Cash's Songs of "Life" Due

The late Johnny Cash will again have his catalog tapped for a thematic compilation, Life, due March 23rd on Columbia/Legacy.

The eighteen-song Life will include Cash favorites like "Man in Black" "Ballad of Ira Hayes," "Wanted Man" (written by Bob Dylan) and "Ragged Old Flag" along with "I Can't Go On That Way," a previously unreleased original from 1977. Life arrives four years after the popular Love, God and Murder albums (also released together as a box set), which included some of Cash's best-known songs shuffled onto categorical CDs.

As with Love, God and Murder, Cash was involved with the song selection on Life prior to his death last September of complications from diabetes. He actually emailed the final track listing to his manager just four days before passing. "I just [pick] some titles," Cash said of the original compilations. "I don't listen to my records except for when I'm making them. I keep going back to a line of Dylan's: "I will know my song well before I start singing."

Despite being plagued by ill health for several years, Cash remained true to the title of the new collection during his last year. "I don't think about death at all," he said in his final interview with Rolling Stone. "What's to think about? I enjoy my life."

Life track list:

Suppertime
Country Trash
The Night Hank Williams Came to Town
Time Changes Everything
I Talk to Jesus Every Day
You're the Nearest Thing to Heaven
I'm Ragged, but I'm Right
These Are My People
Ballad of Ira Hayes
Oney
Man in Black
I'm Alright Now
Ragged Old Flag
I Wish I was Cray Again
Where Did We Go Right (with the Carter Family)
Wanted Man
I Can't Go On That Way
Lead Me Gently Home

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Song Stories

“Let My Love Open the Door”

Pete Townshend | 1980

A peppy, hopeful love song, "Let My Love Open the Door" became a U. S. Top Ten hit for Pete Townshend in 1980, anchored by the kind of repeating synthesizer figures that he'd used in some of the Who's recordings in the previous decade. Although Townshend brushed the song off as "just a ditty" in Rolling Stone shortly after its release, in 1996 he revealed it was about love of the holiest sort. "It's supposed to be about the power of God's love," he remarked. "That when you're in difficulty, whether it's major or minor, God's love is always there for you."

More Song Stories entries »

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