An album of previously unseen Johnny Cash lyrics and poems has been transformed into new music by an all-star line-up including the late Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell.

Elvis Costello, Alison Krauss, Willie Nelson and Cash’s eldest daughter, Rosanne Cash, also feature on Johnny Cash: Forever Words.

The album consists of undiscovered material from a treasure trove of belongings left when Cash and his wife June Carter Cash died less than four months apart in 2003.

The couple’s child, John Carter Cash, co-produced the record and invited a stellar cast of musicians to accompany Cash’s handwritten letters, poems and documents with new music.

Cornell performs You Never Knew My Mind, which sets some of Cash’s introspective words to original music on one of his last solo recordings before he died in 2017.

Carter Cash said: “Determining the artist for each song was truly a matter of the heart.

“I picked the artists who are most connected with my father, who had a personal story that was connected with Dad.

“It became an exciting endeavour to go through these works, to put them together and present them to different people who could finish them in a way that I believed that Dad would have wanted.”

Recorded primarily at The Cash Cabin Studio in Hendersonville, Tennessee, the album also includes performances from Kris Kristofferson, John Mellencamp and Brad Paisley.

The 16-song record is released on April 6.