‘Songwriter’ – New album of unreleased Johnny Cash songs announced

An album of previously unreleased songs by Johnny Cash, titled ‘Songwriter’, will be released later this year – check out the single ‘Well Alright’ below.

The recordings are taken from a series of sessions the country legend played in a Nashville studio in 1993, but which have been shelved ever since.

Now, Cash’s son John Carter Cash has unearthed the recordings, isolated the original vocals and recruited a group of Cash’s former bandmates to create the new set of songs.

‘Songwriter’ will be released on June 28 via Mercury Nashville/UMe, and you can pre-order it here. Check out the first song to have been released from it, ‘Well Alright’, below:

At the time of the original recording sessions, Cash was between contracts, but the tracks were put to one side after he met Rick Rubin and embarked on the now-legendary ‘American Recordings’ series of albums.

After coming across the tracks, John Carter Cash and producer David ‘Fergie’ Ferguson brought together musicians including guitarist Marty Stuart, bassist Dave Roe, drummer Pete Abbott, to the ‘Cash Cabin’ in Hendersonville, Tennessee, where the tracks on ’Songwriter’ finally came together.

The album is comprised of 11 Johnny Cash originals, one of which, ‘Spotlight’, will feature a guitar solo from The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach.

In other Johnny Cash news, Paul McCartney recently credited him for inspiring him to form Wings.

“We were in bed one night,” he said, “newly married, when Johnny Cash came on the telly with a new band he’d formed with Carl Perkins, a big hero of mine. There they were, playing with some country musicians I had never heard of, looking like they were having fun.”

“I thought: here’s Johnny, he’s back, he’s doing it. So I turned to Linda and said: Do you want to form a band? And she went: ‘Sure.’ That’s how our relationship was. Do you want to go and live on a farm in Scotland? ‘Why not?’”

Lykki Li also released her version of Cash’s 1963 classic ‘Ring Of Fire’ earlier this year. The track was included on the soundtrack to the Netflix film Dansel, starring Millie Bobby Brown.

The post ‘Songwriter’ – New album of unreleased Johnny Cash songs announced appeared first on NME.