I have been a fan of Rosanne Cash ever since I first heard “Seven Year Ache” back in 1981. It went to Number One on the country charts, and in that particularly grim year for pop music, it also crossed over, reaching Number 22 on the Hot 100. Although she would top the country charts 10 more times during the 1980s, she never returned to the pop charts (although “Blue Moon With Heartache” bubbled under the Hot 100 for a while in 1981, and she made the AC charts a couple of additional times). As the 80s rolled on, her songs became less and less “country.” Her 1990 album Interiors, recorded in the wake of her divorce from fellow country singer Rodney Crowell and considered by critics to be one of her best—if not the best—isn’t really a country album at all. Since 1990, she’s recorded sporadically—just four more albums in the next 16 years, most recently Black Cadillac in 2006.

Rosanne has always had interesting taste in covers: Steve Forbert, John Fogerty, Karl Wallinger, John Hiatt, Elvis Costello, Jakob Dylan. Her versions of Tom Petty’s “Never Be You” and her father’s “Tennessee Flat Top Box” both topped the country charts, as did her version of  the Beatles’ “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party”  She also cut a version of Lennon and McCartney’s “I’m Only Sleeping.”

In 1973, Johnny Cash began to fear that his then-18 year old daughter was too much into the Beatles and other pop music, so he gave her a list of country songs he considered essential. She has lived with the list ever since, “as a standard of excellence, and to remind myself of the tradition from which I come.” Next month, she’ll release an album of 12 songs from the list titled, uh, The List. The album contains impressive, uh, list, of songs, everything from “The Long Black Veil” to “Girl From the North Country,” and an equally impressive list bunch of guest artists: Bruce Springsteen, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Rufus Wainwright, and Costello. The album is to be released on October 6, but fans (such as I) can get a preview of it next week when Rosanne and her band, featuring her producer/husband John Leventhal, will perform it live in New York City. The show will be webcast via New York’s WNYC at 1:00 Central Time on Wednesday, September 23.

On this particular Wednesday, there’ s a new edition of “One Day in Your Life” over at Popdose.

“I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party”/Rosanne Cash
“I’m Only Sleeping”/Rosanne Cash (buy Rosanne here)