< With a new Johnny Cash album, examining when to release posthumous material

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

One of the great voices in music history, Johnny Cash, died more than 20 years ago, and he has a new album.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HELLO OUT THERE")

JOHNNY CASH: (Singing) Hello out there. This is planet Earth. Calling, calling, calling, calling, calling. Hello out there. Our net worth is falling falling, falling, falling...

INSKEEP: First, let me reassure you, this is not Johnny Cash via AI. It actually is a recording of Johnny Cash - a recording called "Hello Out There," one of a few songs that Cash recorded as a demo, meaning not meant for commercial release, back in the 1990s. It was discovered, punched up with a new band, and is now coming out on Friday as an album called "Songwriter." Lars Gotrich from our NPR music team has been listening and thinking about the ethics of posthumous recordings. He's on the line and alive. Hi there, Lars.

LARS GOTRICH, BYLINE: Hey, Steve. It's nice to be here.

INSKEEP: So, I like Johnny Cash. I'm happy to see the extra material. But I realize that some people may feel differently. How do you think through when it makes sense to release posthumous material?

GOTRICH: So this is just now record industry basic practice when a beloved songwriter or musician dies. They will sometimes clear the vault. Sometimes it's done very tastefully. Sometimes it's done in a not so tasteful way. And so I kind of asked myself a few questions. And one of the questions that I asked myself is, how much was the artist involved in the process? So, this record, "Songwriter," was recorded in 1993 in a Nashville studio, Johnny Cash in a studio with some musicians. But we get a basic shape of what Johnny Cash intended in these demos.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WELL ALRIGHT")

CASH: (Singing) I met her at the laundromat. She was washing extra hot. I said, don't you need a little help with that big load you got. She said, no, but did a double take, and then she smiled and said, I might. As I rolled up my sleeves, I said to myself, well, all right. Well, all right.

GOTRICH: And that is what his son, John Carter Cash, and the producer David "Fergie" Ferguson had to work from. So they actually had a very good baseline. And that's usually my first question to myself. Like, even though Johnny Cash wasn't directly involved in the making of this particular album, he gave us the base to work from.

INSKEEP: You just maybe hinted at another thing that's on your mind when you talked about John Carter Cash. Do you want people close to the artist to be involved in order to feel it's a legitimate production?

GOTRICH: Yes, that is my second question. And this one can be a tricky one because, you know, family is family. So sometimes there are good intentions within that family, and they want to honor the music and the legacy of the person who has left us. And sometimes the family just needs to make a quick buck. In this case, John Carter Cash has basically been entrusted with the legacy of Johnny Cash's music. And he's worked on a few projects since Johnny Cash has died. Some of them have been good posthumous records. And some of them have been questionable, like he did a remix album with a bunch of rappers and hip-hop producers.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FOLSOM PRISON BLUES (FEAT. THE TENNESSEE TWO)")

CASH: (Singing) But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

GOTRICH: No shade to the other artists involved, but maybe a better use of John Carter Cash's time would have been to license samples instead of doing a full-on project.

INSKEEP: What's another question on your mind when deciding if a posthumous recording was right?

GOTRICH: My third question was, has the artist expressed any wishes regarding their music after death? And this is a tricky one because every now and again, you will get someone who flat out says their wishes. So famously, the producer and songwriter Anderson Paak. got a tattoo on his arm that reads, when I'm gone, please don't release any posthumous albums or songs with my name attached. Those were just demos and never intended to be heard by the people (laughter).

INSKEEP: Wow.

GOTRICH: Which is great. But not everybody gets that, and I don't have the last will and testament of Johnny Cash on hand. But the thing is, Johnny Cash basically put out a record every two years from when he began to when he died. So he just has this unbelievable wealth of music. And there have been lots of other posthumous records that have come out from Johnny Cash. And my feeling, at least, personally, is that Johnny Cash wanted his music to be released.

INSKEEP: OK, so you determine that it's OK to let it go. I wonder, also, if at some point, it doesn't matter what the late artist may think. I've just looked up because I'm trying to confirm this famous story that Franz Kafka said that all of his manuscripts should be burned after his death, and this was ignored.

GOTRICH: (Laughter) I mean, there is that, too. But I like this one, this record called "Songwriter." It captures Johnny Cash at a very specific moment in time. In 1993, we had just come out at the '80s when neo-traditionalist country was the favored mainstream country music - so think, like, George Strait.

INSKEEP: Yeah.

GOTRICH: But in the early '90s, we were moving towards pop country like Garth Brooks. And here's Johnny Cash. He's between record labels. He doesn't really maybe know what to do with his career. He's a workhorse. He's going to write and record songs because that's what Johnny Cash does. So he goes into the studio. He cuts a bunch of demos, doesn't know what's going to happen with it. And then at the end of 1993, he meets Rick Rubin, and he starts the American Recordings series, which completely revitalize his career.

INSKEEP: And brought him to a younger generation of fans, as a matter of fact.

GOTRICH: Yeah. Absolutely.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HURT")

CASH: (Singing) I hurt myself today to see if I still feel.

GOTRICH: So here's an opportunity to see Johnny Cash just before that moment when, like I said, he's just doing his day job. He's writing his songs. He's recording them. And this is the moment where Johnny Cash - maybe people weren't paying attention to him, so that can be a liberating moment in an artist's career to just kind of do what they do.

INSKEEP: Lars Gotrich of NPR Music, talking about the ethics behind releasing an artist's posthumous work, which is what happens soon with the album "Songwriter" by Johnny Cash. Lars, thanks.

GOTRICH: Thanks, Steve.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WELL ALRIGHT")

CASH: (Singing) Well, all right. Well, all right.

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