Its first few seconds remain among the most thrilling of any live album.

“Hello, I’m Johnny Cash” … a raucous crowd of inmates explode into hoots and hollers followed by the first immortal lines of “Folsom Prison Blues”…

The dawn of 1968 marked a rebirth in the personal and professional life of Johnny Cash. Cash was a newlywed, finally married to soul mate June Carter. With her support, he was freeing himself of a crippling drug addiction. Then, on January 13, 1968, he recorded his iconic live album, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. The corrections circuit was already an established part of Cash’s tours prior to 1968, and he sensed it would provide the ideal setting for a live album. Cash’s label, Columbia Records, disliked the idea of a prison record but, teamed with producer Bob Johnston, the project gained momentum. Cash’s electrifying presence was matched note for note by the tight musicianship of his longtime band the Tennessee Three. Throughout the concert, Cash’s empathy with the prisoners was palpable. The audience reacted to his every line – cheering, howling and mourning. Cash articulated regret and isolation as though he was one of them. The album’s final song, “Greystone Chapel”, was, in fact, written by an inmate, Glen Sherley. The live recording reinvented “Folsom Prison Blues”. It was one of Cash’s first songs, composed on his first guitar while in the Air Force during the Korean War, and it became his second single. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison went Gold, and the live version of “Folsom Prison Blues” hit #1 on the country charts – more than a decade after the studio version. It also marked Cash’s crossover, climbing to #32 on the pop charts, earning Cash a mainstream following. “I’ve always thought it ironic that it was a prison concert,” he observed, “with me and the convicts getting along just as fellow rebels, outsiders and miscreants should. That pumped up my marketability to the point where ABC thought I was respectable enough to have a weekly network TV show.” This album was, of course, just one of the many highlights in Cash’s storied career. Johnny Cash’s music has been lost and found a dizzying number of times by record buyers. But the experience of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison has less to do with the charts or sales and everything to do with what he shared with forgotten men.

NPR: Inside Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison
Folsom Prison Blues, Virginia Quarterly Review
Salon.com feature on Live at Folsom Prison
Johnny Cash on AllMusic.com
VH-1 Bio