When John Carter Cash happened upon an album of unheard songs by his father, he knew it had to be released. He tells Andy Welch about keeping the Johnny Cash legacy alive

THE first notable album issued after an artist’s death was Otis Redding’s The Dock Of The Bay, in 1968, just a few weeks after he’d died in a plane crash. Buddy Holly also died in a plane crash, in 1959, and there have been compilation releases by him ever since. Tupac Shakur, gunned down in 1996, has now released more music since that fateful September night than when he was alive. Jeff Buckley and Eva Cassidy are other notable examples.

Latest in this long line comes Out Among The Stars by Johnny Cash.

It’s not his first posthumous album – that was 2003’s Unearthed, released two months after he died – and it won’t be the last. It is, however, different from the others in that it wasn’t recorded in the few years before his death, but over various sessions in 1981 and 1984, and seemingly stockpiled for a rainy day.

It’s almost exactly as Cash had been planning to release it, if his record label Columbia hadn’t scrapped the whole idea.

“This is new,” says his son and leading light of the Johnny Cash Trust, John Carter Cash.

“This album is a cohesive body of work to me, not bits we’ve put together – it sounds whole.

And it’s from a period in Johnny Cash’s life that not many people know about.”

History says Cash teamed up with producer Rick Rubin in 1993 to start what would become the seven-strong American Recordings series of albums. Legend has it that Cash, struggling to get any industry attention, walked into The Viper Room one night – the Los Angeles club then owned by Johnny Depp – got up on stage and sang, stopping half of Hollywood’s movers and shakers in their tracks, and his career was reborn.

There is an element of truth to that, but Cash rarely stopped making records. Even when his popularity was at its lowest, he could still pack out 4,000-seat venues, and there’s seldom more than a two-year gap between albums in his discography. You don’t release more than 100 albums by wasting time.

The thing that curtailed Cash’s career in the early Eighties, and explains the three-year gap in recording sessions involving the missing album Out Among The Stars, was a relapse into drug addiction.

The story of that is pure rock’n’roll. Cash was injured by an ostrich called Waldo that he was trying to save from the cold at the House Of Cash, the theme-park-cum-recording studio he’d had built. Although sober for years, Cash became hooked on super-strength painkillers.

By the time of the second bout of recording for Out Among The Stars, he was sober again.

Carter Cash says: “Vocally, he sounded fantastic.

He was physically and spiritually focused.

And that’s why this is an undiscovered treasure.

“It makes a statement, which all great Johnny Cash records do,” he continues. “There’s also humour which he’s perhaps not as known for, but it’s there.”

Columbia’s decision not to release it seems due to the fact that Countrypolitan, a glossy production- style originating in Nashville, had swept away the original songs for something more mainstream.

“To me, there was a lack of vision from the people who were responsible for presenting my Johnny Cash to the world,” says Carter Cash. “I don’t think he ever slipped, his genius never left him. He might’ve done silly things sometimes, but he was having fun, he never lost his talent.”

Carter Cash, the only child of Johnny and June Carter Cash was born in 1970. But Carter Cash had largely forgotten about the recordings, until a few years ago.

“I can hear how deeply in love my dad was with my mother. He was also my best friend, so by coming back into contact with this album I have come back into contact with my best friend.”

As well as overseeing his father’s estate, Carter Cash also produces records – he’s made several with Loretta Lynn, Brooks & Dunn and Elvis Costello – and publishes books.

“I love talking about my dad,” he says, one of the few times he uses the word ‘dad’ rather than ’Johnny Cash’.

“There are more recordings in the vaults, and they will likely be released too, but the timing has to be right. I think of it like finding a missing Van Gogh. What would you do? Keep it in the attic, or present it to the world so everyone else can enjoy it too?”

  • JR Cash was born on February 26, 1932, in Kingsland, Arkansas.
  •  He married Vivian Liberto in 1954 and they had four children – Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy and Tara – but split in 1966.
  • Two years later, he married fellow musician June Carter. She died in May 2003, four months before Cash. They are buried side by side in Tennessee.