Columbia 9827
Producer: Bob Johnston
Track listing: Wanted Man / Wreck of the Old 97 / I Walk the Line / Darling Companion / Starkville City Jail / San Quentin / San Quentin / A Boy Named Sue / Folsom Prison Blues
August 23, 1969
4 weeks
Johnny Cash, Sun Records labelmate of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis, played his first prison in 1956. It seemed like a natural thing for him to do. “Because of my song ‘Folsom Prison Blues,’ the cons thought that I was one of them,” says Cash.
In reality, though, Cash’s only time in prison was served as a performer, but the gravelly-voiced country singer did have a reputation as an outlaw for his often-wild behavior and his style of dress. Good guys wore white; Cash was the Man in Black.
After Cash played Huntsville Texas state prison in 1956, word spread and he was deluged with requests to perform at prisons around the country. In 1968, a decade after Cash’s first charting album, the singer recorded Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison with producer Bob Johnston. It climbed to number 13 and became his highest-charting album to date, while the song “Folsom Prison Blues” went on to top the country singles chart.
On February 24, 1969, Cash paid his fourth visit to California’s San Quentin Prison. This time Cash wasn’t only making a live album; Granada Television also filmed the show for a British TV special. He also came armed with several songs that would make their recorded debut on Live at San Quentin, including “A Boy Named Sue” and a tune named after the prison, which Cash wrote the night before the engagement. In “San Quentin,” Cash put himself in the prisoner’s shoes, expressing the frustration, isolation, and rage the convicts felt for the fortress they called home.
When Cash performed the song that day, even he was taken aback by the response. “Everyone was a little bit uneasy with the excitement following the song ‘San Quentin,”‘ Cash says. “The prisoners stood up on the tables and started stomping their feet. They demanded that I sing it again, which I did. We were all a little uneasy, because they were really overly excited.”
Another new song, “A Boy Named Sue,” a hilarious tale about a young man seeking revenge on the deadbeat dad who’d given him a woman’s name, was also well received. “I didn’t know the lyrics to the song, so I had them on a piece of paper on the stand in front of me,” Cash says. Three days before the performance, Cash had received the song from Shel Silverstein. The song connected with the general public as well as the cons, as it rose to number two on the Hot 100 and topped the country chart.
Yet the prisoners didn’t respond only to Cash’s songs of rebellion. “They had the same reaction to the spiritual ‘Peace in the Valley,'” says Cash. Although the song, which was also recorded by Elvis, is included on the album between “A Boy Named Sue” and “Folsom Prison Blues,” it is not listed on the record sleeve.
Even after Cash left the stage that evening, the show wasn’t over. “I remember when we were walking out past Death Row, the inmates were yelling at me from their cells asking me to sing a song,” Cash says. “So I took out my guitar and sang ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ down on the pavement outside of the prison.”
Despite the possible risk in playing for an audience of dangerous criminals, Cash never felt threatened. “Maybe I should have, but I always felt safe,” he says. “I felt that the inmates would have protected me as much as the guards did.”
THE TOP FIVE
Week of August 23, 1969
1. Johnny Cash at San Quentin, Johnny Cash
2. Blood, Sweat & Tears, Blood, Sweat & Tears
3. Hair, Original Cast
4. Best of Cream, Cream
5. Blind Faith, Blind Faith