Twenty Greatest Albums of the CU Era: Rosanne Cash, Black Cadillac

Rosanne Cash

Black Cadillac

2006

Black Cadillac is not the only album we’ll feature as one of the best of the last twenty years to address the death of a parent. Certainly, it’s an album on which Rosanne Cash lays bare the depth of her grief. But what makes the album so rich and such a rare achievement is the thoughtful, fascinating ways Cash places the loss of her own father in conversation with the loss of an icon of American popular culture, Johnny Cash.

Over the course of the album, Cash creates something of a how-to guide for an adult child’s grief over a lost parent and for anyone’s grief over a public figure whose persona is built on myths and legends. There’s a common thread in contemporary criticism that superheroes and comic books function as religion, and I’d argue there are rare instances in which celebrity culture serves much the same purpose in driving expressions of devotion and explorations of core beliefs. It’s why it’s easy to find those Saint Dolly of Sevierville prayer candles and why Johnny Cash is immortalized as The Man In Black. 

It’s all iconography, and Rosanne fully understands this. The reason Black Cadillac works is that she pulls in details from her father’s persona– the car he used to drive, his stint in the army as a radio operator– into narratives that are deeply personal. It becomes a question of what aspects of her father’s authentic self and of their relationship she chooses to keep for herself, versus what she chooses to make public as an opportunity for shared grief. The album opens with a snippet of a recording in which Johnny Cash whispers words of encouragement to his very young daughter: “Rosanne, say, ‘Come on’.” 

In that moment, he’s excited by the prospect that she’ll find her voice. And, for as brilliant as her work was– especially her run of albums between Seven Year Ache and Interiors– it’s on Black Cadillac that Rosanne Cash found the voice that would carry her through the remainder of her career. Both in terms of a rootsy aesthetic and of a pensive songwriting style, it rebooted Cash’s career as a prominent figure in “Americana” and the caliber of her work has never wavered in the years since.

With Black Cadillac, Rosanne Cash wrestled with her own legacy– both as a daughter of a man who was both a legend and a flesh-and-blood human,  and as an artist with Hall Of Fame-worthy credentials herself– and illustrated the healing power of the best country music.

Additional Listening:

More from RoCash’s essential CU-era catalog

• The List, a selection of covers of songs her father had used to teach her about the history of country music.
• The River & The Thread, the album that best marries her contemporary Americana aesthetic with the heady, dense songwriting style of her 90s-era output.

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