When Johnny Cash entered the cold stone walls of Folsom Prison on Jan. 13, 1968, he knew the live recording he’d make that day would be successful, and even historic. But he didn’t anticipate the deep cultural resonance Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison would still have 40 years later.
The disc did more than polish Cash’s then-fading star, and set him on the path to the iconic status he bore for the final three decades of his career. The single LP pushed country music in its rawest form into the American mainstream. It topped the country charts and hit No. 13 on Billboard’s Pop Albums register, eventually selling more 6 million copies worldwide.
But Live at Folsom – which has just been reissued in a comprehensive and riveting two-CD/one-DVD-plus booklet box Legacy Edition set – also made Cash a hero of the burgeoning counterculture, who responded to Cash’s rebel soul as caught on tape and embodied in the very notion of recording before an audience of 2,000 convicted murderers, drug dealers, rapists, armed robbers, and the like. Only the hardest of the hard-core were – and still are – sentenced to Folsom.
Younger listeners mostly know Cash from his American Recordings series, the albums American Recordings, Unchained, American III: Solitary Man, and American IV: the Man Comes Around, that he recorded with rock über producer Rick Rubin from 1994 to 2002. But Live at Folsom was the inspiration for those dark themed albums, first collecting many of the songs that gave Cash his aura of southern gothic majesty.
The original disc included the prison ballads “Folsom Prison Blues” and Folsom inmate Glen Sherley’s “Greystone Chapel.” But hit its moody heights with the hanging song “25 Minutes to Go” and the ghostly “Long Black Veil.” Of course Cash also leavened the set with humor, including “Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog” and “Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart.”
The new edition includes both concerts Cash performed that day, and ups the comedy and showcases the other performers in Cash’s traveling troupe. There’s Cash’s “I’m Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail,” originally omitted because of flubbed lyrics, and a jokey poem from June Carter. Alternate takes of “Cocaine Blues,” “Greystone Chapel,” and more are also included. Plus Carl Perkins dives into “Matchbox” and “Blues Suede Shoes,” and the Statler Brothers harmonize on their hit “Flowers on the Wall” and the pure corn of “You Can’t Have Your Kate and Edith, Too.”
What’s striking is how raw it all sounds, even with the help of digital enhancement. Cash’s voice and the guitars are bare bones dry; the audio quality and volume levels flux. And yet, cut-by-cut these concerts bristle with heart and power – the sense that every performer on stage desperately wants to connect with the audience.
The new set’s DVD is a documentary inspired by Michael Streissguth’s excellent 2004 book Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: the Making of a Masterpiece, and it highlights another of Cash’s motives for making the album: prison reform. The American Civil Rights Movement was at a peak in 1968, and while it mostly focused on African-Americans, prisoners and other victims of inhumane treatment came under the umbrella of concerns.
Live at Folsom, which included Cash’s references to the plight of the prisoners he entertained, helped humanize inmates for many Americans and prompted discussions of convicts’ rights in the media. As a direct result of recording Live at Folsom and being an outspoken proponent of prison reform, Cash was called to testify before Congress on the issue.
The documentary also parallels the story of Cash and Folsom with the life of Glen Sherley, the prisoner-author of “Greystone Chapel” who – for a short time – became a country music sensation after Cash recorded his song. Sherley clearly had an evil streak that his time in Folsom merely tempered, and eventually he exorcised it by committing suicide. Sherley’s role in the narrative underlines the tragedy that sparked Cash’s reform crusade.
The Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison: Legacy Edition also includes excellent liner notes by Streissguth and photos by famed rock shooter Jim Marshall that capture the musicians’ reaction to the prison’s sober world.