Stunning. It's the best word I can find for this unprecedented collection of music, 49 precious, newly discovered recordings by one of America's most treasured musical giants. And while I'll admit to being a bit of a Johnny Cash fanboy (these days, who isn't?), this is one case where hyperbole is impossible. If you're a fan of Cash to even the slightest degree — just an interest in his life or a desire to dig beyond his greatest hits is all that's necessary — this is the album for you: quite possibly the most intimate, revealing set of recordings the man ever laid to tape.

The first time I heard Johnny Cash's Personal File, it was a Sunday morning — or, I suppose, a Sunday afternoon for church-going folks. I'd just begun my drive home from Ann Arbor to Lansing, and from the moment I slid the disc into my stereo, it was as though Cash himself was sitting in the passenger's seat: playing songs and telling stories with nothing but his acoustic guitar and me, the audience, to keep him company. I spent the rest of that trip at rapt attention, just listening; sometimes laughing, sometimes profoundly moved. The songs he sang in that unmistakable, sonorous voice, might not have always been as memorable as Cash's classic material, but something about them felt more, well, personal. I found myself identifying what parts of Cash's life they were written about: the deaths of his older brother and later his parents, the beginning of his romance with June Carter. Imagine my surprise, then, to discover that very few of these soul-baring songs were written by Cash himself. That's exactly the kind of emotional investment which is on ample display here: Johnny Cash could take a song written by someone else, often decades and even (in the case of the second disc of spirituals) centuries before his performance, and still make it sound as heartfelt and intimate as a diary entry.