Out Among The Stars

If Out Among the Stars had come out when its sessions were completed, it would've appeared sometime in 1984, arriving between 1983's flinty Johnny 99 and 1985's slippery, sentimental Rainbow. Allegedly, this album – discovered by Legacy and John Carter Cash during some archival work in 2012 – was shelved because its Billy Sherrill production was just a little bit too pop for Johnny Cash's taste, but that reasoning isn't sound, particularly with the Chips Moman-produced crossover of sugar of Rainbow taken into consideration. Moman had been riding high on the hits he produced for Willie Nelson – notably "Always on My Mind," Willie's last great crossover smash – and he applied a similar heavy-handed touch to Cash, who at that point was several years away from his last Country Top 10 hit.

"Take Root Among the Stars", quoting the words of the great science fiction writer Octavia Butler, here is Roots Magic’s third installment for Clean Feed. Cut by the Italian quartet, here and there augmented by a couple of special guests, historical wind player Eugenio Colombo and vibes maestro Francesco Lo Cascio, this new album comes as a further step into the borderland between Deep Blues and Creative Jazz. The new repertoire includes reworked tunes by Skip James, Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, Charles Tyler and Ornette Coleman plus new works on some of the band’s favorite composers, Charley Patton, Phil Cohran, John Carter, and Sun Ra…