Unlike other releases touted as “lost recordings,” Johnny Cash’s Out Among the Stars is a true- blue lost album, start to finish. The recording is from Cash’s wilderness years (1980 – 84), recorded before the singer was dumped by Columbia Records in 1986 and this album was shelved.
Famed country-pop producer-to-the-stars Billy Sherrill worked with Cash on this album and it’s a lost artifact from a period when Cash’s popularity was low and his influence was waning. But for all that, there’s verve and joy in some tracks here.
Baby Ride Easy is a classic example of a Johnny/June Carter-Cash duet. It’s an open-hearted story song done in a traditional call and response country/folk style that gets its strength from the chemistry between the duo. This elevates an ordinary song to a fine performance piece. Cash does this again with outlaw buddy Waylon Jennings on the Hank Snow road song, I’m Movin’ On.
Out Among the Stars presents a different, lost persona of The Man in Black. The lingering image of Cash is the one from the recordings and videos from the Rick Rubin-produced American Recordings series of the late 1990s and early 2000s: the dark prophet with the haunted voice, intoning his last songs. That’s a powerful image and the Cash that emerges here is a sunnier sounding singer, without the pathos of his later years.
His voice is clear and deep and his notes are unwavering. Some material has questionable touches (the choir on Tennessee), but taken as a whole, it’s a cohesive album and a reflection of where Cash was at during a low profile period of his career. The mystery of this “lost album” is why it was never released before.
– Dean Gordon-Smith is a Vernon-based musician who reviews new releases for The Morning Star.
