8 Tracks: Beyond the grave, Johnny Cash still shows us how to make music
8 Tracks is your antidote to the algorithm. Each week, NPR Music producer Lars Gotrich, with the help of his colleagues, makes connections between sounds across time. A slightly different version of this column originally ran in the NPR Music newsletter.
On My Mother's Hymn Book, a 2004 collection of gospel songs he learned from his mother, Johnny Cash sings, "My life will end in deathless sleep / Where the soul of man never dies / And everlasting joys I'll reap / Where the soul of man never dies." Cash takes refuge in what the sweet hereafter offers, but also recognizes the restlessness of the eternal.
When an artist dies, there's part of me that yearns for their familiar signatures: the way someone sings or raps, plays the guitar, coaxes unknown tones from a saxophone or lands a drum fill. I come to that music because of that person and the way they understand themselves; I trust them's final album released after her death, : "It is a tapestry of well-meaning guesses, set to music."
