In 1993, Johnny Cash was at one of the lowest points of his career. The titan of country music – of American standards like “Walk the Line”, “Ring of Fire” and “Folsom Prison Blues” – was viewed by much of the public and record companies alike as something of a relic.

As he wrote in his memoir, a song called “The Chicken in Black” – a “deliberately atrocious” song released in 1986, in the video for which Cash dressed up in a chicken suit – started a period he wished to forget. He was dumped shortly afterwards by long-time record label Columbia; by 1993, he had several labels and sub-par albums behind him, as well as a fall back into the on-off addiction to amphetamines that blighted his life. Out of contract, in an interview at the time, Cash admitted to having “no big goals” for his career beyond touring to the converted. 

“That one decade was pretty hard on him,” recalls David “Fergie” Ferguson, Cash’s studio engineer from the mid-80s onwards. “I’m sure it was shocking to have the number one television variety show [The Johnny Cash Show] then suddenly that’s gone. His last number one hit [in the country charts] was in 1976.” 

The last thing you might expect, then, would be for a “lost” album from the period to emerge three decades on – and for it to stand up against much of Cash’s best work. But that’s what’s happened with Songwriter, the “new” Cash album, a collection of songs, all original Cash compositions (a rare occurrence) he had written across four decades, but never officially recorded or released.

The bare-bones performances have been rekindled by Ferguson and John Carter Cash, the only son of Cash and his wife of 35 years, June Carter. “It feels like a very important time in his life,” Carter Cash says. “He was at the cusp of something new and exciting. His energy was there and his purpose was there. It’s a great snapshot. It’s not lacking in anything.”

Carter Cash and Ferguson were the perfect choices to work on Songwriter. Ferguson first met Cash in the early 80s, when he was cutting his teeth working for country music songwriter and producer Jack Clement. “[Cash] was always my hero growing up. My first impression was: super nice guy, super funny, fun-loving person. He didn’t let me down.”

Carter Cash was born in 1970; he recalls his childhood with Cash as a “fairy tale, wonderful. And just love and positivity. But still, the fact was that he was very humble. It wasn’t like living in the shadow of a king.”

In the years up to 1993, they had seen both the best and worst of Cash. They both talk generously of Cash’s character, instilled when he was raised by poor cotton farmers in Arkansas – “he was willing to give you the shirt off his back,” Carter Cash says. His Man in Black image – the outlaw, the rebel, the anti-authority icon – was often just that: an image. “The Man in Black and my dad, they’re two completely different people in some ways,” Carter Cash says. “Because he was a gentle man. And he had a good spirit. The image didn’t add up to who he really was.”

But his lifelong struggle with addiction to pills would invariably cause problems. “By the time I was 11 years old, his addiction took over,” Carter Cash says. “A lot of struggles at home were him being inconsistent. It wasn’t like he turned into a vicious, mean person – he never did. He just wasn’t present any more. But he’d always come back around.”

“He had a terribly addictive mind and personality,” Ferguson says. “And so if he got on any kind of pain medicine, there was no way that it wasn’t going to be abused. But the doctors were like everyone else; Johnny Cash is one of them guys you couldn’t say no to, just like Elvis. And he struggled with it. He was not being nice when he was doing that. And he knew that. But he was a spiritual person, really spiritual. The Lord had a lot to do with his surviving.”

In 1993, Cash was clean after a spell in rehab. “He was actually in a great space when this album was made,” says Carter Cash. “He was very clear headed. He was in recovery mode; his heart was in a good place.” Though he still suffered from chronic pain due to a botched operation to fix a broken jaw – “some days he felt good, some days he didn’t feel so good,” Ferguson says – he went into the LSI Studio in Nashville, aged 61, and laid down some songs with his touring band. The almost dashed-off nature of the recordings meant the album “fell through the cracks”, Carter Cash says; Ferguson had never even heard some of the songs before Carter Cash rediscovered them last year.

