Lost Johnny Cash album set for release in 2014

A collection of unheard country tracks will hit shops in March next year

A new Johnny Cash album will be released in March 2014 (Getty Images)

A new album of unheard Johnny Cash tracks is due to be released in spring next year, featuring twelve uncovered studio recordings.

The ‘lost’ album features Marty Stuart on guitar and mandolin, with Jerry Kennedy on guitar, Pete Drake on steel guitar, Hargus ‘Pig’ Robbins on piano and Henry Strzelecki on bass.

Duets with Cash’s wife June Carter, played by Reese Witherspoon in 2005 film Walk The Line, and close friend Waylon Jennings, are also included on the album.

The recordings first came to light in 2012, nine years after the US country singer’s death, when Cash’s son John Carter Cash was cataloguing his parents’ memorabilia archives with other Cash experts in Hendersonville, Tennessee and at the Sony Music Archives.

Produced by Billy Sherrill and taken from two early 1980s sessions in Nashville and Los Angeles, Out Among The Stars will hit shelves on 25 March next year.

The 12 songs included on the album are all originals, with no demos, outtakes or alternate versions. Titles from the tracklist include “I Drove Her Out Of My Mind”, “After All” and “Baby Ride Easy”.

“When my parents passed away, it became necessary to go through his material,” John Carter Cash told the Associated Press. “We were like, “My goodness, this is a beautiful record that nobody has ever heard.

“They never threw anything away. [They have] everything, from the original audio tapes from The Johnny Cash Show to random things like a camel saddle and a gift from the prince of Saudi Arabia,” he added.

“Dad was always uniquely himself. He never modified himself, and later on the world would come back around.”

Cash’s 49-year career cemented him as an American folk icon. He cultivated an outlaw persona and famously performed at a US prison, before dying aged 71 in 2003.

Out Among The Stars has been restored by John Carter Cash, co-producer Steve Berkowitz, Marty Stuart, Buddy Miller and Carlene Carter at the Cash Cabin Studios in Hendersonville.