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Johnny Cash
“AMERICAN V: A HUNDRED HIGHWAYS”
RATING: 4 SOUND LEVELS.
When Cash exhales a raspy breath after singing “asthma’s coming down” on “Like the 309,” listeners should feel a chill. The line is from the last song the iconic star ever wrote and recorded. Far from a dirge, though, “309” rolls along in a pleasing manner as the train song it is–even if death is a passenger, as it is in one form or another on all of the album’s cuts. On “American V,” recorded before Cash’s September 2003 death, his voice was not as a strong as it once was, but it still carried an authority that set him apart from other singers.