How It Came About
Recording a live album with an audience of felons didn’t seem like the blueprint for a career revival. However, it had always appealed to Cash to perform a show in a prison. CQ Cash had an image of “an outlaw who always sided with the underdog.” ATI Marshall Grant, Cash’s bassist, said, “John had a real feeling for the down and out, for the prisoners…for anybody like that. He came from very humble beginnings in Arkansas.” ATI
Besides, in the mid-‘60s, it was difficult to get Cash into the studio. When he did go, he was unprepared and uninspired. A live album was a way to get an album out of him. He was convinced it would be the shot in the arm his career needed. MS
The proposition came at a time when the United States “was experiencing a major wave of social and political upheaval.” TB “As rock music increasingly became the voice of dissent, Nashville, the acknowledged seat of social conservatism in music, stood in contrast with its tales of drinking, divorce, and redneck mayhem.” TB
For Cash, it was a make-or-break moment in his waning career.” ATI “Few knew about the raucous side of life better than Johnny Cash, who’d had his share of booze, pills, and bruises during his first dozen years in the business.” TB He’d recently been in trouble with the law for smuggling pills across the border of Mexico, had an affair with June Carter which left some fans upset, and had a negative relationship with the press in general. ATI His record label had threatened to drop him and he’d even contemplated suicide. WP
Columbia Records wasn’t convinced a prison show was the answer to reviving his career. Drummer “Fluke” Holland echoed that sentiment. “I remember saying…it won’t sell enough to pay for tape.” RS’18 The record company was finally persuaded and agreed to two live tapings from which the album would be assembled.
The Stage Is Set
It was recorded January 13, 1968, for an estimated 1,000 inmates UT’18 at Folsom, a maximum-security prison outside Sacramento that was the state’s second oldest prison. BL It actually wasn’t Cash’s first time to perform at a prison. He performed at Huntsville State Prison in Texas in 1957 ABS and had even performed at Folsom BL in November 1966 at the suggestion of Floyd Gressett. He preached at a church in Ventura which Cash sometimes attended and did prison outreach.
The stage was set up in the cafeteria, right behind death row. Carl Perkins opened the show with “Blue Suede Shoes.” The Statler Brothers performed “Flowers on the Wall” and “This Old House” and provided backup vocals for Cash. Cash was backed by the Tennessee Three (guitarist Luther Perkins, bassist Marshall Grant, and drummer W.S. Holland), and June Carter guests with him on “Jackson” and “Give My Love to Rose.”
Before Cash took the stage, Hugh Cherry, an L.A. disc jockey who served as the emcee, instructed the crowd not to clap, stand up, or even acknowledge Cash when he came out. However, once he stepped to the microphone and said, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash” the group was told “to blow the roof off of this building. Whatever noise you ever made, let it be multipled tenfold.” RS’18
Why It Worked
“Two elements make this recording so remarkable: The first is Cash’s conviction while singing these songs.” CQ “It takes a certain audacity to sing about prison to an audience full of prisoners, and who better to do it than Johnny Cash, the original country outlaw?” PM “Cash stimulates the audience’s emotions, which in turn stimulates his performance, especially since he delivers the songs with the conviction of someone who has lived through it.” AM
“The Man in Black clippety-clops through grim story-songs about love and revenge and justice.” TM Robert Hillburn, who was there that day writing for the Los Angeles Times, said, “He didn’t just do a greatest-hits show that day; he designed every song for that audience and their emotional needs.” ATI Cash focused more on songs “about prison, crime, murder, regret, loss, mother, God, and loneliness.” AM Cash tweaked the lyrics of Cocaine Blues to reflect his narcotics arrest in 1965. UT’18
“The other element that resonates is Cash’s interaction with the inmates.” CQ Cash “appreciates the uniqueness of his position – that to this assembly he’s not a temporary escape from the drudgery of the pen, but a living symbol of the rebel road.” TM He “connects with this rough crowd not by being by being a cartoon tough but by spinning stories about what it means to be human, and to struggle with the mistakes no amount of hard time can undo.” TM
“Cash had the audience in the palm of his hands for the entire duration of the show.” ATI The prisoners were “visibly overjoyed” ATI although “reluctant to respond too raucously [because] they feared reprisals from the guards.” ABS
Not only did Cash pick a setlist the prisoners related to “but he constantly pauses to speak and joke with them. This human touch, coupled with the way he openly carried his own troubles and shortcomings on his sleeve, creates a camaraderie that the listener can’t help but notice.” CQ Cash “delivers a maximum-security meditation on sin and forgiveness.” EW’12
The Impact
