NEW JOHNNY CASH ALBUM TO BE RELEASED NEXT SPRING

There's new never-before-heard music coming from Johnny Cash.

Cash's estate is releasing "Out Among the Stars," an album he recorded with Billy Sherrill in the early 1980s that was never released by Columbia Records, then disappeared when the company dropped Cash in 1986. Turns out Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash, stashed the tapes - along with just about everything else that came into their possession.

"They never threw anything away," said their son, John Carter Cash. "They kept everything in their lives. They had an archive that had everything in it from the original audio tapes from `The Johnny Cash Show' to random things like a camel saddle, a gift from the prince of Saudi Arabia."

They stored away so much, in fact, the younger Cash and archivists at Legacy Recordings didn't find the material until last year, long after the family began issuing archival music by Cash. "Out Among the Stars" will be out March 25, and continues an intense period of interest in the singer, who helped shape modern country and rock `n' roll music and became an American pop cultural figure before his death 10 years ago at age 71.

Multiple music, book and restoration projects have been started in the past 18 months to mark what would have been the singer's 80th birthday and the 10th anniversary of his death. The music being released was recorded during a difficult period for Cash personally and professionally.

Columbia paired him with Sherrill, a producer and Country Music Hall of Fame member who was then the president of CBS Records Nashville. One of the main architects of country music's so-called countrypolitan sound, Sherrill helped push the genre toward pop sounds and conventions - and away from Cash's more independent-minded ways.

The pairing came at a time when Cash was at a low ebb in his popularity. The music on "Out Among the Stars" is taken from 1981 and `84 sessions, at a time when country music was going through great change.

"Dad was always uniquely himself," Cash said. "And later on the world would come back around. He never modified himself. But Nashville at the time was in a completely different place. It was the `Urban Cowboy' phase. It was pop country, and dad was not that. I think him working with Billy was sort of an effort by the record company to put him more in the circle of Music Row and see what could happen at the heart of that machine."

It was clear record company executives didn't think much of the outcome. They put out a few more Cash albums after the recordings were made, but never used the music from those sessions before dropping him. Sherrill backed Cash with a band that consisted of fellow Country Hall of Fame member Hargus "Pig" Robbins and a young friend of Cash's named Marty Stuart.

The younger Cash and his co-producer, archivist Steve Berkowitz, decided they'd bring Stuart back in to re-record his parts with 30 years more experience as a picker. Others, including Buddy Miller and Jerry Douglas, helped fortify the original tapes as well. The 12 tracks include a duet with Waylon Jennings and two with June Carter Cash.

"We were so excited when we discovered this," Cash said. "We were like, my goodness this is a beautiful record that nobody has ever heard. Johnny Cash is in the very prime of his voice for his lifetime. He's pitch perfect. It's seldom where there's more than one vocal take. They're a live take and they're perfect."

John Carter Cash doesn't think Columbia executives realized what they had in hand. Even though his father had been a major star, tastes would soon turn to Garth Brooks and Shania Twain.

Biographer Robert Hilburn, who recently released "Johnny Cash: The Life," said the music fans are about to hear was recorded during some of the most difficult years of Cash's life. He felt like he'd lost his legacy and he was still dealing with the fallout from personal problems including infidelity and drug addiction.

He soon met producer Rick Rubin, though, and wrote a coda to his career that gave his life something of a mythic quality.

"Johnny Cash was redeemed, and that was a wonderful lesson," Hilburn said. "His story is so great and it's so dramatic and it's so much more dramatic than I ever envisioned."

But...but...now there will be some demand for the original tapes. Which means a second release!!!

And the Cash fans have no problem with the use of re-recordings and overdubs for this title? Will it sound like an unreleased 1984 album or something more contemporary, and does it matter?

Johnny Cash's son says there are more records to be released from the vaults

Johnny Cash's son John Carter Cash has described a new album by his father as "a great treasure" and says there will be more new music released in the future.

'Out Among The Stars' will be released in March and features 12 tracks by the late singer, recorded for Columbia Records between 1981 and 1984. Among the tracks are duets with Cash's wife June Carter and friend Waylon Jennings. The tracks have never been made available before, as they were recorded at a time when Cash had fallen out of favour with the public and his career deemed over. He was dropped shortly afterward by the label.

The unearthed recordings came to light when John Carter Cash found them in a vault while he was cataloguing his father's private archive in 2012. He discovered hundreds of reels of unreleased live and studio recordings, including duets with Bob Dylan.

The new album will be the fourth posthumous album released since Johnny Cash died in 2003, aged 71. Speaking to the BBC, Carter Cash said: "There is more music to be released that is unheard, there are some great recordings. But we don't want to release something unless it means something. It has to be in line with what we believe my father would have wanted released".

The Cash estate has made a large amount of money since Cash's death, with the new recordings expected to bolster that further. In 2009, Cash sold more than three million records, earning around £4.9 million. Carter Cash, however, has defended the decision to release the recordings, saying: "Do you want to see another Picasso if there's one that nobody has ever seen before? I would say that probably the world would want to see another Picasso. And it's really the same thing. This is a work of art."