New York, NY. (Shore Fire Media)--Released From The Archive For The First Time:
CD One: 65-minute first show -with seven previously unissued tracks
CD Two: 75-minute second show - with 24 previously unissued tracks (of 26)
DVD: new documentary film - with exclusive Folsom Prison footage, interviews with Merle Haggard, Rosanne Cash, Marty Stuart, and former inmates at concert, and unpublished photographs by Jim Marshall
Six years in the making, first live prison recording by Cash - who identifies with convicts on "Folsom Prison Blues," "Busted," "Dark As A Dungeon," "Cocaine Blues," "25 Minutes To Go," "I'm Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail," "The Long Black Veil," "I Got Stripes," "Green, Green Grass Of Home," and more - Also, duets with June Carter and highlights by Carl Perkins and Statler Brothers
In-depth liner notes essay by Cash biographer Michael Streissguth, plus liner notes written in 1999 by Cash and Steve Earle
Latest entry in deluxe Legacy Edition series - available at both physical and digital retail outlets starting October 14, 2008, through Columbia/Legacy
"Each song Cash reeled off that day spoke his understanding of prison life - 'Dark As A Dungeon,' 'I Still Miss Someone,' 'Cocaine Blues,' 'Send A Picture of Mother' ... Each song described confinement in some sense - in a coal mine, in love, in poverty - making clear to the men that they weren't the only ones imprisoned. And between songs, he conversed with the men on their level, grumbling about wardens and dishing out off-color jokes." - from the liner notes written by Michael Streissguth
It is one of those dates that is embedded in music history - and should be embedded in American history, if it is not already. January 13, 1968, the day that Johnny Cash and his crew - June Carter (two months before their wedding), Columbia staff producer Bob Johnston, Carl Perkins, the Statler Brothers, and the Tennessee Three (guitarist Luther Perkins, bassist Marshall Grant, drummer W.S. "Fluke" Holland), rolled into northern California's notorious maximum security lockup and gave a performance that changed Cash's career arc and the future of popular music. Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison, the LP issued on Columbia Records the following May, became a cultural benchmark in the midst of the single most tumultuous year in American history since the end of World War II. It was more than a record album - it was the turning point for a generation.
Forty years later, the Cash archives in Tennessee continue to dazzle researchers with their riches. In fact, as rarely known by even the most ardent fans, and rarely mentioned in Cash writings until now - there were two Folsom shows performed and recorded that day: The first show, the bulk of which comprised the classic, familiar 16-song album; and a longer second show, the bulk of whose 26 tracks (except for two songs) were put on the shelf.
JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON: LEGACY EDITION has been a long time coming, indeed. The revealing three-disc (2 CD+DVD) close-up of that day now presents the entire unvarnished 65-minute first show on disc one - expletives intact for the first time, and with seven previously unissued tracks; and the entire 75-minute second show on disc two, with 24 previously unissued tracks (out of 26). It's topped off with a new documentary DVD - featuring exclusive footage from inside Folsom, interviews with Merle Haggard, Rosanne Cash, Marty Stuart, and former inmates who witnessed the concert, and unpublished photography by Jim Marshall.
JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON: LEGACY EDITION, the latest deluxe display-book box set entry in the Legacy Edition series will be available at all physical and digital outlets starting October 14th through Columbia/Legacy, a division of SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT.
The broad popular acceptance of the original Folsom Prison - by country fans, hippies and hillbillies, the Rolling Stone and FM radio population, and liberal urbanites - turned Johnny Cash's life around. Buoyed by its #1 country single title tune, the LP spent 92 weeks on the country chart (where it was #1 for 4 weeks) and 122 weeks on the pop side, was certified platinum, and chosen CMA Album of the Year. At the next Grammy Awards (in March 1969), "Folsom Prison Blues" won for Best Country Vocal, Male, and Johnny won Best Liner Notes. It set the stage (along with the follow-up success of Johnny Cash At San Quentin in 1969) for ABC television to offer him the prime t ime variety show series that catapulted him to superstar status. Over and above this recognition, for the next decade he was an outspoken advocate for prison reform.
The new FOLSOM PRISON box set complements Johnny Cash At San Quentin - Legacy Edition, released November 2006, the three-disc (2 CD+DVD) deluxe display-book box set chronicle of his follow-up prison concert of February 1969.
FOLSOM PRISON offers one expansive 4,000-word essay by Michael Streiss-guth. He is the author of Johnny Cash: The Biography (Da Capo Press, 2006) and Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece (Da Capo Press, 2005), as well as the editor of Ring Of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader (Da Capo Press, 2003). His other books include Voices of Country: Profiles and Interviews from the Golden Age of Country Music (Taylor Francis, Inc., 2004), and biographies of Ed dy Arnold (Pioneer of the Nashville Sound, 1997) and Jim Reeves (Like A Moth To A Flame, 1998).
"Nothing brushed Cash with darkness as broadly as At Folsom Prison," writes Streissguth, "mostly due to its loud suggestion that Cash had done hard time. Could any listener be blamed for thinking it? Hadn't he sounded devilishly conspiratorial with the men whom he entertained? Hadn't they cheered him like a brother? Didn't his voice sound gallows grave and the scar on his cheek look like a knife wound?... The Grammy-winning liner notes that Cash wrote only fueled the myth - 'I have been behind bars a few times,' wrote Cash. 'Sometimes of my own volition--sometimes involuntarily. Each time, I felt the same feeling of kinship with my fellow prisoner.' For the rest of his years, he uncomfortably lived with the myth, knowing that he'd conspired in its birth."
