Johnny Cash, American IV: The Man Comes Down

If anyone has earned the right to use such an inclusive title for a series of records as “American Recordings,” it’s Johnny Cash. He connects with an amazingly broad set of audiences, from collegiate hipsters to presidents Nixon and Reagan, and is equally able to impress pious churchgoers and (as Merle Haggard once observed) “to take five thousand convicts and steal the show away from a bunch of strippers.” For the past decade, Cash has been collaborating with producer Rick Rubin, who’s kept his profile high among Xers and post-grungers with smart covers of songs by people like Beck and Soundgarden. Despite multiple Grammys, the American records certainly aren’t a blockbuster popular crossover in the O Brother sense (mainstream country radio won’t touch a Nine Inch Nails cover, for one thing). Neither are they trend-chasing put-ons like that buffoonish Pat Boone metal album of a few years back. If the O Brother phenomenon is about today’s performers reaching back to affirm the past, the Man in Black’s venerable integrity makes his recent work a living bridge in the opposite direction. On The Man Comes Down the choice of material is often inspired, including Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus,” a duet with Nick Cave on the Hank Williams tune “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and for a closing number, “We’ll Meet Again,” best known as the nuclear-armageddon serenade in Dr. Strangelove . Given the 70-year-old Cash’s ongoing health problems, it could very well be his own personal touch of dark humor.