American VI: Ain't No Grave

The supposed final chapter in the late country star's career-capping sessions with producer Rick Rubin is released and fashioned as a tearjerker.

In 1994, Johnny Cash released American Recordings, his first team-up with Rick Rubin, the producer who continued to work beside him until Cash’s 2003 death. Their American albums gave Cash spare, sympathetic production and first-rate material, burnishing his status as an American legend. The collaboration began as a…

If Ain’t No Grave, the final installment in Johnny Cash’s rich collaboration with producer Rick Rubin, had appeared in, say…

Released for the occasion of Johnny Cash's 78th birthday, American VI: Ain't No Grave is the final installment in the collaboration between Cash and Rick Rubin that began with 1994’s American Recordings.

Ain’t No Grave amounts to a touching and often very sad sendoff.

American VI is every inch Johnny Cash’s final, life-affirming masterpiece. Rating: * * * * *