Great cover.

“American VI: Ain’t No Grave,” the final chapter of Johnny Cash and Rick Rubin’s “American” series, is due February 26 on Lost Highway. It includes songs from Sheryl Crow and Kris Kristofferson (“For the Good Times” — one of his best). The Avett Bros. guest on the title track, too.

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The songs come from sessions that began in 2002, just after Cash and Rubin wrapped up “American IV: The Man Comes Around,” and continued all the way up until Cash’s death in 2003.

From the Lost Highway release:

During these sessions, in May of 2003, less than four months before he passed, Cash lost his wife June Carter Cash due to surgical complications. According to Rubin, “Johnny said that recording was his main reason for being alive. I think it was the only thing that kept him going.”

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Cash feared that American IV might be his last release, so Rubin suggested that he immediately begin writing and recording new material. Due to the artist’s frail condition, Rubin arranged for an engineer and guitar players to always be on call. “Every morning, when he’d wake up, he would call the engineer and tell him if he was physically up to working that day,” Rubin explains.

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