Johnny Cash, the country singer with a voice like a gravel road, released his sixty-sixth studio album American III: Solitary Man on October 17, 2000. It was the third record in his American Recordings series, produced by Rick Rubin and Cash's son John Carter Cash. But this one arrived after a hard season: between the previous American album and this one, Cash's health buckled under a series of ailments. Pneumonia put him in the hospital, and the illness forced him to scale back touring.
The effect on his voice was impossible to miss. Most tracks on American III: Solitary Man carry a rougher, more fragile tone than his earlier work in the series. Instead of hiding that frailty, Cash leaned into it. His answer to the sickness was a cover of Tom Petty's 'I Won't Back Down', a song about standing firm when everything pushes against you. Petty himself sang and played organ on the track, and also appeared on the album's title song.
His answer to the sickness was a cover of Tom Petty's 'I Won't Back Down', a song about standing firm when everything pushes against you.
The record mixed new versions of songs by others with a few of Cash's own older pieces. He covered U2's 'One', and he brought in guests who matched the album's somber, determined mood. Will Oldham sang with Cash on 'I See a Darkness', and Merle Haggard added vocals and guitar to 'I'm Leavin' Now'. Sheryl Crow contributed vocals to 'Field of Diamonds' and accordion to 'Mary of the Wild Moor' and 'Wayfaring Stranger'. The album also drew on Cash's own past. Three of its songs had appeared on earlier records: 'Field of Diamonds' dated back to a 1986 duet with Waylon Jennings, 'Country Trash' first surfaced in 1973, and 'I'm Leavin' Now' had been recorded for a 1985 album. Revisiting them here gave the project a sense of looking back without surrendering to nostalgia.
Critics mostly welcomed the album. On Metacritic, which averages professional reviews, American III: Solitary Man holds a score of 80 based on 15 reviews. Pitchfork gave it an 8.6 out of 10. Rolling Stone was less enthusiastic, calling Rick Rubin's production too timid. Yet the album still reached number 11 on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart and number 88 on the Billboard 200. The album's reach extended well beyond the United States. In the United Kingdom it climbed to number 3 on the country albums chart and later earned a gold certification from the BPI. It also made the top twenty in Norway and Croatia, while charting in Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
The title track brought Cash one more piece of recognition. In 2001, 'Solitary Man' won the Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance. It was a fitting cap for a record built on the idea that even a weakened voice could refuse to quit. Cash never pretended his health was fine; he just sang through it, and that made the songs land harder. The recognition did not stop with the Grammy. American III: Solitary Man was nominated for Album of the Year at the Academy of Country Music Awards. Some critics went further: Billboard called it no less a masterpiece than Cash's earlier work, and Jim DeRogatis of the Chicago Sun-Times considered it possibly the strongest entry in the American Recordings series. The album was also a commercial presence in its home market. It sold 186,000 copies in the United States and placed on Billboard's year-end country chart for 2001. In Canada it appeared on the year-end country albums list as well, a sign that Cash's late-career resurgence had listeners on both sides of the border.