Johnny Cash Songwriter

Songwriter takes a set of demos Johnny Cash recorded in early 1993 and builds them out with posthumous recordings from a full band. Casual fans may find this a weird proposition, but those versed in Cash will recognize ’93 as the year preceeding the career-changing American Recordings and hence a kind of tremor before the quake. With the exception of “Drive On” and “Like a Soldier,” both of which showed up on American Recordings, and 1962’s “Sing It Pretty Sue,” these songs are new to us. Several are great: the cosmic “Hello Out There,” the gritty “Drive On,” the quaintly noble “Have You Ever Been to Little Rock?” and, best of all, “Well Alright,” in which a man meets a woman in a laundromat on a “dangerous, beautiful night” and, having helped her with her load (“she was washin’ extra hot”), begins a life with her. Mysterious, mundane, funny as a bird and deep as a well where you’ll never hear the penny hit bottom: Johnny Cash.