When I was young, my dad had this giant entertainment cabinet with a turntable and radio. He had a bunch of old country and a few pop standard albums. He still has it, in fact. He and mom would put on a stack of records (Marty Robbins, Andy Williams, Jim Reeves, Up With People) and listen to them all evening. Good stuff. But the one album that captured my nine-year-old imagination more than any was Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison. What a record! I would listen to that record over and over, always picking up on a new nuance or sound that I didn't notice before.
I hadn't thought about it for a long time until Walk the Line came out (the fantastic movie starring Joaquin Phoenix as Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter, a role for which she won the Oscar for Best Actress). That movie takes us inside Folsom prison for the recording of the album, and reignited my imagination around the album. I just got around to ordering it last week, and it's even more amazing than I remember. I've basically been listening to it nonstop ever since. It's so raw and real, and Johnny is funny, man. He really knows how to tap into the energy of the audience. Almost all the songs are directly or indirectly related to themes of imprisonment, freedom, crime, punishment--all eternal themes, and ones he knew would strum the heartstrings of the prisoners.One thing that really caught me this time around were the original liner notes (in his own handwriting, no less) from the 1968 release. Here is a link to them: http://maninblack.net/Albums/Record_Folsom.html#Liner%20Notes (click on "Liner Notes")Take a moment to check them out. They are amazing to me.
Johnny is such a classically flawed hero. As he mentions in the liner notes (which is really more of an essay on the American punishment system) , he was behind bars more than once. He also saw firsthand the devastation of addiction to pills and alcohol, an addiction that the Carter family basically saved him from. He turned to Christianity as part of that process, and as a reformed "bad boy", his rhetoric of redemption and grace carried so much more weight than someone who had never seen the bottom of a bottle or the bottom of their souls. Johnny had seen these, and much more. He wasn't innocent. No, he was a living testament to the healing and freeing power of God. And his heartfelt compassion for the prisoners really comes through on the album. He is one of them. He doesn't put himself above the prisoners. He understands that we are all imprisoned, we all deserve punishment, we all need saving and freeing. For the record, God Bless Johnny Cash.
