Rescued from Cash’s low ebb in the early 1990s, this fun, lightweight song is a long way from the moody recordings with Rick Rubin he soon turned towards
In the great American saga of Johnny Cash, the early 90s are held to be among his lowest ebbs: the lull that made the triumphant final act of his career – the American Recordings series with Rick Rubin, critical acclaim, Grammy awards, platinum sales and all – seem all the more startling. He’d been dropped by Columbia Records after 28 years and a brief and turbulent period with Mercury had yielded mixed artistic dividends and indifferent sales. One of country music’s Mount Rushmore figures was reduced to recording Christmas songs for a now defunct budget label called Laserlight Digital.
You might consider it an era in Cash’s artistic life best forgotten, but posthumous retrospection has a way of recalibrating history: just as David Bowie’s 1990s output has been significantly upgraded since his death, so a collection of Johnny Cash songwriting demos that no label wanted in 1993 emerges 31 years later, heralded as a major new release.
