New York, NY (Top40 Charts) The latest official music video from 'Johnny Cash: Forever Words' (out now/Legacy Recordings) finds newlyweds Ruston
Kelly &
Kacey Musgraves turning a love letter that
Johnny Cash wrote to June Carter Cash into an all-new ballad. It was filmed at the remains of Johnny and June's home at Old Hickory Lake in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
Ruston originally started composing "To June This Morning" as a teenager, based on a love letter that Johnny had written to June as she descended the kitchen stairs one morning in 1970, eight months pregnant with their son John Carter Cash. Years later, when Ruston was asked by John Carter to contribute to this album, he asked his then-fiancée
Kacey Musgraves to record the final version with him.
The video begins with Willie
Nelson & Kris Kristofferson's contribution to 'Johnny Cash: Forever Words,' called "Forever/I Still Miss Someone." A thematic prologue to both the album and the video, "Forever/I Still Miss Someone" features two of Johnny's old friends and collaborators: Willie plays the melody to one of Johnny's songs ("
I Still Miss Someone") while Kris recites one of the final poems Johnny ever wrote, called "Forever."
Says John Carter Cash, "To me, the essences of the tracks "Forever/I Still Miss Someone" and "To June This Morning" are both of hope. My father wrote the poem "
Forever" weeks before his passing. "To June This Morning" has the same hope; the words were written in February of 1970, one month before my birth. Together they represent Dad's enduring hopes, the beauty of faith and the belief in all the good to come...even in the face of his own mortality."
A collaborative album of Johnny Cash's unknown poetry, lyrics, and letters now set to music by an astounding array of contemporary artists, 'Johnny Cash: Forever Words' was released on Friday on Legacy Recordings, a division of Sony
Music Entertainment. The release has been met with a number of high profile features including CBS This Morning, the NY Times, Rolling Stone, NPR Weekend Edition, and much more.
Along with Ruston
Kelly & Kacey Musgraves, 'Johnny Cash: Forever Words' features new songs by Chris Cornell, Rosanne Cash, Elvis Costello,
Alison Krauss & Union Station, Kris Kristofferson & Willie Nelson, Brad Paisley, John Mellencamp, Carlene Carter, The Jayhawks and more.
Legacy Recordings has previously released the music video for Rosanne Cash's "The Walking Wounded," which was filmed at Johnny Cash's childhood home in Dyess, Arkansas. Other previously released songs include Chris Cornell's "You Never Knew My Mind" and Elvis Costello's "I'll Still Love You."
When
Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash passed, they left behind what John Carter Cash describes as a "monstrous amassment" of things, including a treasure trove of undiscovered material that includes Johnny Cash's handwritten letters, poems and documents, penned across the entirety of his life.
Recorded primarily at the Cash Cabin Studio in Hendersonville, Tennessee, 'Johnny Cash: Forever Words' is also the musical companion to the best-selling "Forever Words: The Unknown Poems," a volume of Cash's unpublished writing edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon and curated by John Carter Cash and Steve Berkowitz. Muldoon also contributes liner notes on the album. Many of the songs on 'Johnny Cash: Forever Words' were directly inspired by material in the book while others are drawn from different sources of Cash's unpublished writings.
PRAISE FOR 'JOHNNY CASH: FOREVER WORDS':
"Hope abounds here, an unshakable faith of almost biblical proportions, in the persistence of some form of life — some sort of enduring relevance — beyond the grave…Reverberating throughout the album's 16 tracks is the unmistakable voice of the Man in Black." - NY Times
"A moving, illuminating window into the grace, darkness, mercy and struggle that
Johnny Cash spent his entire life documenting in song." - Rolling Stone
"Exceptional…remarkably diverse." - LA Times
"A fitting and reverential legacy…worthy of the man's iconic status." - American Songwriter
"Moving…shines a light on Cash's enduring artistry." - MOJO
"Beautiful and poignant… There's a stony beauty to these tunes, etched out of the craggy splendor of Cash's vision and insights into the vagaries of his life." - No Depression
Johnny Cash: Forever Words
Forever/I Still Miss Someone - Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson
To June This Morning - Ruston
Kelly and Kacey Musgraves
Gold All Over the Ground - Brad Paisley
You Never Knew My Mind - Chris Cornell
The Captain's Daughter -
Alison Krauss and Union Station
Jellico Coal Man - T. Bone Burnett
The Walking Wounded - Rosanne Cash
Them
Double Blues - John Mellencamp
Body on Body - Jewel
I'll Still Love You - Elvis Costello
June's Sundown - Carlene Carter
He Bore It All - Dailey & Vincent
Chinky Pin Hill - I'm With Her
Goin', Goin', Gone - Robert Glasper featuring Ro James, and Anu Sun
What Would I Dreamer Do? - The Jayhawks
Spirit Rider - Jamey Johnson
