Out Among the Stars

Lore & Background

The album is composed of recordings made by Cash in 1981 and 1984 with producer Billy Sherrill for Columbia Records. The album was shelved by the label and was never released. In 2012, Cash's son, John Carter Cash, discovered the recordings in the archive and commissioned additional production to complete the album. Cash also recorded the 1981 album The Baron with Sherrill, in an attempt to turn around his dismal album sales, but the strategy did not work, leaving his record executives eager to end his affiliation with the label. The album is also a posthumous release for June Carter Cash, Johnny Cash's wife, who is featured on two tracks, and for Minnie Pearl and Waylon Jennings, who provide vocals on two other songs, "If I Told You Who It Was" and "I'm Movin' On", respectively.

Two of the tracks would later be rerecorded by Cash at American Recordings and would be released posthumously prior to earlier versions being included here; "I Came to Believe" appears on American V: A Hundred Highways, and a non-duet version of "I'm Movin' On" appears in the box set Unearthed. In a March 2014 interview promoting the release of Out Among the Stars, John Carter Cash indicated that there may be as many as "four or five" albums worth of previously unreleased material from Cash's 1990s–2000s American label recording sessions, with Cash's last producer, Rick Rubin indicating at least one more such release is planned for the future.

Reader's Guide

Out Among the Stars represents a significant archival discovery, unearthing a complete set of sessions from a period when Cash's commercial fortunes were waning. The album provides insight into his work with countrypolitan producer Billy Sherrill, a collaboration that had previously yielded only the 1981 album The Baron. The recordings were shelved by Columbia Records and remained unheard for decades until John Carter Cash located them in 2012. The album's release in 2014 was met with strong commercial performance, debuting at number three on the Billboard 200 and number one on the Top Country Albums chart, selling 54,000 copies in its first week in the United States. Critical reception noted that the album showed Cash's ability to create work with weight and moral complexity even during a less commercially successful era. The album also serves as a posthumous tribute to several collaborators, including June Carter Cash, Minnie Pearl, and Waylon Jennings, all of whom appear on the recordings. The release prompted discussion of further unreleased material from Cash's later American Recordings sessions, with producer Rick Rubin indicating at least one more such release was planned.