The musicianship on the records left something to be desired. They sounded rough and amateur, although Ferguson points out these were great musicians – they just “didn’t take much time to get the parts good”. But Cash himself left plenty to work with. “When Johnny Cash sings on a microphone, there’s no such thing as a demo,” Carter Cash says. “You have a master vocal.”

The pair recruited some of Cash’s favourite musicians – guitarist Marty Stewart, drummer Pete Abbott, the late bassist Dave Roe – to play new music to Cash’s recorded vocals. They both say separately it felt like Cash was with them, though they never felt the weight of his presence, or second guessed what he might think. “He would have literally said – ‘follow your heart and do what you think is right,’” Carter Cash says. Carter Cash played in guitar in Cash’s band in the early 90s and recorded with him on his final albums. “He was never controlling or the puppet master. He was pretty open minded.”

Songs vary from the experimental – “Spotlight”, featuring Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, “is a new groove for Johnny”, Ferguson says – to the traditional: “Well Alright”, a tongue-in-cheek song about an illicit rendezvous in a launderette, harks back to Cash’s classic boom-chicka-boom early hits.

Others are more personal: “Like a Soldier” deals with his addiction struggles; “Drive On” refers to the constant pain he suffered after his broken jaw. “That was a therapy song for him,” Carter Cash says. “He was in so much physical pain. He was reading books about Vietnam vets who learned to live with their post-traumatic stress and carry on with their lives. He was looking at others who had pains bigger than his own. There’s wisdom in that.”

One song, “I Love You Tonite”, dates back to the 70s, a paean from Cash to Carter. “It was a very personal thing. I think it was written as a love letter,” Carter Cash says. He says by 1993, after some turbulence brought on by Cash’s addiction – “when one person is sick the whole family gets sick” – Cash and Carter “had sort of come to a place in their relationship where they were supportive of each other and accepted each other. There wasn’t a lot of struggle going on at this point.”

Health issues aside, it was during this period things started to look up for Cash. In February of 93, Cash met U2 while in Dublin – Bono was a big fan – which led to Cash performing onstage with the band, before singing “The Wanderer” on U2’s 1993 album Zooropa. This led to a meeting with Rick Rubin, a producer then best known for his work with hip-hop artists like Public Enemy and The Beastie Boys, as well as Red Hot Chili Peppers. 

The resulting collaboration was startling, perhaps the greatest ever late-career creative rebirth: a series of raw, stark, powerful albums that recast Cash as a chronicler of human pain and mortality, a great life well lived poured into every note. The renaissance took everyone by surprise – even Ferguson. “When we listened to it, it was shocking to us, because we hadn’t imagined him that way, just naked. I mean, you’re talking about stripping it all back. You can hear the man’s breakfast. You could hear it all. It took a little getting used to. But it lit a fire under Johnny.” 

Cash refound his cool, and discovered a new, young audience, helped by a stellar mid-afternoon Glastonbury performance in 1994 that invented the festival’s “legends slot”. “And that made him so happy,” Ferguson says. Cash worked with Rubin on four albums in the legendary American Recordings series, while a further three emerged posthumously.

But as the 90s progressed, ill health took its toll. “He couldn’t read,” Carter Cash says. “He couldn’t get around hardly at all without being in a wheelchair. He had neuropathy. He was losing his appendages. He was having a tough time.” But he still made music until the very end. “He was driven in the face of his own pain and infirmity,” Carter Cash says. “He did not slow down. He was the driving force behind making those records happen. Even when my mother died” – June Carter Cash died in May 2003 aged 73 – “a few days later, we were in the studio. It was his outlet. He gave it everything that he had. He put it into those records. And so that’s why they were so powerful.” Cash died from complications from diabetes aged 71, just four months after June.

Songwriter casts new light on the last decade of Cash’s life: his creativity was in a much healthier place than people assumed before he teamed up with Rubin. “I think we’ve given him a little redemption,” Carter Cash says.

“People are discovering Johnny Cash, still, for the first time,” he adds. “I think that if you discover this record as the first thing, it’s an accurate picture. It’s a good shot of who Dad was as an artist.”

‘Songwriter’ is out now