RumbleStrip Records is proud to announce The Essential Collection by Rosanne Cash, a new, definitive, expanded forty-song set spanning 1979 - 2021. Out digitally and on CD December 6, the album features all 10 of Cash’s #1 hits, collaborations with John Leventhal, duets with Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello and Jeff Tweedy, and for the first time on any album, her 2021 song “The Killing Fields.” Full track listing is below. The Essential Collection is available at the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum, and Rosanne’s online store at RumbleStripRecords.net.

Listen to The Essential Collection HERE.  The 2-CD set is available now at the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum, and Rosanne’s online store at RumbleStripRecords.net.

The Essential Collection is the album inspired by Rosanne Cash: Time Is a Mirror, the newest exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum. Running now through March of 2026, the exhibit will explore Cash’s more than 40-year journey as an artist, songwriter and storyteller, and how she has embodied both tradition and innovation across her musical career. 

“I couldn’t have done anything else in my life but write songs and make music, so I’m lucky I was able to carve a spot and have it held open by so many people, most especially the fans,” writes Rosanne in the liner notes. “Artists do evolve—if in nothing else, then in gratitude, and in the realization that time is the most precious resource. I don’t enshrine the work here, but I treasure it. This is how I spent my time.”

Beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present day, Cash has staked out a distinctive place in American music. Her songs have drawn on rockabilly rhythms, the truth-telling of folk-rock songwriters, West Coast country-rock energy, new wave flash and deeply rooted country music. 

A four-time Grammy winner and one of CMT’s ‘40 Greatest Women of Country Music’, her hits include “Seven Year Ache,” “Blue Moon with Heartache,” “I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me,” “I Don't Want to Spoil the Party,” “It Hasn’t Happened Yet,” “Tennessee Flat Top Box, “No Memories Hangin' Round” and “Never Be You.”  The Essential Collection also includes four songs from her 2014 triple-Grammy winning 2014 album, The River and the Thread. Throughout her career, she has maintained an unwavering artistic spirit and vision. In 2021, Cash became the first female composer to receive the MacDowell Medal, awarded since 1960 to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to American culture.  

RumbleStrip Records is founded by Rosanne Cash and her creative partner and husband John Leventhal, with distribution by Thirty Tigers. Additional releases on the label include Cash’s landmark album The Wheel 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, and Leventhal’s debut, Rumble Strip.  Rosanne is planning a new solo album for late 2025. 

Photography by Pam Springsteen