TTP | The Last of the Breed

In this age of the quickly dismissed digital single, it is rare that a full-length album can still keep your attention (never mind necessitate purchase). Johnny Cash’s American VI: Ain’t No Grave (released tomorrow) is one of those records.  

With his gravelly baritone, Cash takes on familiar subject matter like the power of faith, friendship, adversity, and hope through covers of Sheryl Crow, Kris Kristofferson, and Ed McCurdy to name a few. Like the previous five albums in the American series, Ain’t No Grave is produced by sonic wunderkind Rick Rubin, whom MTV called the “most important producer of the last 20 years.” Rubin helped re-launch Cash’s career, whose success certainly confirmed Rubin’s Midas touch. Together, the two made an indelible mark in music history and left incomparable work.

This was said to a judge after Cash’s truck caught fire and torched 508 acres of Los Padres National Forest in California, killing 49 of the forest’s 53 endangered condors.

Ozzy bit the head off a bat. Cash burned 49 endangered condors alive.

noun.     The intellectual identification of the thoughts, feelings, or state of another person; capacity to understand another person’s point of view or the result of such understanding. 

Cash spoke for the downtrodden, uneducated, poor, incarcerated, and wretched who were looking for redemption … AKA The Toilet Paper staff.

In 1998, Rick Rubin took out an ad in USA Today, which featured Cash “flipping the bird.” The caption was: “American Recordings and Johnny Cash would like to acknowledge the Nashville music establishment and country radio for your support.” The ad also congratulated Cash for winning a Grammy Award for Best Country Album, Unchained. The ad, of course, was a sarcastic “thank you” to country radio virtually ignoring the album.

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