JOHNNY CASH - Personal File Review

By 1994, Johnny Cash's status as an icon of not only country music but of American popular culture was already firmly secure, the songs from his unrivaled creative peak in the 1960s defining country's "Golden Era" even as the content and form of those songs challenged the genre's clean-cut mainstream conventions, and his larger-than-life image as The Man in Black forever changing the way that the most compelling recording artists—those who truly earn the term—craft a public persona that's as inseparable from their music as is their voice. ...full text Johnny-come-latelies may think of Cash as shaky-voiced, because of Joaquin Phoenix's raspy impression or his own final releases. But even die-hard fans may be startled to hear Cash's effortlessly deep, full-bodied baritone in Personal File, newly uncovered, secret sessions from 1973 to '82, wherein he appears to have invented the solo-acoustic American Recordings ethos two decades early....full text As the title says, this comes from Cash's personal archive, as opposed to the official back catalogue now being flogged to death. Its 49 songs, all previously unreleased, stem from a work in progress dated 1973-82 (the wilderness years between having his career killed off by Columbia Records and resurrected by Rick Rubin), which his son recently discovered in Cash's former museum....full text