February 24, Johnny Cash is staging a comeback after years of lagging success and a personal battle with drug addiction. Like the Live At Folsom Prison album of a year earlier, it is an agent for change. It changes our perception of cons, punishment, and prisons. It may be his masterpiece. The inmates at San Quentin were in for a memorable performance.
There are two never previously recorded Johnny Cash songs on the album. His band includes the Statler brothers and the Carter family singing backing vocals, and a guy named Carl Perkins playing lead guitar. During the concert Cash shares a personal tragedy with his audience. His friend and guitarist Luther Perkins no relation to Carl had recently passed, after playing with Cash for 13 years. Luther gets his cheer. I think I paid ten bucks for it. He first played San Quentin in , and his performance there so electrified one of the inmates, his future course in life was forever altered.
The cons name? Merle Haggard. He was a mean mother from the South who was there because he loved us. When he walked away, everyone in that place had become a Johnny Cash fan.
It's none of my business how you feel about some other things, and I don't give a damn about how you feel about some of the things. But anyway, I try to put myself in your place and I believe this is the way that I would feel about San Quentin. And then he begins to singβno longer the kid singing a hypothetical tale about a prisoner listening to a train passing him by. Every stanza is kicked off with a new blast at the institution.
Those of us who have never been there, get a glimpse. Those who have, immediately recognize and relate to the visceral feelings. It's pure genius. He plays the brutally honest song again. In a row. The cons go wild for it. The album was reissued on vinyl in by Sundazed Records. It looks just like the original, except for a bar code on the back. Legend would have us believe he was flipping off the Warden or a prison guard, maybe. But Johnny βhonest as everβput the kibosh on all that.
