As a lifelong Johnny Cash fan, raised on country, gospel, blues and folk and all their outlaw cousins, I spent my adolescence listening to 1969’s Live from San Quentin and imagining the scene: Cash, who never served hard time, singing about prison life to hardened men who greeted him as kindred. Little did I know, wonders of the Internet to behold, that there is actual footage of the concert online. And so there it is above, and it’s great. Johnny mocks the guards, gets theatrically belligerent, and rocks out outlaw country style with “San Quentin,” voicing every prisoner’s grievances with his gravelly delivery. His glare is hypnotic, and the song plays over footage of armed guards on the fences and inmates marched in herds.
Of course, there’s no San Quentin without Cash’s first prison concert, 1968’s At Folsom Prison. The documentary below (with Swedish subtitles) opens with interviews from country stalwarts Marty Stuart and Cash’s daughter Roseanne; it’s an hour-long exploration of the Folsom prison concert and its import.
Cash loved giving these concerts, and he loved the men inside, not because he was one of them but because he knew he could have been if music hadn’t saved him. He gave another concert in 1977 at the Tennessee State Prison, but this recording never had the impact that those first two did. Cash’s appearances at Folsom and San Quentin in some ways defined his career as a writer and singer of outlaw songs who cared about the men who paid the price for law and order.
Josh Jones is a writer and scholar currently completing a dissertation on landscape, literature, and labor.
He never actually shot a man in Reno — but Johnny Cash blew inmates away when he played at Folsom Prison.
Cash’s famous performance at the California penitentiary took place 48 years ago on Jan. 13, 1968 — but it wasn’t the first time Cash performed on a prison stage.
His first prison performance happened in 1957 at Huntsville State Prison in Texas.
Another quickly followed in 1958 at San Quentin State Prison in California on New Year’s Day — a notable set that jumpstarted 20-year-old inmate Merle Haggard’s new life as a country music legend.
“He had the right attitude. He chewed gum, looked arrogant and flipped the bird to the guards-he did everything the prisoners wanted to do. He was a mean mother from the South who was there because he loved us,” Haggard later said.
“When he walked away, everyone in that place had become a Johnny Cash fan.”
Just years later in 1968, Cash’s future wife June Carter joined him while he recorded two live albums from performances inside Folsom State Prison.
The Folsom Prison shows were often credited with reviving the Man in Black’s career.
Cash put out the song “Folsom Prison Blues” in 1955, which was featured his debut record “With His Hot and Blue Guitar.” But his 1968 version recorded live at the same prison was a No. 1 hit that stayed at the top the charts for weeks.
The Folsom Prison performance was also depicted in the film, “Walk the Line” based off of Cash’s life and achievements.
Performing for inmates was so successful that Cash released a second album after “At Folsom Prison” from San Quentin Prison in 1969 — his first album to hit No. 1 on the pop charts.
But he didn’t just use the opportunity to play in prison to boost his record sales — although the album “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison” sold more than three million copies.
Cash played the shows for free and overtime became an outspoken advocate for prisoners’ rights.
“He always identified with the underdog,” Tommy Cash, Johnny’s youngest brother, told BBC.
“He identified with the prisoners because many of them had served their sentences and had been rehabilitated in some cases, but were still kept there the rest of their lives. He felt a great empathy with those people,” his brother said.
Cash took his interest to prison reform directly to a U.S. Senate hearing in 1972 and stated that people needed to start caring about prison reform, BBC reported.
“At Folsom Prison” is still mentioned as one of the greatest albums of all time by Rolling Stone and it cemented Cash’s legacy as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.