The Man in Black comes around again: Johnny Cash's "Personal File" album out next month

Now here's a reason to head to the local music store in May. There will be a collection of previously unreleased recordings by the late Johnny Cash coming out, the album will be called "Personal File."

"I'm anxious to hear it" is what Cash said about the song "San Quentin" on the great Johnny Cash at San Quentin album from 1969. And I'm anxious to hear "Personal File."

From the Hollywood Reporter via Reuters:

Expect a new wave of interest in Cash next month: On May 23, Columbia/Legacy will release "Personal File," a two-CD set of previously unheard solo material, recorded by Cash from 1973-80 and culled from the musician's studio vaults.

The material on "Personal File" came to light when John Carter Cash, son of Johnny and June Carter Cash, was clearing out his father's House of Cash studio in Hendersonville, Tenn., in late 2004.

"It's a lifetime's worth of tapes -- whatever passed through (Cash's) hands," says Gregg Geller, the veteran catalog executive who produced the forthcoming set. "There were literally thousands of tapes that we plowed through. . . . There are several hundred guitar-vocal demos along the line of ('Personal File'). I would hasten to add that this is the cream."

The years 1973-1980 represent a kind of lost period of the country music baritone. Cash's ABC-TV variety show was cancelled in 1971, and his last big hit for many years, Man in Black, was released that year.

Cash found well-deserved critical and commercial success with the sparse "American Recordings" that trickled out beginning in the 1990s. The last of those, American IV--The Man Comes Around, was released in 2002. He was 70. How many septuagenarians release albums--let alone good ones?

I'm thinking (and hoping), based on what I read in the Hollywood Reporter article, that the "new" material will be similar to the American recordings.

Technorati tags: Johnny Cash Country Music Nashville music Entertainment