It comes as no surprise that the #1 top-charting album of Johnny Cash’s entire career was recorded live in concert at a maximum security prison, in front of a “captive crowd” of all-men, behind bars “for armed robbery, rape, pedophilia, arson, murder,” June Carter Cash told herself, as well as “a few innocent men.” Surrounded by tense, armed guards, this was an audience, Johnny’s manager Lou Robin understood, where “the most powerful inmates sat in the front row in their tailored uniforms with their ‘assistants’ coming over to light their cigarettes and bring them drinks.”
Johnny Cash At San Quentin was the follow-up to June 1968’s ‘Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison,’ the enormously successful #1 country LP (for four weeks), his first major pop crossover success (#13), which went on to spend 92 weeks on the pop chart and 122 weeks on the country chart. The LP (recorded January 1968) included his remake of the 1955 Grammy Hall Of Famer “Folsom Prison Blues” – the ’68 version hit #1 on the country chart (for four weeks), Top 40 pop, and won the Best Country Male Vocal Grammy.
It was followed by “Daddy Sang Bass” (written by Carl Perkins, with the Statler Brothers and the Carter Family on background vocals), a second #1 country (for six weeks) and Top 40 pop hit. All the attention set the stage for Johnny’s ABC-TV variety series that premiered on June 7, 1969. In every way, it was ‘Folsom Prison,’ his first CMA Album of the Year and first RIAA double-platinum LP that set off three and a half decades of iconic worldwide superstardom for Johnny Cash.
Johnny started performing at prisons in the ’50s, and always wanted to record a live LP at one of those dates, but Columbia would not hear of it. It was not until he hooked up with staff producer Bob Johnston that he found a sympathizer. But could it have gone another way? “I picked up the phone and called Folsom and San Quentin,” the producer relates. “The reason the Folsom album was made first is because the Folsom warden answered first, simple as that. I got the warden, Duffy, and I handed Johnny the telephone and left.”
The double-platinum LP stayed at #1 country for a record-setting 20 weeks, which made it the Top Country Album of the decade. In all, Johnny’s second CMA Album of the Year charted for 55 weeks at country and 70 weeks pop – which meant that for the better part of a year, he had two prison LPs selling tonnage off the shelf together.
‘San Quentin’ was an historic 10-song LP when it was first released in 1969 – and it was an historic occasion 31 years later when it was first remastered as an expanded edition CD. As part of Columbia/Legacy’s American Milestones country music series, the 2000 configuration included eight bonus tracks previously unreleased at the time, all of them featuring Johnny: “Big River,” “I Still Miss Someone,” “I Don’t Know Where I’m Bound,” “Ring Of Fire” (with the Carter Family), and the final four with the whole company – “He Turned the Water Into Wine,” “Daddy Sang Bass,” “This Old Account Was Settled Long Ago,” and the closing medley with the full company, “Folsom Prison Blues/ I Walk the Line/ Ring Of Fire/ The Rebel – Johnny Yuma.” The 2000 CD also resequenced the program according to the original show’s running order.
‘Johnny Cash – At San Quentin: Legacy Edition’ ups the ante with another 13 previously unissued tracks that now complete the show in its entirety, starting with the first five tracks that introduced each of the show’s stars – Carl Perkins (“Blue Suede Shoes”), the Statler Brothers (“Flowers On The Wall”), the Carter Family (Tom Paxton’s “The Last Thing On My Mind), and June Carter Cash (who talked to the audience and then sang “Wildwood Flower”) – before Johnny took the stage with “Big River” and “I Still Miss Someone.”
Johnny provided an interlude: the true story of Jim Marshall’s notorious photograph of Cash flipping “The Bird” to one of the Granada cameraman who was standing between him and the San Quentin audience. The liner notes’ longest section was penned by June, whose emotions ran from fear to compassion as she inspired her husband (of 11 months) to compose the four verses of “San Quentin” on the spot. The final section of liner notes were written by Johnny’s long-time manager, Lou Robin.
‘Johnny Cash – At San Quentin: Legacy Edition’ is now available for pre-order at Amazon . Visit the music database for more information.
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