The energy and excitement of FOLSOM PRISON is all about Johnny Cash's relationship with those prison inmates and their regard for him, unfounded or not, as one of their own. He encouraged them to be uninhibited for the recording, and their raw spirit lifts every minute higher. Of the nearly 20 songs Cash performed at each show, with and without June, no less than half of them "spoke his understanding of prison life" (as Streissguth puts it). These included "Folsom Prison Blues" (with its memorable line, "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die"), Harlan Howard's "Busted" (via Ray Charles), Merle Travis' "Dark As A Dungeon," "Cocaine Blues" (with the controversial "I can't forget the day I shot that bad bitch down ," which was edited out of the Walk the Line movie), the gallows humor of Shel Silverstein's "25 Minutes To Go," the Everly Brothers' "I'm Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail," Mary Buck Wilkin's "The Long Black Veil," Johnny's own "I Got Stripes," and Curly Putnam's "Green, Green Grass Of Home."
As mentioned, the bulk of the first show (which began at 9:40 a.m.) comprised the original LP. Segments that were not used - some announcements by old friend L.A. disc jockey Hugh Cherry, cameos by Carl Perkins ("Blue Suede Shoes") and the Statler Brothers ("This Ole House"), "I'm Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail," and a duet by Johnny and June on Ray Charles' "I Got A Woman" - have all been restored on this Legacy Edition. [The 1999 expanded edition restored "Busted," "Joe Bean," and "The Legend Of John Henry's Hammer," which were all previously unissued prior to that.]
Johnston chose only two songs from the second show to weave into the LP, Johnny's "I Got Stripes" and his duet with June on "Give My Love To Rose," both original compositions. But the producer felt that Johnny was struggling "to recapture the dynamism of the earlier show... even as his energy drained," and so virtually the entire show was set aside. That included multiple cameos by Perkins and the Statlers, and multiple duets with June. Johnny did not sing any songs at the second show that he had not sung at the first show.
"Recorded days before the Tet Offensive in Vietnam," Streissguth writes, "and a few months before the shocking assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the album's performances and Cash-penned liner notes urged listeners to remember the caged men, much like King shone the spotlight on disenfranchised blacks and the voiceless poor. The album also tapped into the yearnings of late sixties music fans around the world who wanted from their music more viscosity, more depth, more reality, more rebellion. At Folsom Prison gave it to them - songs performed with unrelenting passion, a performer who would let nobody stand in his way, and a look at a failing prison system."
JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON: LEGACY EDITION
(Columbia/Legacy)
(recorded Jan. 13, 1968; originally issued May 1968, as Columbia 9639;
first expanded edition CD issued Oct. 1999, as Columbia/Legacy CK 65955)
Disc One - Show One:
Hugh Cherry
1. * Opening announcements
Carl Perkins
2. * Blue Suede Shoes
The Statler Brothers
3. * This Ole House
Hugh Cherry
4. * Announcements and Johnny Cash intro
Johnny Cash
5. Folsom Prison Blues
6. Busted
7. Dark As A Dungeon
8. I Still Miss Someone
9. Cocaine Blues
10. 25 Minutes To Go
11. * I'm Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail
12. Orange Blossom Special
13. The Long Black Veil
14. Send A Picture Of Mother
15. The Wall
16. Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog
17. Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart
18. Joe Bean
Johnny Cash with June Carter
19. Jackson
20. * I Got A Woman
Johnny Cash
21. The Legend Of John Henry's Hammer
22. * June's Poem
23. Green, Green Grass Of Home
24. Greystone Chapel
25. Closing announcements
Disc Two - Show Two:
Carl Perkins
1. * The Old Spinning Wheel
Hugh Cherry
2. * Opening announcements
Carl Perkins
3. * Matchbox
4. * Blue Suede Shoes
The Statler Brothers
5. * You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith, Too
6. * Flowers On The Wall
7. * How Great Thou Art
Hugh Cherry
8. * Announcements and Johnny Cash intro
Johnny Cash
9. * Folsom Prison Blues
10. * Busted
11. * Dark As A Dungeon
12. * Cocaine Blues
13. * 25 Minutes To Go
14. * Orange Blossom Special
15. * The Legend Of John Henry's Hammer
Johnny Cash with June Carter
16. Give My Love To Rose
Johnny Cash
17. * Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog
18. * Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart
19. * Joe Bean
Johnny Cash with June Carter
20. * Jackson
21. * Long-Legged Guitar Pickin' Man
Johnny Cash
22. I Got Stripes
23. * Green, Green Grass Of Home
24. * Greystone Chapel
25. * Greystone Chapel
Hugh Cherry
26. * Introduces Johnny's father, Ray Cash and Floyd Gressett and closing announcements
* indicates previously unissued track.
Disc Three: DVD - Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison
New documentary film includes exclusive footage from behind the walls of Folsom Prison, unpublished photographs by the legendary Jim Marshall, and new interviews with Merle Haggard, Rosanne Cash, Marty Stuart, and former inmates who witnessed the concert.
