One Last Round

If America was personified into a single person, it very well could be Johnny Cash. He was a progressive who cared deeply about tradition. He is was highly religous but unfundamental. He has a checkered past, and an illustrious career. Johnny Cash, the man in black, is an artist who has endoured the test of time, trajedy, and a music industry constantly in flux. Hank Williams burned out at 29. Elvis conqured the world but failed to see 50. Johnny Cash lived to be an old man at 71, rising and falling in popularity, but leaving behind a catalouge and a legacy few artist could hope for. After six decades in music, Johnny Cash is America; stripped to its raw bones.



His latest and final effort, American VI: Ain't No Grave, is one more triumphant round for the Man in Black with his late career savior and producer Rick Rubin. Cash's second posthumous record released three days before what would have been his 78th birthday, Ain't No Grave is an old man, weathered and worn by life's long hard dirt road, staring out the window and seeing his own grave dug and ready. In the studio, feverishly laying down tracks while dealing with his failing health and recently loss wife, June Carter, Cash doesnt fear the end. He faces it head on, humble and certain in his convictions what the end will bring; where tomorrow's outside of life will pass. Armed in his final load, Cash carrys fantastic songs penned down by friends (Kris Kristofferson), forerunners (Bob Nolan), followers (Sheryl Crow), and comtemporaries (Elvis Presley) recarved in his hard legendary baritone-cotton vocals. This is Cash's best album under Rubin, as an overall experience. Though it lacks the powerhouse singles that cemented the importance of previous American Albums like "God's Gonna Cut You Down", "Delia's Gone", "Rusty Cage", or his career epitaph in the NIN cover "Hurt", Aint No Grave, with the possible exception of the title track, stands with no mountain high causing no valley low. The album, as an album, is greater than its predecesors because it is a sermon. Track built on track culminating in a statment summing up a man's final hours, thoughts, hopes, and emotions. As great as their previous endeavours were, Cash and Rubin never fully reached his sublime before. A great deal of this accomplishment must be slated to Rick Rubin, who largely crafted the album alone following Cash's death and picking through the around fifty tracks Cash had recorded during the American V sessions. Rubin's genious as a producer often hides behind Johnny's magificent remaining shadow, but it deserves high praise here, crafting moments of striped down honesty and deep personal introspection into a masterwork rather than a masterpiece.


I heartly recommend this album, and if possible, ask that the roughly 32 min finale be listened to in full, at least once. Hear the whole sermon intact, and experience one of America's own blood and bone artist's final words. The first CD I ever bought with my own money was Johnny Cash's Superhits, and digging through the man's back catalouge in my young life has rarely lead to disapointed. American VI: Ain't No Grave is a great album start to finish dealing with the universal morality all men must face, and the great beyond many of us pine for. On the final cut, a soothingly bitter cover of Elvis's 1961 "Aloha Oe", Johnny Cash says a heart warming farwell to his listeners, seemingly already off in paradise awaiting his left loved ones future embrace. In the soundwaves he left behind, I know I'll meet Johnny again and again and again.