Johnny Cash: Storyteller

[pmp]

Has anyone else heard the new Johnny Cash disc yet? This is an album of songs that was recorded literally months before Cash became involved with Rick Rubin. Cash had been recording for Mercury for half a decade, and those albums are mostly workmanlike efforts but with only occasional flashes of inspiration. This new 1993 disc strays a little from the usual Cash album in that the whole thing is written by him - very few of his albums avoid covers altogether. The recordings have been stripped down to just Cash and his guitar and then new arrangements rebuilt around them for release. It is fine, but rather low key - an enjoyable set of mostly unremarkable compositions, but it's the ones that later turned up on the American series that show that Cash was really struggling with direction before Rubin entered the scene. For example, compare the two versions of Drive On (the first is from the new album):





It's easy to see why this 1993 album was set aside in favour of something more ambitious with Rubin's encouragement. There are comparisons being made between "Storyteller" and "Out Among the Stars," another album of new material released in 2014, this time a set-aside early 1980s collection. But Out Among the Stars is the superior set. Those later Columbia years often yielded surprisingly good results given their overall reputation (especially Johnny 99 and Heroes), and Out Among the Stars is roughly on par with both of them. Storyteller, although pleasant, is only on par with the run-of-the-mill Mercury offerings. Nice to have, of course, but it probably won't be spinning in my CD player any more often than Boom-Chicka-Boom or Water From the Wells of Home - and that's not very often.

[JohanD]

I have it on vinyl since last week, love it, it's a great "missing link" in between his previous work and the outstanding American Recordings.
I like it more then "Among the stars".
Just a matter of personal taste ofcourse.