Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison
(1968)
Tracks
1 Folsom Prison Blues 2:42
2 Busted 1:24
3 Dark as the Dungeon 3:04
4 I Still Miss Someone 1:37
5 Cocaine Blues 3:01
6 25 Minutes to Go 3:31
7 Orange Blossom Special 3:00
8 The Long Black Veil 3:57
9 Send a Picture of Mother 2:10
10 The Wall 1:36
11 Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog 1:30
12 Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart 2:17
13 Joe Bean 2:25
14 Jackson 3:12
15 Give My Love to Rose 2:40
16 I Got Stripes 1:57
17 The Legend of John Henry's Hammer 7:08
18 Green, Green Grass of Home 2:29
19 Greystone Chapel 6:02
Johnny Cash was born in Arkansas in 1942. Formerly in the United States Air Force, Cash made his name in the vibrant American country scene of the 1950's, but it would be wrong to pigeon hole the man, if anything I would try to stick him between Rock N Roll, Folk and maybe half way towards Tennessee, but certainly Cash's sound was very much of his own with a voice unmistakably his.
Hit after hit would be very prominent throughout his output in the 1950s and early sixties; however by 1963 his excesses caught up with his, and his career was most definitely on the wane, a brief come back in 1964 did nothing to halt this slide.
After a turbulent few years, Cash, thanks to new wife June Carter had managed to compose himself and gathered some direction and in 1968 recorded one of the greatest live albums ever made.
Live at Folsom Prison funnily enough was an album recorded in Folsom Prison, a prison situated in California. You can imagine the looks on the faces of those Record Company Executives at Columbia when he pitched the idea for this album. In essence what this album was is Johnny Cash playing golden oldies which now seemed awfully dated, to an audience of thieves, rapists and murderers, as well as these issues, Cash by this point was a forgotten artist and very much irrelevant, but someone at CBS must have owed him a favour or something.
The first time you play At Folsom Prison you're met with the now iconic greeting of "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash", followed by a huge roar, at this point you think..... well I certainly thought anyway, "oh my", and as the first notes of Folsom Prison play out it suddenly dawns on you that what you are listening to here is simply one of the most definitive moments in musical history.
18 tracks follow the opener, 18 tracks about love and loss, imprisonment and escape, poverty and death, and for all their faults in life, the imprisoned at Folsom Prison really are what makes this album what it is. The energy from the crowd which you can literally feel oozing from the record is soaked up by Cash and his band and is relayed perfectly to the listener at home
There are many highlights on this record, too many in fact, ones that stick out for me as I write this are 25 Minutes to Go, a song about a man waiting to hang, the story telling and imagery created by Cash for this song really is quite something. There are also some undoubtedly foot tappy numbers too, Cocaine Blues is a glorious song with some memorable lines (see what I did there), as well as Orange Blossom Special which is also a cracking song which does get repeated quite often on the old radio show.
This album will forever make Johnny Cash a legend and ensured that he was not like the typical 1950's artist who only your Gran fondly remembers. It spawned a follow up live album, At San Quentin, which like Folsom Prison had some landmark moments which will live on long after Cash's death in 2003. In short, glorious, glorious, glorious.