MUSIC: Dream Album

There are two kinds of cool. There's the sugary, quickie cool you get from eating a Popsicle under a hot noontime sun. It's tasty and sharp, but it lasts only a few licks. Then there's the other kind of cool, the kind you get from resting in the shadow of a big oak tree on a summer day. That kind reaches down to your bones, and it even touches your soul: that old oak tree is noble and enduring.

Johnny Cash is oak-tree cool. The 62-year-old singer and songwriter has sold more than 50 million albums in 40 years. His signature songs -- I Walk the Line, Ring of Fire -- are classics. Despite his achievements, though, the past few years have been hard for Cash, and he has needed all his cool to persevere. His albums have sold poorly, and with the rise of young, easy- listening stars like Billy Ray Cyrus, record companies have lost interest in people like Cash. But now Cash has a label that's committed to him, and he has made a wise and beautiful new album. He has reasserted himself as one of the greats of popular music.

The new CD is called American Recordings -- that's also the name of the label Cash has signed up with -- and it was produced by 31-year-old music mogul Rick Rubin. It's hard to imagine a less likely collaboration than that between Cash and Rubin; on the surface, it seems as ill-advised a pairing as, say, Dan Rather and Connie Chung. Cash is a contemporary of Elvis Presley's and was once the host of a network variety show. Rubin is a hairy, ripped- jean-wearing studio virtuoso who has produced platinum albums for rappers like Run-D.M.C. and for the punk-funk band Red Hot Chili Peppers. As it happened, their different backgrounds didn't matter, for Cash and Rubin agreed on the most important thing: the sound they wanted. All you hear on American Recordings is Cash's guitar and his deep, sonorous voice. This is the way he has hoped to record for years, without the overproduction that plagues so much country music. Cash calls American Recordings his "dream album."

The theme of the record "is kind of sin and redemption," says Cash. On the CD's first track, Delia's Gone, Cash sings about the thin line between love and hate: "Delia, oh Delia/ Delia all my life/ If I hadn't shot poor Delia/ I'd have had her for my wife." Later he sings of salvation in the gospel- inflected Down There by the Train, describing a heavenly train for wrongdoers seeking righteousness: "There's no eye for an eye/ There's no tooth for a tooth/ I saw Judas Iscariot carrying John Wilkes Booth." Cash's voice has deepened with age; he has never sounded more commanding. The songs were written by a range of composers, including Cash, Kris Kristofferson and even hard rocker Glenn Danzig. Each one is moderately paced, simply arranged. Cash's guitar work is direct and intimate -- an old cowboy strumming away around a dying campfire.