Funny thing is, the first few albums that Cash did with Rick Rubin did not actually sell very well nationally–even though they got a lot of national media attention– (especially the first one.). I remember reading an article that the third American album might be the last one, with Cash saying that he understands that and can’t blame anybody.

Then, the whole thing clicked–to the point that it seems to me Cash is now up there with Crosby, Armstrong, Cole, Sinatra, Elvis as recognized icons of 20th-Century male popular singing–even if he was never quite at that level during his life.

I don’t know who suffered more in their final years–Cash or Waylon–but Cash at least seemed to be happy that he was experiencing a public resurgence. Waylon seemed to be angry and bitter at the end–which was especially sad, considering that with the “Highwaymen,” Waylon was the funny, light-hearted one who got the audience in a good mood.

In a sense, Waylon was re-posititoned as a different, black leather punkier sort of singer when the Outlaw trope happened in the 70s. I never believed that it was all that much more than a change in marketing and venue direction–with some, just some change in arrangements. And basically, that was what was done with Cash by Rubin in the 90s–at a different time, and with a different set of now chic writers and songs.

As Jon and nm are suggesting, there never was that sort of concerted, audience targeting late stage marketing and positioning push with Waylon. But he’d already’d had several before. (Folk Country King anyone?)

And saying that you believe that Jennings “tried to do just what Cash did” is the same as saying someone’s seriously imperceptive – either him or you. Because someone would have to be seriously imperceptive to think that Don Was is just the same as Rick Rubin, or that Paul Simon is just the same as Trent Reznor. Of course, someone would also have to be seriously imperceptive to argue in one breath that Jennings was doing “mostly self-written material” where Cash wasn’t and in the next that he “tried to do just what Cash did,” but there’s only one candidate for the title there.

Hearing what people think about music – what they like, what they don’t like, why they like or don’t like it, what role it plays in their lives, and so on – is usually interesting. Hearing comments on the business, the creative process and the motivations of artists from anonymous commentators who obviously know nothing first-hand about any of those things, not so much.

And I think Waylon tried to do just what Cash did. He used producers like Don Was and recorded songs by Paul Simon, Mick Jagger etc.–in addition to his own material.

Both those approaches are legitimate, I think. But one of them is more likely than the other to bring in new listeners.

It was sad that Waylon seemed so bitter toward the end, but I guess he had good reasons to be.