A HUNDRED HIGHWAYS, is a moving and fitting swan song for the legendary performer. Like Cash's other recordings with producer Rick Rubin, AMERICAN V is quiet, intense, and minimal; it creates a thrilling intimacy by keeping the focus on Cash's aging voice and increasingly soulful, nuanced phrasing. The album was produced piecemeal, with Cash's vocal tracks recorded mere months before the artist's death in 2003, and the backing tracks added two years later. Yet the album coheres remarkably well, thanks in large part to the fine musicians on hand (including ace session guitarist Smokey Hormel). But this is Cash's show through and through. Whether on covers (Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind"), originals ("Like the 309," the last song Cash ever wrote), or spirituals ("I'm Free From the Chain Gang Now," the album's stirring, heartbreakingly appropriate closer), Cash sounds like no one but himself--weary, wise, and touched, perhaps, by an unseen hand

Rolling Stone (p.96) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Rubin had an immaculate sense of how to frame Cash's voice -- these stark, mostly acoustic arrangements don't try to conceal the singer's ruined instrument but find authority in its quavers and crags." Rolling Stone (p.103) - Ranked #14 in Rolling Stone's "The Top 50 Albums Of 2006" -- "[T]here is a deep strength and dignity in his performances..." Spin (p.83) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "The arrangements -- acoustic guitars, piano, harpsichord, a modest church organ, a small string section -- frame him impeccably." Entertainment Weekly (p.158) - "The man's spirituality...is everywhere....Completely representative of the faithful old man he had become, having long ago shed his outlaw image..." -- Grade: A- Q (p.109) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Full of humanity, declarations of eternal love and the prospect of heaven, it makes a dignified final addition to the American Recordings series." Q (p.124) - Ranked #22 in Q Magazine's "100 Greatest Albums of 2006" -- "A fine swansong." No Depression (p.104) - "The results are gorgeous, haunting. The moaning, tolling cellos that assist Cash down to his knees on the prayer 'Help Me', for example, transform this album opener into one of Cash's most moving performances ever." Mojo (Publisher) (p.89) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he dignity and sharp poetic instincts on AMERICAN V are classic Cash."

Johnny Cash was part rockabilly rebel, part campfire storyteller, part outlaw in black. Cash made country and rockabilly history on the Sun label in the 1950s. During the '60s, the ruggedly charismatic Cash rose to superstardom, ending the decade with both his marriage to June Carter and his own television show. In the '90s, Cash began his highly successful and acclaimed AMERICAN RECORDINGS series, reaching a new audience with an amazingly diverse set of songs, ranging from traditional tunes to alternative rock covers. With his lean, angular sound and hearty, passionate baritone, Cash forged one of the most unique styles in all of popular music, one that delved into gospel, folk, and rock, but also remained the essence of country music. Four months after his wife died, Johnny Cash passed away on September 12, 2003. And in 2005, the Oscar-nominated biopic WALK THE LINE brought Cash's music and legend to his largest audience yet.

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