JOHNNY CASH
“American V:A Hundred Highways”
(four stars)
Lost Highway/American
ON Johnny Cash’s posthumous “A Hundred Highways,” you hear the Man in Black facing the end with courage and acceptance on a collection as exceptional as Warren Zevon’s soaring final record, 2003’s “The Wind.” Like Zevon’s, Cash’s exploration of death isn’t a bummer, but a reflection on how to live.
After a single listen, even those who have never been fans will admire Cash. On the last song Cash wrote before his death, the funeral-train tale “Like the 309,” he spits in the Reaper’s eye and laughs, just a little, about his oneway ticket getting punched. His spiritual “I Came to Believe” explains how faith overcame his fear of death.
Cash wrote just two of the dozen songs, but his bravery and black humor come through in his delivery. He sounds as if singing is sapping all his strength, his voice so craggily dry you want to fetch him a sip of water. There’s no mistaking how frail he is, but on “A Legend in My Time,” there’s strength and emotion in his deep, halfspoken, half-sung rumble.
This is a collection of deathbed confessionals by a man who knows the marble orchard is his next stop. He gives Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Further On (Up the Road)” surprisingly chilly readings.
But there are also the lifeaffirming “Love’s Been Good to Me” and “Rose of My Heart,” which remind that love is the reason to suffer life’s pains.
Even without this final statement, Cash would have been immortal. But “A Hundred Highways” captures a man of hard won grace whose fire burned bright even as it was being snuffed out.