Product Description
American VI: Ain't No Grave, is the sixth and final installment of Johnny Cash's critically-acclaimed American Recordings album series. As with the previous five albums in the American Recordings series, American VI was produced by Rick Rubin.

American VI is deeply elegiac and spiritual, with each song its own piece of the puzzle of life's mysteries and challenges - the pursuit of salvation, the importance of friendships, the dream of peace, the power of faith, and the joys and adversities that entail simple survival. It is an achingly personal and intimate statement, as, from the end of the line, Johnny Cash looks back on a most extraordinary life.

1. Ain't No Grave
2. Redemption Day
3. For The Good Times
4. I Corinthians 15:55
5. Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound
6. Satisfied Mind
7. I Don't Hurt Anymore
8. Cool Water
9. Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream
10. Aloha Oe

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0030NL8KK/?tag=imwan-20

It's about time! Been waiting for it 3 1/2 years.

Johnny Cash's American VI Due in February

12/23/2009 By Josiah Hughes
http://www.exclaim.ca/articles/generala ... 26&csid1=0



Proving he's just as much of a badass as Tupac, fallen country icon Johnny Cash has another posthumous album slated for release in early 2010. The album is the sixth in his series of recordings with Rick Rubin, and was recorded between the death of his wife, June Carter, and his own death.

As TwentyFourBit reports, the album is appropriately called American VI: Ain't No Grave, and is due in stores on February 23. That date is significant, as it's three days before what would have been Cash's 78th birthday. The website also point to an Amazon listing for the disc with minimal artwork that may or may not be the final product.

Little else is known about the album or what will be on it. There is speculation as to what songs will be included, however. Those tracks are included below.

Rumoured Ain't No Grave tracklisting:

“Ain’t No Grave”
“Redemption Day”
“For The Good Times”
“First Corinthians”
“Where I’m Bound”
“Satisfied Mind”
“It Don’t Hurt Anymore”
“Cool Clear Water”
“Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream”
“Aloha”

Guess Unearthed and The Legend weren't the final word after all... how much more of the Rubin material is still in the vault?

Rubin must've had him locked in a studio recording 24/7.

Cash didn't sleep regularly at that time of his life, and Rubin would record him literally day and night, whenever Cash felt like playing. There was a ton of material (obviously!)

Sixteen tons !!

Love it. Love Johnny. Hope it happens. Thanks for the info.

Amazon has just added a description which calls this the last of the Rubin-produced material left in the vaults.

I had read that the final Summer 2003 sessions with Cash/Rubin yielded between 24-26 solid vocal recordings that could be the basis of future releases. Between American V &VI, it sounds like we'll get most of them. (Sadly, Johnny was scheduled to record some more just four days after he passed away.)

Jim

According to the Sunday insert, this is on sale for something like seven or eight bucks at Best Buy.

Here's a review from the Chicago Tribune:

Rating 3.5 stars (out of 4)

In the final decade of his life, Johnny Cash revived his career by collaborating with producer Rick Rubin on a series of recordings that yielded five studio albums and a box set – one of the great final chapters authored by any pop icon in the last half-century.
Now, more than six years after Cash’s death in 2003, 10 more songs from those sessions have been collected on “American VI: Ain’t No Grave” (American Recordings/Lost Highway). Skepticism would be in order, given that the legacies of artists from Elvis Presley to Tupac Shakur have been marred by countless ill-considered, posthumous releases.

That is not the case with “VI.” Cash was determined to record as much as possible soon after the love of his life, June Carter Cash, died in May 2003. Over the next four months until his own death in September, the singer hunkered down with Rubin at Cash’s home studio in Tennessee, working feverishly against time and his own declining health. Rubin helped make Cash relevant again in the ‘90s by serving as a low-key cheerleader and facilitator; he helped pick the songs and the musicians for each of Cash’s “American” recordings. He recorded Cash in small-group settings, an approach that only enhanced the singer’s gravelly conviction.
On his last recordings, Cash wore his mortality like one of his black suits, with a comfortable dignity. In the traditions he grew up with – country, gospel, blues – death was a subject that came up frequently; serious yet matter of fact. It cloaked Cash’s first posthumous studio album, the 2006 release “American V: A Hundred Highways.” That record was a difficult listen; his voice sounded like a shipwreck, echoing Billie Holiday’s audible deterioration on her penultimate album, “Lady in Satin,” or the ravaged croon of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker in his final years.

