Here is one of those posts that I have dreaded; a post where it is overwhelmed by one artist completely.
It isn’t that I don’t like the artist, as I do, but I generally didn’t want any one artist to overload a single post. Too bad that Johnny Cash put out so many “American” albums before his death.
Going alphabetically, as iTunes does it, we will hit quite a few in this post. We start with:
Johnny Cash - American III: Solitary Man
The third in the series, Solitary Man, wherein we have some covers that were in response to Cash’s various illnesses at the time.
We also get quite a bit of Tom Petty adding in backing and accompanying vocals. It is all stripped bare and left, fittingly, solitary. Stand out tracks:
I Won’t Back Down – Paired with Petty this version is strong, especially sung by a man already knowing his time is almost over.
One – Again, knowing his time is limited, this song takes on a new meaning and is done elegantly with just Cash and his guitar.
The album is a keeper, as it is the best Cash had sounded in a long time. New material, even if it is mostly covers, worked well for Cash as a lot of his earlier albums were retreads of previous work recorded over and again.
