Track Listing

1. Help Me
2. God's Gonna Cut You Down
3. Like The 309
4. If You Could Read My Mind
5. Further On Up The Road
6. On The Evening Train
7. I Came To Believe
8. Love's Been Good To Me
9. A Legend In My Time
10. Rose Of My Heart
11. Four Strong Winds
12. I'm Free From The Chain Gang Now

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #982 in Music
• Released on: 2006-07-03
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 43 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
The ethical questions surrounding this final album in the American Recordings series are as unavoidable as they are, ultimately, peripheral. While the vocal tracks were recorded in the months just prior to Johnny Cash's passing in September 2003, the arrangements weren't undertaken until two years later. And though producer Rick Rubin had become a trusted friend, the Man in Black wasn't around to approve or disapprove, let alone guide, the final sessions. However, if the pure power of these recordings doesn't quiet the skeptics, nothing will. With Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench and slide guitar session pro Smokey Hormel on board (all three of whom appear on earlier Cash albums), along with guitarists Matt Sweeney and Johnny Polansky, the sound is stately and acoustic, but rarely staid, even as the dynamics of earlier recordings in the series are absent. Instead, the songs have a measured, elegiac intensity, the sound of musicians choosing their notes carefully and making just the right choices.

The songs Cash sings are, unsurprisingly, confessional and reflective: his mortality and his mistakes, his maker and his salvation, and the loss of his wife June and the end of his career may have weighed on his mind, but in these songs he both embodies and transcends his personal history. On "God's Gonna Cut You Down," as the musicians clap and stomp behind him, his voice cuts through the air like that same avenging hand. On the new original "Like the 309"--the last song Cash ever wrote--he cops to being short of breath, and that voice becomes a metaphor for what each of us will one day face. On Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Read My Mind," Rubin flirts with overwhelming the damp bittersweetness of Cash's phrasing in tasteful atmospherics, but the voice is implacable, hitting and finding notes one never expected he'd have the will to find. Likewise, it's hard to believe this is his first recording of Ian Tyson's "Four Strong Winds"; the elemental narrative seems to have been written for him. Two songs, however, Cash has recorded before: the born-again hymn "I Came to Believe" and the final spiritual, "I'm Free from the Chain Gang Now." The latter especially is a definitive testament, as is his version of Bruce Springsteen's "Further On (Up the Road)." "One sunny morning we'll rise, I know / And I'll meet you further on up the road," he sings. If only, John, if only. --Roy Kasten

CD Description
'A Hundred Highways' is the posthumous fifth Rick Rubin-produced album from the man in black himself, Johnny Cash. A more than fitting finale to the 'American Recordings' series, this album is yet another timely reminder of Cash's great talent for taking recordings made famous by other artists and making them his own with his distinctive voice and dark sense of humour. Includes the final song Cash wrote before his death, 'Like The 309'.

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Customer Reviews

A work of sublime beauty
These songs were recorded while Johnny Cash was wheelchair-bound, nearly blind, asthmatic, diabetic, in constant pain and grieving the death of his soulmate and love of his life June Carter Cash, whom he would join mere weeks after the last of these tracks was recorded. Despite all that, he managed, through sheer force of will, to create an album of honesty and beauty that will stay with you long after the last note fades.

The album opens with a straightfoward appeal for help. "Oh Lord, help me to walk another mile, just one more mile" he sings on "Help Me", a hauntingly beautiful song that is neither maudlin nor overly sentimental. This is followed by what the sequencing seems to suggest is God's answer to that humble plea, the slashing, foot-stomping "God's Gonna Cut You Down". Cash seems to relish the role of the avenging hand and sings this one with gusto.

"Like the 309", the last song Cash wrote and recorded, has him returning to the "train song" motif that has been a lifeblood of his music. Cash stares down "Dr. Death" with a wink, a sly grin and a clear-eyed view of his own mortality. "Tell me all about it, what I did wrong/Meanwhile, I will be doin' fine/Then load my box on the 309".

Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind", a staple of light-pop radio, is transformed by Cash from a pleasantly hummable song about a romantic breakup into a harrowing trip into a dark night of the soul. Cash's voice is at its weakest here as he struggles for breath and pitch but that only serves to make the effect greater. Lyrics that seemed throwaway in the original seem weighted with years of regret and pain when sung by Cash. His voice breaks and nearly disappears while singing "The feeling's gone/And I just can't get it back" and "If you read between the lines/You'll know that I'm just trying to understand".

Cash takes Bruce Springsteen's "Further On Up the Road" from "The Rising" and turns it into the song it was always meant to be. What was a hard-driving rock song when done by Springsteen becomes, in Cash's hands, an instantly classic folk song that sounds like it was handed down through the years. The melody is allowed to breathe, the lyrics are clear and beautiful and the song becomes a meditation on life, faith and redemption. "If there's a light up ahead/well, brother, I don't know/But I'll meet you further on up the road".

The specter of June Carter Cash hovers over many songs on the album, notably "On the Evening Train" (the Hank Williams song about a widower sending off his wife's casket at the depot), "Love's Been Good to Me" and "Rose of My Heart" ("We're the best partners this world's ever seen... You are the rose of my heart/You are the love of my life" ). "Four Strong Winds", with its lyrics "Now our good times are all gone/And I'm bound for moving on" takes on a different meaning altogether from its original "good love gone bad" connotation.

The album closes with "I'm Free From the Chain Gang Now", a song Cash originally recorded in 1962. Back then, in the hands of a young man, the song was simply about a prisoner released from his shackles. Now, as recorded by an old man with his soulmate gone, his health gone and his best days behind him, the song is about freedom from earthly bonds. I don't think it's a coincidence that Cash's voice sounds strongest on this track. When he sings "I got rid of the shackles that bound me" he sounds like a man who has made peace with his past and is looking forward to moving on to the next station. On September 12, 2003 Johnny Cash was freed from his earthly shackles but, to our great benefit, he had the strength and talent to leave behind some sublime beauty for the rest of us. I love you, John. I'll meet you further on up the road.

Truthful... the best of all American Saga
Many people can say what they want, but I almost had tears when I heard this album... just listening to `Help Me' and the way Johnny sings those lyrics, man! that's just too much. The songs in this album are perfect, and personally this is my favourite of the American saga... Johnny knew what was coming and you can feel it across the songs, there's nothing like how he approach the melodies.
I'm just glad we can always remember him with so many great records... the last one can have that nostalgic ingredient, but honestly I've never heard an album that reflected feelings in such a truthful way.

It's almost me being stupid, but after hearing this record, you feel that you know the guy... I guess very few artists could do something like that.

Enjoy this masterpiece...

Is this the last we'll hear from Johnny ??
Though American V's quality shines through on first hearing, no trouble, it is only after repeated listening that it's stark beauty becomes fully apparent.
Only a strong man would be able to sing about failure, heartache and suffering the way Johnny does. Only Johnny Cash was able to take an "ordinary" songs such as Legend in my Time and make it say more than the original writer can ever have intended.
I would hope That Rick Rubin will be able to extract more gems from what is left in the vaults at the House of Cash. I would hope that Benmont Tench, Smokey Hornel and such musicians will once again be involved. In short I hope Johnny's last farewell, if there is to be one, will be handled in the same tasteful way as "Cash Unearthed".
One bit of very minor criticism : Rubin's liner notes were, I thought a bit on the self indulgent side. I would have preferred a few photographs of Johnny with his June.
What a mountain of a man Johnny was !!