Death remains the big subject on “VI,” and Rubin magnifies the drama. The music casts long shadows, packed with foreboding. But Cash’s voice isn’t particularly morbid or self-pitying. Instead, it’s tinged by longing -- not for what he’s leaving behind, but for what’s next. Just as he explored new sounds until the day he died, Cash paints death not as an end, but as the start of his next road trip.

The title track that opens “Ain’t No Grave” was originally a gospel rave-up recorded by the Pentecostal preacher Claude Ely in 1953. In Cash’s version, a spectral organ hovers and a bell tolls, as if announcing the violent climax of a Sergio Leone Western, and the drums trudge like a dead man walking. It’s all meant to suggest that for Cash, the term “eternal rest” will be anything but.

In songs such as Tom Paxton’s “Where I’m Bound” and especially Sheryl Crow’s “Redemption Day,” Cash amplifies his restlessness. The chug of Crow’s original is cut to a crawl, with earthly turmoil juxtaposed with what’s in store at “heaven’s gate.’

“Freedom … freedom … freedom,” Cash mutters as the song fades, as if removing unseen shackles.
As the album winds down, Cash turns positively psychedelic: His music sounds like it was made in a semi-conscious state, blurring the lines between the temporal and spiritual. He drifts into reveries such as Ed McCurdy’s protest classic “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream,” transformed into a twinkling, narcotized lullaby that imagines a world without war. The old country hit “Cool Water” centers on a mirage, the narrator stumbling through the desert with a thirst that can’t be quenched. The sole original, Cash’s chamber-pop interpretation of the biblical passage “I Corinthians 15:55,” finds him tracing a path through darkness toward the white light of redemption.

He bids farewell with a 19th Century Hawaiian song, “Aloha Oe.” Elvis Presley recorded a souped-up version of it for his 1961 movie “Blue Hawaii.” But Cash just rides the gentle melody over a bottleneck guitar, as if he were swinging in a hammock with a bottle of rum, biding his time until the next great adventure comes along. What a way to go.

I bought this CD at Best Buy today ($7.99) and listened to it on the way home tonight. It is a wonderfully poignant and dignified final gift from Johnny. To me, it's not as sad as some have mentioned. I think his voice sounds stronger here than on the previous album. His last lyric on the final song is "until we meet again", and like everything else Johnny Cash sang, I believe it.

Highly recommended!

Jim

It's also $7.99 at J&R.

$8.99 at Borders according to the e-mail I got today.

Alan

Guys, it's been $7.99 at Amazon practically since it first appeared for pre-ordering:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0030NL8KK/?tag=imwan-20

I'll agree with Jim. I'm listening to it now as I speak. Yes, Johnny's voice does sound stronger than on previous American label recordings. I love that voice. I miss that voice.

Thanks, Johnny. It's a beautiful birthday gift. (We share the same birthday -- February 26th!).

My grandmother, a chain-smoker for years and years and years quit smoking one day, cold turkey. Reason: Johnny Cash came to her in a dream and told her she had to stop. When Johnny Cash tells you something, you gotta listen!

And if Amazon had free shipping for under $25, that'd be a great deal!

B&M is the way to go on this one, IMO.

After gas, tax and time spent, B&M isn't the way to go for any releases, AFAIC.

Ah, but there is the joy of immediate gratification (and the possibility of some exclusive)!

As I've said before, I haven't bought media from a walk-in store since the late-1990s, and I've neither missed the experience nor missed any releases I wanted.

Doesn't matter anyway. Soon enough B&Ms won't stock music or videos at all.