Out Among The Stars
The previously unreleased recordings on *Out Among the Stars* fill in a lost chapter in Johnny Cash’s career. Recorded between 1981 and 1984, the album’s tracks (produced by Nashville hitmaker Billy Sherrill) were rediscovered by Johnny’s son John Carter Cash in 2012. The music here captures the country legend in fine voice as he tempers his dark persona with a sense of gratitude and a touch of rowdy humor. Cash is in his best storytelling mode as he unreels a gritty morality tale in the title number and fantasizes about ending it all with a perverse twist in “I Drove Her Out of My Mind.” There are echoes of his wilder days in “I’m Movin’ On” (a duet with Waylon Jennings) and the rockabilly-slanted “Rock and Roll Shoes.” June Carter Cash joins Johnny on the lighthearted Western number “Baby Ride Easy” and the uplifting bluegrass tune “Don’t You Think It’s Come Our Time.” Cash honors his Southern roots in “Tennessee” and testifies to his sustaining faith in “I Came to Believe.” “She Used to Love Me a Lot” is the album’s standout, a moody narrative of love and regret in the classic Man in Black fashion.
Johnny Cash recorded Out Among the Stars with countrypolitan producer Billy Sherrill in the early 1980s, but the album never saw release at the time. Rescued from the vaults and augmented with new instrumentation, Stars sheds welcome light on a period when Cash kept a low profile.
An interlude of good humor between the populist heat of Cash’s prison albums and the Christ-haunted nightscapes of his comeback LPs.
Mention Johnny Cash and most people either think of the young Sun Records singer whose early singles like "Folsom Prison…
If Out Among the Stars had come out when its sessions were completed, it would've appeared sometime in 1984, arriving between 1983's flinty Johnny 99 and 1985's slippery, sentimental Rainbow.
Beyond being some of Johnny Cash's most brilliant work, his early '90s collaborations with Rick Rubin were celebrated for their sparseness after the tinny, technologically-obsessed studio practices of the 1980s laid waste to many a legacy artist's creative core. Recently discovered by John Carter Cash, the only child of Johnny and June Carter Cash, Out Among the Stars challenges conventional wisdom about Cash's artistic worth in the '80s.
Out Among the Stars is a newly unearthed Johnny Cash album, recorded in 1981 and 1984 but for some reason shelved at the time.
<p>The Man in Black had lost his way when he recorded this set 30 years ago, writes <strong>Paul Mardles</strong></p>
Out Among the Stars is a reminder of how easy Johnny Cash made it all look even when he was slumping.
Johnny Cash's label refused to release this album in the 1980s, but it contains some terrific material that fans won't want to miss any longer, writes <strong>Robin Denselow</strong>
Most 'lost albums' get lost for a reason, but this one is strong, assured and full of Cash's trademark emotional integrity, says Neil McCormick