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lifestyle WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2013 Spring Summerand 2014 Collection New Johnny Cash album to be released next spring here’s new never-before-heard music coming from Johnny Cash. Cash’s estate is releasing “Out Among Tthe Stars,” an album he recorded with Billy Sherrill in the early 1980s that was never released by Columbia Records, then disappeared when the company dropped Cash in 1986. Turns out Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash, stashed the tapes - along with just about everything else that came into their possession. “They never threw anything away,” said their son, John Carter Cash. “They kept everything in their lives. They had an archive that had everything in it from the original audio tapes from ‘The Johnny Cash Show’ to random things like a camel saddle, a gift from the prince of Saudi Arabia.” They stored away so much, in fact, the younger Cash and archivists at Legacy Recordings didn’t find the material until last year, long after the family began issuing Models present creations from archival music by Cash. “Out Among the Stars” will be out the Spring and Summer 2014 March 25, and continues an intense period of interest in collection by Polish fashion the singer, who helped shape modern country and rock ‘n’ designer Lukasz Jemiol during roll music and became an American pop cultural figure a show in Warsaw, Poland. before his death 10 years ago at age 71. Multiple music, book and restoration projects have — AP photos been started in the past 18 months to mark what would young friend of Cash’s named Marty Stuart. have been the singer’s 80th birthday and the 10th The younger Cash and his co-producer, archivist Steve anniversary of his death. The music being released was Berkowitz, decided they’d bring Stuart back in to re- recorded during a difficult period for Cash personally and record his parts with 30 years more experience as a picker. professionally. Columbia paired him with Sherrill, a pro- Others, including Buddy Miller and Jerry Douglas, helped Bacharach calls musical ducer and Country Music Hall of Fame member who was fortify the original tapes as well. The 12 tracks include a then the president of CBS Records Nashville. One of the duet with Waylon Jennings and two with June Carter main architects of country music’s so-called countrypoli- Cash. “We were so excited when we discovered this,” Cash of his songs a ‘valentine’ tan sound, Sherrill helped push the genre toward pop said. “We were like, my goodness this is a beautiful record sounds and conventions - and away from Cash’s more that nobody has ever heard. Johnny Cash is in the very few years ago, Kyle Riabko found himself in the most done,” says Bacharach, who has been tough on anyone independent-minded ways. The pairing came at a time prime of his voice for his lifetime. He’s pitch perfect. It’s intimidating of places on Earth for a young singer- reworking his material. “This was like a valentine that was when Cash was at a low ebb in his popularity. The music seldom where there’s more than one vocal take. They’re a Asongwriter. First, he was in the home of Burt Bacharach, being given to me by Kyle.” The two men first worked together on “Out Among the Stars” is taken from 1981 and ‘84 ses- live take and they’re perfect.” a songwriter who has three Academy Awards and eight at the Los Angeles workshops of Bacharach’s musical he wrote sions, at a time when country music was going through John Carter Cash doesn’t think Columbia executives Grammys. Second, Riabko was performing songs for the mas- with Steven Sater, “Some Lovers,” that would go on to pre- great change. “Dad was always uniquely himself,” Cash realized what they had in hand. Even though his father ter himself. Third, what he was playing were a few of miere at The Old Globe in San Diego. Riabko was a cast mem- said. “And later on the world would come back around. He had been a major star, tastes would soon turn to Garth Bacharach’s own songs with his personal spin. “It was a very ber who fell in love with the older man’s songs, calling each a never modified himself. But Nashville at the time was in a Brooks and Shania Twain. Biographer Robert Hilburn, who nerve-racking experience: Going to a legend’s house and sit- “handcrafted sculpture.” He soon reworked some, recorded a completely different place. It was the ‘Urban Cowboy’ recently released “Johnny Cash: The Life,” said the music ting him down and playing him his music by you,” Riabko says. phase. It was pop country, and dad was not that. I think fans are about to hear was recorded during some of the “There were a lot of sweaty palms involved.” him working with Billy was sort of an effort by the record most difficult years of Cash’s life. He felt like he’d lost his Somehow he survived the session and even walked away company to put him more in the circle of Music Row and legacy and he was still dealing with the fallout from per- with Bacharach’s respect. “He impressed me very much with see what could happen at the heart of that machine.” sonal problems including infidelity and drug addiction. his musicality, with his sensibility and the way he was han- It was clear record company executives didn’t think He soon met producer Rick Rubin, though, and wrote a coda to his career that gave his life something of a mythic dling the songs,” says Bacharach. More important, Riabko got much of the outcome. They put out a few more Cash albums after the recordings were made, but never used quality. “Johnny Cash was redeemed, and that was a won- the green light to continue tinkering with Bacharach’s impres- the music from those sessions before dropping him. derful lesson,” Hilburn said. “His story is so great and it’s so sive catalog as the 26-year-old built it into a cool new musical Sherrill backed Cash with a band that consisted of fellow dramatic and it’s so much more dramatic than I ever envi- the 85-year-old icon would like. Country Hall of Fame member Hargus Robbins and a sioned.” — AP “One thing that I realized about Burt early on was he has such a deep respect for melody,” says Riabko, a singer and actor who appeared on Broadway in “Spring Awakening” and “Hair.” He conceived the Bacharach show with David Lane Seltzer. “My strategy was always to infuse a sense of style that Disney’s ‘Frozen’ cools was very personal to me within the music but also to main- tain and always respect those melodies,” he says. “I main- tained them because I feel like that is the work that we’re cel- This photo shows co-conceiver Karl Riabko (left) and ‘Catching Fire’ at box office ebrating here.” What emerged is “What’s It All About?” a composer Burt Bacharach. — AP stripped-down and hauntingly emotive show now at New isney animated musical “Frozen” extinguished the America alone. The series stars Oscar winner Jennifer York Theatre Workshop in which Riabko leads a small cast 20-minute demo on his computer and got Bacharach’s per- box-office flames of “The Hunger Games: Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, a teenager forced into a through some two dozen of Bacharach’s songs, including mission to keep going. DCatching Fire” to take top spot as the highest- deadly battle for survival in the macabre post-apocalyp- “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” “Walk on By” and “Say a Emboldened, Riabko created “What’s It All About?” by listen- earning movie in North American theaters this weekend, tic kingdom of Panem. In a distant third place with $5.2 Little Prayer.” Riabko’s orchestrations have stripped down the ing and then trying to categorize Bacharach’s songs, most of industry figures showed Monday. The 53rd movie in the million was “Out of the Furnace,” a thriller starring songs and rebuilt them, making the familiar new, and he which were written with lyricist Hal David in the ‘60s and ‘70s. “A Walt Disney Animated Classics series, which began with Christian Bale and Casey Affleck as two brothers who are bleeds together different choruses to make connections lot of these songs I see as colors,” he says. “I was kind of thinking “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” in 1937, “Frozen” is sucked into the criminal underworld as they attempt to between diffuse songs. of this body of work as a bunch of watercolor paints and then I loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairy- break free from poverty. “Burt’s written so many damn hits, you can’t do it any other took a paintbrush and used them.” What he found when he tale “The Snow Queen.” Box office tracker Exhibitor In fourth spot was superhero flick “Thor: The Dark way,” says Riabko, laughing. “You have to smash them all pulled the songs apart was a special songwriter, one who first Relations showed the movie had deposed “The Hunger World,” the latest movie based on Marvel’s iconic comic together.” He and six performers - who all play instruments - decided what he wanted to say and then wrote a song around Games: Catching Fire” after raking in a cool $31.6 million. book character, which took in $4.8 million on its fourth move through the 90-minute show effortlessly under the it rather than rely on a formula.

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