Folsom Prison Blues
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"Folsom Prison Blues" is an American country music song written by Johnny Cash in the early 1950s and originally recorded with his trio in 1956 for the Sun Records label. The song combines elements from two popular folk genres, the train song and the prison song, both of which Cash would continue to mine for the rest of his career.
Cash was inspired to write this song after seeing the movie Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951) while serving in West Germany in the United States Air Force.
The jailed protagonist listens to the whistle of the train outside his cell and recounts his deeds (this song's most famous line is undoubtedly "I shot a man in Reno/just to watch him die"); imagines the free people inside the train; and dreams of what he would do if he were free. "I know I had it coming/I know I can't be free," sings the imprisoned man. "But those people keep a'moving/and that's what tortures me."
Cash included the song in his repertoire for decades, the definitive live performance being the opening song of a concert recorded at Folsom Prison itself on January 13, 1968, and released in the At Folsom Prison album the same year. That opening song is more up-tempo than the Sun studio recording, as befits a concert-opening number. However, the recording's most notable feature — the whoops from the audience at the "Reno" line — was actually added in post-production, according to Michael Streissguth [1].
Reference
- Streissguth, Michael. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece, Da Capo Press (2004). ISBN 0306813386.