The stock market crash that happened in the United States on 29th October 1929 (“Black Tuesday”) precipitated the 20th century’s longest and deepest recession known as the Great Depression. To compound the financial collapse, three waves of severe drought throughout the Thirties reduced the Great Plains to a “dust bowl”, causing widespread poverty and famine in states such as Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas. This was the world into which Johnny Cash was born. He was born in 1932, and lived with his family in one of F D Roosevelt’s New Deal colonies in Dyess, Arkansas. From age five he worked with his family in cotton fields, and experienced their financial and personal struggles throughout drought and flood. If a deprived background leads to authenticity in music, then Johnny Cash was surely authentic!
He was also incredibly gifted musically, with that amazing bass-baritone voice of his, and after being discharged from the US Air Force in 1954, he launched a career that would turn him into one of the bestselling artists of all time and a country music icon. His other defining characteristics were his tendency to misdemeanour as a result of alcohol and drug abuse, and his natural compassion for the underdogs of society. The former led to many setbacks from which Cash had to bounce back, whilst the latter led him to activism on behalf of Native Americans as well as a series of concerts in high security prisons.
Of his many comebacks, the biggest was undoubtedly the 1968 live album Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. Recorded in front of an audience of nearly 2000 convicted criminals, in Folsom’s Dining Hall 2, it cemented his outlaw reputation and status as champion of the downtrodden, and it shot him back into the big time. Containing definitive versions of many Cash classics, it’s a masterpiece that’s sold consistently ever since. He began, appropriately enough, with Folsom Prison Blues, the song he had first recorded back in 1955.
Cash had been inspired to write this song after watching the movie Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951) whilst serving in West Germany in the US Air Force. The song combined two popular folk styles, the “train song” and the “prison song”. It was recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee in July, 1955, produced by the legendary Sam Phillips, and the musicians were Cash (vocals, guitar), Luther Perkins (guitar), and Marshall Grant (bass). Here is a great performance of the song by Cash and the Tennessee Three on the Jimmy Dean Show in 1964.
I hear the train a comin’, it’s rolling ’round the bend
And I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when
I’m stuck in Folsom prison, and time keeps draggin’ on
But that train keeps a rollin’ on down to San Antone
When I was just a baby my mama told me, “Son
Always be a good boy, don’t ever play with guns”
But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die
When I hear that whistle blowing, I hang my head and cry
I bet there’s rich folks eating in a fancy dining car
They’re probably drinkin’ coffee and smoking big cigars
Well I know I had it coming, I know I can’t be free
But those people keep a‑movin’
And that’s what tortures me
Well if they freed me from this prison
If that railroad train was mine
I bet I’d move it on a little farther down the line
Far from Folsom prison, that’s where I want to stay
And I’d let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away
