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How New Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash Releases Put a Different Spin on Two Classic Voices
New releases from Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash highlight two classic artists.
Coincidentally, Cash’s 11-track Songwriter(released June 28 by Mercury Nashville/Universal Music Enterprises) includes the similarly titled “Well Alright” — a previously unreleased, 30-year-old song that echoes the spacious, simplistic sound that characterized his own Sun recordings. “Well Alright,” by adapting “boom-chick” production to a story about meeting a woman in a laundromat, has elements of his 1957 hit “Ballad of a Teenage Queen.” “I Love You Tonite” reflects on his relationship with June Carter Cash while employing an appropriate country-ballad posture. “Hello Out There” — written after the 1977 launch of the Voyager spacecraft — takes a spiritual view of the universe’s expanse, much like his “I fly a starship” verse in “Highwayman.” And the tremolo-enhanced “Spotlight,” with a bluesy guitar solo by Dan Auerbach,fits neatly into the Americana genre that coalesced during Cash’s latter years.
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