5-disc set unearths bounty of new Cash

Two of them are just Cash singing and playing solo acoustic guitar, as though he's right in your living room. All of the material is from sessions conducted in the past 10 years, with producer Rick Rubin, often in his living room in Los Angeles, or in Cash's cabin in Tennessee. The down-home feel is real.

The sessions with Rubin resulted in four Grammy-winning albums and captured Cash at his best, whether singing country classics, gospel tunes, coal-miner ballads, outlaw anthems, or reinterpretations of rock tracks such as the Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt," which won song of the year at the recent Country Music Awards.

The song is included on the fifth CD of the box set, a "best of" compilation of Cash/Rubin collaborations on their four-disc "American Recordings" series.

But it's the previously unissued songs on the first four discs of "Cash Unearthed" -- and their consistent high quality -- that make this the box of the season. Rubin, who met Cash after the singer played a dinner theater in Orange County in 1993, says in extensive liner notes and song-by-song commentaries that he just wanted Cash to sing songs he was comfortable with, and to do so in a stripped-down manner.

Cash, who is also quoted extensively (the finishing touches on the project were done before he died), adds that it reminded him of his start back in the '50s, at Sun Records in Memphis. Sun producer Sam Phillips would tell him, "Let's hear what you've got. Sing your heart out!" Or as Cash puts it: "I taught Rick that if he believed in me I would deliver. And I feel like I've delivered."

That's an understatement. Cash mesmerizes on the first, all-acoustic CD, which combines new takes of some of his original songs ("Flesh and Blood" and "The Caretaker") with country classics by Billie Joe Shaver and Jimmie Rodgers, and a vivid treatment of Tom Waits's "Down There by the Train," suggested by Rubin.

The second CD, titled "Trouble in Mind," features punched-up tracks with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (they give a rockabilly kick to Roy Orbison's "Down the Line"), along with three of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (on Neil Young's "Heart of Gold"), and two with fellow rock pioneer Carl Perkins (one a cover of Chuck Berry's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man"). Cash also does numbers by country troubadour Hank Snow, Native American writer Peter LaFarge, singer/poet Leonard Cohen, and Tennessee mountain girl Dolly Parton. It's amazing to think these songs were left off the "American Recordings" series, but Rubin clearly had some tough choices to make.

The third CD takes its name from Bob Marley's "Redemption Song," a stunning cover done with former Clash singer Joe Strummer. Strummer was on vacation in LA and came every day to Rubin's recording sessions, until Rubin finally asked him to join. Other guests on this CD are Fiona Apple (on a great treatment of Cat Stevens's "Father and Son") and Nick Cave (duetting on "Cindy Cindy"). These are outtakes from later sessions, when Cash's voice was becoming weaker as his health was failing -- but for the most part the Man in Black still rallied miraculously.

The disc labeled "Number Four" is devoted entirely to solo acoustic versions of Cash's mother's favorite hymns. This may be the best of the bunch, given the accumulating emotion it represents. It includes two gospel songs sung at the funeral of Cash's 14-year-old brother, Jack, who was killed in an accident when Cash was 12. Another gem is the softly sung "In the Garden," which Cash describes as a "peaceful song about a beautiful, peaceful place. "I hope I'll see it some day," he wrote with simple faith, "but I'll leave the timing up to God."