This is a really interesting dissection of a show and album many of us may have heard as kids. I met Mr Cash briefly when I lived in Nashville, TN and, even though it was in a very mundane setting, I couldn’t have been more excited and he couldn’t have been more generous and kind.
At Folsom Prison: Johnny Cash’s career-changing show
I’m no country-music fan, but I’m very happy to own this man’s two prison concert albums. Seems every time I’ve been careless enough to dismiss a musical genre, I get steered to an artist or two who’ll change my mind by rising high above the average.
I used to have a list of artists I’d offer to anyone who said they hated country music. Can’t remember most of them, but I know Keith Whitley was on the list. He had a very traditional kind of sound, but a wonderful voice. Try “Tell Lori I Love Her”… the bad quality is because a lot of the song had to be recreated off some very bad recordings.
I think Alan Jackson was on it, too. He has some cheese songs for sure, but some of his stuff is so wonderfully written. At his best, he’s more bard than mere singer.
I’ve almost entirely moved on from country now. I think Garth Brooks ushered in a new sound I didn’t like as much, and then artists like Toby Keith turned the entitlement and anger up to 11. And, of course, nearly every female country singer since the 1980s has been trying to channel Reba McEntire in some way (and say what you want about the style; at least Reba was GOOD at it).
Cash’s anthem, “The Man in Black,” reveals a thorough, deep, lived understanding of the sometimes dark realities of human nature that is diametrically opposed to the black-and-white, good-versus-bad, simplistic moralism of a lot (not all) of contemporary “country” music.
Very few of us are simple people. Cash certainly wasn’t. He was an artist in the essential sense that he could express himself through his music far more effectively than through simple spoken or written language.
Cash= proof that country once had integrity