“American VI: Ain’t No Grave” a fitting, fond farewell

Producer Rick Rubin promises this Johnny Cash album, the second posthumous one, will be the last he releases, which as good as makes it the last actual Johnny Cash album. I’m sure distant relatives will one day release outtakes, live performances and “alternate versions” much the same way Elvis’ catalog has been raped by RCA, but this is the last real new Johnny Cash album. That in itself is a sad, sobering thought.

Culled mainly from tracks recorded in the months between the death of Cash’s beloved wife June in May, 2003, and his own demise shortly thereafter, American VI: Ain’t No Grave is Cash’s musical last will and testament, and almost every track proves itself the equal of that intimidating responsibility.

The disc’s opening lines, “There ain’t no grave that can hold my body down,” are intoned in a dry, sepulchral rasp meant to chill, and despite the cynical calculation of it, they do. I wouldn’t want to meet this song in a dark alley at night!

I don’t know what a new listener, just discovering Cash’s American output for the first time would think, hearing this opening track. The melody is not the most tuneful and the clanking-chain percussion I thought was perhaps a touch too much. And the voice, though on-pitch, is clearly ravaged. I just heard my first Charlie Louvin record lately and the voice of the singer was wrecked, but it had a lived-in, stately dignity about it that gives me chills. I really like it, even though I can tell it must be a shadow now of what it once had been.

I’d hope a new listener would hear this album’s title track and come to a similar conclusion.

But if one is already an admirer of the Man In Black, it’s impossible not to marvel at, and have empathy with, the grave timbre of The Voice in its final corporeal moments. This is the sound of a great spirit letting go, dissipating gracefully, even joyfully, into that Eternal White Light.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The next song is called “Redemption Day.” First reaction: Cheryl Crow wrote a song on the last Johnny Cash album?? I’m glad I never heard her version, this one is great. And the production is thankfully chain-free. It sounds like it should always have been a Johnny Cash tune. Spot-on.

Then Cash covers a revered pop chestnut, this one written by his good friend Kris Kristofferson. Like American V’s “If You Could Read My Mind,” he doesn’t just re-interpret the familiar classic, he re-invents it.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not some endlessly forgiving/undiscerning fanboy here. I think there have been a number of misfires over the years in Cash’s selection of cover songs. “Cats In The Cradle,” comes to mind. So does “Personal Jesus.” I’m not really crazy about his version of U2’s “One” and in my opinion, no one has done “Solitary Man” better than Tucson, Arizona’s The Sidewinders. Most of the time, I tend to like the first version of a song I heard, no matter who covers it later, even Cash.

But on this album’s “For The Good Times,” he snatches the wistful number away from whatever pop crooner’s version I remember so fondly and makes it his own. (As an example of the phenomenon at work, Trent Reznor has recently taken to introducing “Hurt” in concert as a Johnny Cash song, in spite of the fact that Reznor wrote it and recorded it first.) Cash is in really good voice on “For The Good Times.” Strong and smooth. Good times, indeed.

The album’s standout is the lone new composition, “I Corinthians 15:55.” On my first couple listens, it was the one song that made me stop typing and look up from my keyboard to see which song was playing. And not even for the passionate lyrics, but for the lilting, playful vocal line. To think he had such beauty inside of him even as his heart was broken and his outer shell was falling to pieces around him… Only Cash could sing the words, “Oh Death, where is thy sting?” not as self-pity or a brash challenge, but rather as a teasing lover to a would-be paramour. Cheeky and cool.

“Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound” is practically unrecognizable from its popular rendition. But again, Cash invests the words with so much easy passion, it sounds like a whole different song till he gets to the familiar refrain. Which he sings with a sly wink because if there’s one thing Cash knew when he recorded this song, it’s where he was bound.

“Satisfied Mind” also kicks maximum ass and was recorded on a good voice day. Another fitting epitaph in a final album full of them. His strong, confident performance on this song makes it feel less like a coda and more like a period in 72-point, bold type.

The next cut, “I Don’t Hurt Anymore,” is a nice song and performance, but perhaps it’s a tad a bridge too far, theme-wise.

And sorry, but Walter Brennan owns “Cool Water.” But again, Cash is in great voice and seems to be enjoying himself. Still, I find it hard to believe that in all the time Cash and Rubin worked together, Rubin didn’t have a deeper well to draw from while assembling this final album. Hey, I just made a metaphor or something!

On either the last or second to last Larry King show Cash did, King grilled him about what he thought of (then-) current events, including W’s newly-minted Iraq War. I remember Cash’s eyes flashing for a moment before he demurred. I thought at the time that he just decided he didn’t have the strength to “go there.” I didn’t have much doubt what he really thought about it, and the inclusion of the anti-war classic “Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream” on the this, his final album, seems to validate my suspicion about Cash’s unspoken opinion.

The version here is Cash not in his strongest voice and for this song, it works perfectly. The accompaniment is nicely underdone and appropriate to the material. I see a picture in my mind of an old soldier laying dying, looking at all his medals and memorabilia on his bedside and for the first time wondering, what the hell had he done with his life?

The last song. “Aloha Oe,” nicely underplays the Hawaiian underpinnings of its origins. The vocal is up front, and when Cash gets around to translating the chorus, it was my voice that caught in my throat, not his. A lovely send-off. If Johnny Cash couldn’t have a proper Viking funeral—flaming boat and all—this song is the next best thing.

This obsession of Cash’s, at least in his professional life, with death and the hereafter wasn’t just window dressing he picked up in his dotage to keep the kids interested. Johnny Cash sang about death from one of first hit records, “Folsom Prison Blues,” on. (If you’re new around here, that was the one where he “shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.”)

Death was a theme he returned to again and again, from every side of the equation, but more often than not his character was the receiver of death, not the bringer.

The great country gospel music that filled Cash’s childhood and informed his professional output usually dealt with this life as merely a grisly, unpleasant series of ordeals one had to endure in order to earn a coveted spot at the right hand of the Lord in the afterlife. And to get from here to the hereafter, you were going to have kick death’s ass somewhere along the way so you might as well face it head-on. Check out the tune below. Here’s a first-person death song that’ll have you wanting to jump up and sing along:



Cash’s obsession with death and the next life only became creepy the nearer he himself got to it. But like the fearless artist and true believer that he was, rather than shy away from it, he confronted it straight on. In his last recordings with Rubin, he used his impending demise as the muse that elevates American VI from sad elegy for an American icon to something bigger, more important. People ought to be teaching this album in grief counseling workshops from now till judgment day.

When my time comes, if I can look death in the eye with even a trace of the equanimity and class Cash demonstrates here, I’ll have become a far better man than I am as I write this.

Even at a meager ten tracks, barely 30+ minutes and a couple of throw-away tunes, American VI: Ain’t No Grave rates five stars.