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• JohnnyCash.com • Johnny Cash's America • At Folsom Prison
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Remembering His America and Musical Freedom on Two New Releases A Kweevak.com Rock Report by Rich and Laura Lynch Musical icon Johnny Cash was the man in black but running through his blood was indisputably red, white, and blue. As the voice of those without a voice he became the most authentic representative of Americans that the country has ever seen or may ever see again. Perhaps that's why every single President courted Johnny Cash during his lifetime, no matter what political affiliation. And while society became increasingly divided, Americans who agreed on little else agreed on Johnny Cash and they still do today. He is, was and remains a bridge from one generation to another.
 These ideas and more are explored in a new documentary airing on the Bio Channel and a DVD/CD package released by Columbia/Legacy on October 28th entitled Johnny Cash's America. In the film, co-directors Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon delve into what shaped Johnny Cash into the influential American icon he became. This film evokes the question, "In losing Johnny Cash, has America lost the best advocate we had for those without a voice?" as he represented the poor, the downtrodden, our soldiers overseas, Native Americans, prisoners, the disenfranchised and the youth of today without losing his audience. He was the ultimate American who embraced all of America's diversity without prejudice or partisanship. And although non-partisan his whole life, one can't help but wonder, who would Johnny Cash vote for in this election? The road through Johnny Cash's America takes us on a journey of his career and personal highs and lows while unveiling never-before seen footage and unreleased music from Johnny's vault. Footage highlights include interviews with Johnny Cash, Al Gore, Snoop Dogg, Sheryl Crow, Steve Earle, Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan, Ozzy Osbourne, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tim Robbins, Vince Gill, Johnny's sister Joanne, and his children John Carter Cash and Cindy Cash. Additionally, the film shows the never-before broadcast pilot from the 1965 "Johnny Cash Show," rare footage from a 1968 Canadian TV special, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan outtakes from "Eat The Document" and other sessions, unseen rehearsal for a Highwaymen recording session plus a rare BBC performance during his American Recordings comeback. Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon are the filmmakers behind last year's acclaimed PBS presentation, "Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story," and the Grammy -nominated "Muddy Waters Can't Be Satisfied." Neville directed the Emmy-winning "Hank Williams: Honky Tonk Blues." Gordon wrote and was a producer on "The Road to Memphis," an episode of Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues. John Carter Cash and Lou Robin, of the Johnny Cash Estate, are Executive Producers of the documentary. 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. 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 time 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. FOLSOM PRISON offers one expansive 4,000-word essay by Michael Streissguth. 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 Eddy 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."
 Originally Published: 11/08/2008 on Kweevak.com
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