It took Cash to the top of the country charts and spent over two years on the Billboard album chart. It sold three million copies, becoming one of the biggest-selling country records of all time. RS’18 He was embraced by the counterculture WP and became “an icon of cool.” ATI Grant said, “It just turned everything in our lives around. Our careers were turned around. John was becoming what he deserved.” RS’18
“Record companies by the score began hauling tape machines in and out of correctional facilities in order to capitalize on the trend” TB but this is “undoubtedly the most significant prison album ever recorded.” ATI It “finds one of American music’s all-time greats at the very peak of power.” PM “Few albums come as close to capturing the darkness and rage that lays deep in Cash’s music, as well as the depth of his talent.” AM “This set is all about atmosphere. Live at the Grand Ole Opry this ain’t.” AZ Uproxx’s Corbin Reiff called it “the definitive Johnny Cash album.” UT’18
Photographer Jim Marshall, who was at Folsom to shoot the legendary performance, said he thought it was just as important as the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Are You Experienced?, the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, and Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde. RS’18 “It was the realness, the rawness, the honesty at Folsom that made the record important.” RS’18 Cash said it resurrected his career. CQ
The album also brought attention to the need for prison reform. Cash felt strongly that the system was broken and not fixing anyone. First-time offenders and full-fledged killers were all mixed together.
The Songs
Here are some insights into some of the individual songs.
“Folsom Prison Blues”
Cash wrote the song while serving in Germany with the U.S. Air Force in 1953. ABS He was inspired by watching Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison, a 1951 crime drama. He recorded it for Sun Records in 1955 and it became one of his signature songs. The live version recorded at Folsom was released as a single in 1968 and topped the country charts. Hillburn said, “the live version was…much more dynamic. He had emotion singing in front of those prisoners and you can hear their affection for him.” UT’18
Some of Cash’s audience at the prison shows likely assumed he’d done hard time, probably because they took the lines “But I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die” literally. WP It has been called “one of the most iconic lines in country music history.” ABS Cash said, “I sat with my pen in my hand, trying to think up the worst reason a person could have for killing another person, and that’s what came to mind.” ABS
However, Cash had never spent more than a few nights in jail (mainly in the drunk tank), but prisoners “related to him as being one of them” said W.S. Holland, Cash’s drummer. WP “Cash had a natural sympathy for men who gave in to their worst impulses.” TL
“Give My Love to Rose”
June Carter joined Cash for duets on Jackson and Give My Love to Rose. ABS On the latter, when Cash “sings about a prisoner who misses his wife and wishes to know his young son…it’s easy to forget that, unlike his audience, Cash gets to go home after the show.” CQ
“25 Minutes to Go” and “I Got Stripes”
He also performed Shel Silverstein’s 25 Minutes to Go, “a countdown to an execution.” 500 In the context of a prison performance, they “lose some of their defiance and gain some sadness, particularly when they’re interrupted by announcements like, ‘88419 is wanted in reception.’” TL That song and I Got Stripes serve as “allegories in which remorseful men ponder the consequences of their actions.” TM
“Dark As a Dungeon”
When one inmate started laughing during Dark As a Dungeon, Cash chuckled as well and then casually admonished him. The prisoner responded with “Oh, hell” which led Cash to say “I just wanted to tell you that this show is being recorded for an album released on Columbia Records so you can’t say ‘hell’ or ‘shit’ or anything like that.” ABS
“Greystone Chapel”
The whole crew assembled the night before in a local motel and were even visited by then-California governor Ronald Reagan. Gressett played Greystone Chapel, a song written by Folsom inmate Glen Sherley. It was about finding God in the prison chapel. Cash wrote down the words and rehearsed it with his band to perform it the next day. ATI It was the last song Cash performed, leaving his audience with the line “Inside the walls of prison my body may be/ But my Lord has set my soul free.” TL
Sherley didn’t know Cash was going to play his song and, according to Ventura Star-Free Press reporter Gene Beley, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a happier man alive.” ATI Sherley recorded an album in prison ATI and maintained correspondence with Cash. Although he was serving a potential life sentence, he was released in 1971 WP and joined Cash on the road. Sadly, he was fired when he threatened to kill one of the band members ATI and killed himself in 1978. Cash paid for the funeral. WP
Notes:
The 1999 reissue added the songs “Busted,” “Joe Bean,” and “The Legend of John Henry.”
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