Highway to Heaven

American V: A Hundred Highways
Johnny Cash
(American/Lost Highway)

Producer Rick Rubin has received a lot of credit for helping Johnny Cash stage a successful third act to his career with the "American Recordings" series. Now that this year's outstanding "Personal File" has been released, and we've seen that Cash was recording solo-acoustic songs back in the '70s, maybe the amount of praise allotted for Rubin needs to be reevaluated. Even if Cash didn't have a specific vision for those tapes at the time, he was prescient enough to preserve the songs. One thing is for certain, though: Rubin did help resurrect Cash's recording career, and proved to be a worthy caretaker of his artistic vision. Rubin's performance in that role is more noticeable than ever on "American V: A Hundred Highways," a poignant, fully realized final statement from a giant of American music that was brought to fruition by Rubin's guiding hand after Cash's death.

"A Hundred Highways" made a strong statement in the marketplace as well, rising to No. 1 in its first week (it was released on July 4) and putting Cash atop the album chart for the first time since 1969's "Live at San Quentin."

Though the sessions began almost immediately after the release of "American IV: The Man Comes Around" in 2002, much of the disc was recorded between the death of Cash's wife, June Carter Cash, in May 2003 and Cash's passing at age 71 in September 2003. The album wasn't completed, but Rubin took the vocal tracks from the incomplete songs and convened a cast of "American" regulars such as guitarist Smokey Hormel and Heartbreakers Mike Campbell (guitar) and Benmont Tench (organ) to finish the job. It's unlikely to be the final Cash release, but it stands as a thorough rumination on death that gives closure to his career as a living recording artist.

Cash didn't have to work hard at singing about dying. He was living the role. Suffering from diabetes complications, near blind and sometimes struggling to get his breath, he often sounds frail on "A Hundred Highways," like his once-robust voice could be silenced at any moment. He undoubtedly knew his time was coming, just as many fans suspected after June's passing. Like anything else, though, Cash faced the Grim Reaper head-on.

Many of the themes on the disc are specific and universal. The traditional "God's Gonna Cut You Down" succinctly sums up the inevitability of death; nobody gets out alive. Cash acknowledges his acceptance on Larry Gatlin's "Help Me" and his own "I Came to Believe." The hope for a better afterlife manifests itself in Bruce Springsteen's "Further On Up the Road," which pretty much ended up serving the same purpose on Springsteen's post-9/11 album, "The Rising" (though the song was composed before September 11).

In "Like the 309," a song about a train coming to get a man's coffin that reportedly is Cash's last composition, he again acknowledges that he's going down the line like all before him, while also admitting the bad shape he's in: "It should be a while before I see doctor Death / So it would sure be nice if I could get my breath." But he allows himself a bit of gallows humor, too: "Take me to the depot, put me to bed / Blow an electric fan on my gnarly ol' head / Everybody take a look, see, I'm doin' fine / Then load my box on the 309." Hank Williams' "On the Evening Train" has a similar premise, except in it the wife is on the boxcar.

The death-themed songs come as no surprise from a man at Cash's station in life. But it's the songs that weren't written about mortality that are surprisingly and effectively recast in this context, enabling the album to be so cohesive. In Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind," which on the surface seems like an odd choice for this collection, there's something especially haunting about the lyric, "In a castle dark, or a fortress strong / With chains upon my feet / You know that ghost is me / And I will never be set free / As long as I'm a ghost that you can't see." Likewise, Ian Tyson's "Four Strong Winds," which was written about the end of a relationship, is effective in this setting when Cash sings, "Well, our good times are all gone / And I'm bound for movin' on."

Cash spends a bit of time recounting his blessings, too, on Rod McKuen's "Love's Been Good to Me" and Hugh Moffat's "Rose of My Heart." In the hands of a lesser artist, and on an album with less gravity, they could easily have come off as mawkish. Once again, though, Cash's sincerity and sense of finality help him convincingly sell the songs.

The closer, "Free From the Chain Gang Now," puts a somber end to the proceedings and Cash's one-of-a-kind life. Ostensibly about a man freed from prison, it contains another story that bends to Cash's will as he sings, "I prayed that the gossip will spare me / When I return to the one I will marry / Like a bird in a tree I got my liberty / And I'm free from the chain gang now."

If there is something after this world (Cash certainly believed there was), then hopefully a reunion with June is part of Cash's greater reward. We're left with a moving final work to cap a career that played out like a great, epic movie. And the only fitting end for Johnny Cash was a courageous fade to black.