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

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

More Song Stories entries »

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