THIS posthumous studio album release from one of the biggest icons in the world of country music debuted at Number 3 on the Billboard 200 chart and Number 1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums charts, selling 54,000 copies its first week and has sold 80,000 copies since being released in March.

For me and many others I think it is Johnny Cash at his musical best.

Controversy seemed to surround his musical direction and production under Nashville producer Billy Sherrill, but as a producer who had already made his mark and given Kenny Rogers and Billie Jo Spears many hits, I thought Sherrill was an ideal choice in the early 1980s.

Sherrill was also the producer of The Baron album recorded by Cash in 1981.

Progress of country music has changed and diversified since the album was originally shelved in the 1980s. So, this will be a welcome edition to anyone’s CD collection, displaying how country music was in its heyday without modern electronic trickery and effects.

Let us hope that over the next few years a few more “lost” treasures will emerge.

My own personal highlight was interviewing Johnny Cash in 1987, a recording which was also “lost”, emerging some 20 years later. It gave an insight to the world of “The Man In Black” and can be heard by logging on to http://showbiz.euvue.co.uk/rare-johnnycash- interview-with-brian-clough-part-1