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One of the delights fans found on the latest series of reissues of Elvis Costello's albums is a 1979 duet with the late Johnny Cash on "We Oughta Be Ashamed."
"I had the cassette from the session in '79. (Cash's son) John Carter Cash was good enough to have someone go into the archive at Hendersonville (Tenn.) and find the original tape," Costello explains. "They delivered the tape over to Nashville when we were recording with Emmylou (Harris). We put the tape up with great trepidation, not knowing whether there would be anything on it. As you know, old tape doesn't keep very well, and it is 25 years old. But it came up perfectly."
Costello got chills as Cash's powerful voice filled the room.
"When I first met Johnny... his voice still had all its power and resonance. I love those late records that he made, but he was an older man who was ill. Some of the beauty has to do with his perseverance against the frailties of the body," Costello says. "Nobody's gonna pretend that's the greatest performance that either of us ever did, but there's a real charm to hearing it after all these years, hearing just a very off-the-cuff performance of something that was done sincerely. I was so nervous singing with him I could barely bring myself to come up on the mic. But I'm so glad that we got it."
It was a time when Cash, not content to sit on his laurels, was exploring new music. He would eventually record songs by everyone from Bruce Springsteen to U2 to Nine Inch Nails.
"The period of out of focus for him was before '79. His career was going this way and that way. He was making movies. Around the time he came to London, to my way of remembering it, that was reaching out to find a new place to make it real. I think that's why he enjoyed working with (Cash's then-son-in-law, Nick Lowe). He saw Nick really loved that music.
"Nick wrote that great song, 'The Beast in Me,' for him, which didn't get recorded by John until the first of the Rick Rubin records. But I remember Nick sort of playing me that song when he'd written it. I couldn't believe it. It was so perfect for John."
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