ICONS
J
ohn R. Cash was born 26th February
1932, in Kingsland Arkansas. During his
71 years on this earth, he became a
legend. 55 studio albums, 6 live albums,
10 gospel albums and 104 compilation albums in
a career that spanned from 1954 up to his death
in 2003 and beyond. Cash left a legacy of music
that still influences musicians across genres to
this day.
One of the Highwaymen and part of the
Outlaw Country movement, Cash often
expressed the darker side of country having
battled with a great many demons throughout
his life, beginning with the tragic death of his
beloved brother Jack when Cash was only 12
years old and the sense that his father
always blamed him. Over the years Cash
developed an empathy
with the plight of
prisoners, despite
having spent no more
than 3 nights in jail
himself after smuggling
amphetamines across
the Mexican border in
October 1965. It may
have been 3 nights
compared to a life
sentence, but he still
knew what it was like to
disappoint his family, to
feel the frustration of
helplessness in front of
the law, and feel hope
slipping away. Much like
performers of the
1940’s playing to the troops during WW2, Cash
had a desire to perform to prisoners, music they
could relate to. The idea to perform at Folsom
Prison first came about in 1953 when he
adapted Gordon Jenkins’ ‘Crescent City Blues’ to
become ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ after being inspired
by the film Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison.
The song contains some of his darkest lyric – ‘I
shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.’ Cash
was music’s ultimate method actor he
personified the Man in Black outlaw image and
in turn prisoners related to him. In 1968 his
goal of performing and recording at Folsom
came to fruition. The resulting album ‘At Folsom
Prison’ would be the first of 4 he would
ultimately record in penitentiaries ('At San
Quentin,' 1969; 'På Österåker,' 1973; 'A Concert
Behind Prison Walls,' 2003).
At the end of 1967 Cash had been through the
mill. Struggling with multiple drug and alcohol
addictions and the resulting divorce from his first
wife Vivian Liberto, Cash was under pressure
(largely from himself) to produce an album he
could be proud of and would get his creativity
flowing again. He pitched the idea for a live
album recorded at the maximum-security Folsom
Prison, just outside Sacremento, to the new head
of Columbia Records, which was met with
enthusiasm. The rest, as they say is history.
However, Cash wasn’t 100% confident that he
was still capable of his past levels of greatness. He
told Robert Hilburn, author of the acclaimed 2013
biography, Johnny Cash: The Life, that record
producer Bob Johnston was largely
responsible for helping to allay Cash’s fears: ‘Bob
kept telling me I was an
artist. He would sit me
down and say ‘Cash you
and Bob Dylan are
different. You’re “f***in’
artists.” You don’t just
make records. You make
records that mean
something to you and the
people who hear them.’ I
liked the sound of the
word ‘artist,’ and
he helped me understand
I needed to put
everything I had into the
Folsom album.’
Cash called his band,
The Tennessee Three,
and performers the
Statler Brothers in a day early for rehearsal in the
banqueting suite at the El Rancho Motel,
Sacremento, before the event. This came as a bit
of a surprise to them as Johnny had not
traditionally been one for rehearsing. This time
he was serious. Everyone was surprised to see
the setlist John had put together which was
missing massive hits like ‘Walk The Line’ and ‘Ring
of Fire.’ Instead in true ‘method musician’ style,
he had gone to the heart of songs he had known
and loved or recorded previously, songs that this
very specific audience would relate to. In was
‘Cocaine Blues’, as was a song that had been
handed to him just a few hours earlier written by
an inmate, Glen Sherley, called ‘Greystone Chapel’
about God’s grace in reaching out to even the
greatest of sinners at Folsom.