One of the things that strikes you listening to his new everything including the kitchen sink box-set is, “What if Johnny Cash had never met Rick Rubin?”

Icon that he most certainly was in the ’50s and ’60s, the punk years were unkind to The Man In Black who, strapped for readies, took to the country festival and cabaret circuit. Great news for people in Limerick and Offaly who got to see him, The Carter Family and Kris Kristofferson on his 1990 Irish tour, but a bit of a comedown for somebody who’d palled around at Sun Studios with Elvis and Carl Perkins. As for albums like Songs Of Love And Life and I Believe, well, even diehard fans had to admit that there was more than a whiff of the contractual obligations about them. No, if the grim reaper had come a callin’ before the first of his American Recordings, Johnny Cash would have died a yesterday’s man – somebody your mum and dad liked, but a heroic straddler of generations and genres? I doubt it.
“What gave me the idea I could and should produce Johnny Cash?” ponders Rick Rubin in the Unearthed sleeve-notes. “There’s no good answer to that; it just felt like the right thing to do. I’d been thinking about who was really great but not making really great records; what great artists are not in a great place right now. And Johnny was the first and the greatest that came to mind. A unique character, kind of his own force of nature. Someone who doesn’t fit into any guidelines – whatever he does it’s always, well, Johnny Cash.”
Talk about hitting the nail on the proverbial! With Rubin to guide him, Cash recorded not just the four volumes of American Recordings that revived his fortunes, but the countless covers, collaborations and gospel songs that make up the rest of this 5-CD monster.
Highlights? Jesus, where do you start? At the beginning perhaps?
Unearthed Volume One: Who’s Gonna Cry? is notable for two superb Kris Kristofferson covers, ‘Just The Other Side Of Nowhere’ and ‘Casey’s Last Ride’, and a take on Jimmie Rodgers’ ‘Waiting For A Train’ that puts goosepimples on your goosepimples.
Getting palsy walsy with Nick and Trent didn’t mean that his old friends got the elbow – the Carl Perkins-assisted ‘Brown-Eyed Handsome Man’ on Volume Two: Trouble In Mind is as poignant as anything they hatched up together under Sam Phillips’ roof. Cash’s ability to make songs his own is underlined by a version of ‘Heart Of Gold’ that makes you go, “Neil who?”. Ditto the re-workings of ‘Devil’s Right Hand’ and ‘I’m A Drifter’ which take the Steve Earle and Dolly Parton originals off in completely new directions. A live, even more maudlin than Lennie ‘Bird On A Wire’ later and it’s on to Volume Three: Redemption Songs. Joined on the Bob Marley-penned title-track by Joe Strummer, you get a genuine sense of Cash telling his maker that he’s on his way and, God, there’d better be someone there to let him in. He also lends an air of finality to ‘Father & Son’, a gorgeous number made even more gorgeous by the presence of Fiona Apple.
Just when you’re thinking that Johnny can do no wrong along come versions of ‘Wichita Lineman’, ‘You Are My Sunshine’ and ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ which hark back far too vividly to those cabaret hell days of yore. That slip in the quality control department is quickly rectified by Volume Four: My Mother’s Hymn Book, a do-what-it-says-it-does-on-the-tin revisiting of his Southern Gospel upbringing. ‘Where We’ll Never Grow Old’, ‘I Shall Not Be Moved’, ‘Let The Lower Lights Be Learning’…they’re all timeless songs, sung by somebody who realises that their resonance goes beyond mere music.
After that brief detour through God’s country, it’s back to more familiar territory with Volume Five: Best Of Cash On American. It’s highly unlikely at this stage, but if you haven’t heard him grappling with Bono, Trent Reznor, Beck, Chris Cornell et al, you’re in for the treat of Johnny’s lifetime.
“Nobody’s song is safe from me,” Cash joked shortly before his death. “I go through ‘em all, picking and gleaning, picking and gleaning. Danzig, Depeche Mode – I love that song of theirs, ‘Personal Jesus’, I wish I wrote it.”
He mightn’t have written it, but he definitely made it his own.

The Cash Unearthed box-set is out now on American