Fans of Johnny Cash are in luck. His estate has announced they will release a record of unheard tunes, 'Out Among the Stars,' next spring.

The new collection of songs is an album Cash recorded with Billy Sherrill in the early '80s, when he was signed to Columbia Records. When the singer-songwriter was dropped by his label in 1986, he held onto the tapes, which were later discovered by his son, John Carter Cash, along with the archivists at Legacy Recordings.

"They never threw anything away," Carter Cash says of his parents (quote via Nashville's Tennessean). "They kept everything in their lives. They had an archive that had everything in it from the original audio tapes from 'The Johnny Cash Show' to random things like a camel saddle, a gift from the prince of Saudi Arabia."

His son says the songs were recorded at a time when the Man in Black's popularity was waning, and it seemed his music was a thing of the past.

"Dad was always uniquely himself," he continues. "And later on the world would come back around. He never modified himself. But Nashville at the time was in a completely different place. It was the 'Urban Cowboy' phase. It was pop country, and Dad was not that. I think him working with Billy was sort of an effort by the record company to put him more in the circle of Music Row and see what could happen at the heart of that machine."

'Out Among the Stars' includes a duet with Waylon Jennings, and two with Cash's wife, June Carter Cash.

"We were so excited when we discovered this," his son adds. "We were like, 'My goodness this is a beautiful record that nobody has ever heard.' Johnny Cash is in the very prime of his voice for his lifetime. He's pitch perfect. It's seldom where there's more than one vocal take. They're a live take and they're perfect."

'Out Among the Stars' will be released on March 25. It is currently available for pre-order at Amazon.

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