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Johnny Cash: Songwriter – posthumous patchwork is a pleasant surprise

(Mercury Nashville/UMe)A collection of songs recorded before the Man in Black’s 1990s Rick Rubin revival and reworked by his son has much to offer

When Johnny Cash recorded the demos that would eventually form the basis of Songwriter, in Nashville in 1993, he would have been unaware that just around the corner lay the fruitful collaboration with Rick Rubin that was about to resurrect his career. A collection of songs that he’d written over the preceding 30 years, the demos lay forgotten until his son, John Carter Cash, found them in 2023. A couple of the songs (Like a Soldier and the tribute to Vietnam veterans Drive On) later appeared on 1994’s American Recordings, but lead single Well Alright – a tale of laundromat seduction – has a humour and lightness of touch largely absent from the Rubin years, while I Love You Tonite is a touchingly earnest affirmation of his love for wife June.

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