Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison: Legacy Edition
Category: Music

    It is one of those dates that is embedded in music history – and should be embedded in American history, if it is not already.  January 13, 1968, the day that Johnny Cash and his crew – June Carter (two months before their wedding), Columbia staff producer Bob Johnston, Carl Perkins, the Statler Brothers, and the Tennessee Three (guitarist Luther Perkins, bassist Marshall Grant, drummer W.S. "Fluke" Holland), rolled into northern California's notorious maximum security lockup and gave a performance that changed Cash's career arc and the future of popular music.  Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison, the LP issued on Columbia Records the following May, became a cultural benchmark in the midst of the single most tumultuous year in American history since the end of World War II.  It was more than a record album – it was the turning point for a generation.
    Forty years later, the Cash archives in Tennessee continue to dazzle researchers with their riches.  In fact, as rarely known by even the most ardent fans, and rarely mentioned in Cash writings until now – there were two Folsom shows performed and recorded that day: The first show, the bulk of which comprised the classic, familiar 16-song album; and a longer second show, the bulk of whose 26 tracks (except for two songs) were put on the shelf.
    JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON: LEGACY EDITION has been a long time coming, indeed.  The revealing three-disc (2 CD+DVD) close-up of that day now presents the entire unvarnished 65-minute first show on disc one – expletives intact for the first time, and with seven previously unissued tracks; and the entire 75-minute second show on disc two, with 24 previously unissued tracks (out of 26).  It's topped off with a new documentary DVD – featuring exclusive footage from inside Folsom, interviews with Merle Haggard, Rosanne Cash, Marty Stuart, and former inmates who witnessed the concert, and unpublished photography by Jim Marshall.
    JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON: LEGACY EDITION, the latest deluxe display-book box set entry in the Legacy Edition series will be available at all physical and digital outlets starting October 14th through Columbia/Legacy, a division of SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT.  
    The broad popular acceptance of the original Folsom Prison – by country fans, hippies and hillbillies, the Rolling Stone and FM radio population, and liberal urbanites – turned Johnny Cash's life around.  Buoyed by its 1 country single title tune, the LP spent 92 weeks on the country chart (where it was 1 for 4 weeks) and 122 weeks on the pop side, was certified platinum, and chosen CMA Album of the Year.  At the next Grammy Awards (in March 1969), "Folsom Prison Blues" won for Best Country Vocal, Male, and Johnny won Best Liner Notes.  It set the stage (along with the follow-up success of Johnny Cash At San Quentin in 1969) for ABC television to offer him the prime time variety show series that catapulted him to superstar status.  Over and above this recognition, for the next decade he was an outspoken advocate for prison reform.
    The new FOLSOM PRISON box set complements Johnny Cash At San Quentin – Legacy Edition, released November 2006, the three-disc (2 CD+DVD) deluxe display-book box set chronicle of his follow-up prison concert of February 1969.  
    FOLSOM PRISON offers one expansive 4,000-word essay by Michael Streissguth.  He is the author of Johnny Cash: The Biography (Da Capo Press, 2006) and Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece (Da Capo Press, 2005), as well as the editor of Ring Of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader (Da Capo Press, 2003).  His other books include Voices of Country: Profiles and Interviews from the Golden Age of Country Music (Taylor & Francis, Inc., 2004), and biographies of Eddy Arnold (Pioneer of the Nashville Sound, 1997) and Jim Reeves (Like A Moth To A Flame, 1998).
    "Nothing brushed Cash with darkness as broadly as At Folsom Prison," writes Streissguth, "mostly due to its loud suggestion that Cash had done hard time.  Could any listener be blamed for thinking it?  Hadn't he sounded devilishly conspiratorial with the men whom he entertained?  Hadn't they cheered him like a brother?  Didn't his voice sound gallows grave and the scar on his cheek look like a knife wound?... The Grammy-winning liner notes that Cash wrote only fueled the myth – 'I have been behind bars a few times,' wrote Cash.  'Sometimes of my own volition—sometimes involuntarily.  Each time, I felt the same feeling of kinship with my fellow prisoner.'  For the rest of his years, he uncomfortably lived with the myth, knowing that he'd conspired in its birth."
    The energy and excitement of FOLSOM PRISON is all about Johnny Cash's relationship with those prison inmates and their regard for him, unfounded or not, as one of their own.  He encouraged them to be uninhibited for the recording, and their raw spirit lifts every minute higher.  Of the nearly 20 songs Cash performed at each show, with and without June, no less than half of them "spoke his understanding of prison life" (as Streissguth puts it).  These included "Folsom Prison Blues" (with its memorable line, "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die"), Harlan Howard's "Busted" (via Ray Charles), Merle Travis' "Dark As A Dungeon," "Cocaine Blues" (with the controversial "I can't forget the day I shot that bad bitch down," which was edited out of the Walk the Line movie), the gallows humor of Shel Silverstein's "25 Minutes To Go," the Everly Brothers' "I'm Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail," Mary Buck Wilkin's "The Long Black Veil," Johnny's own "I Got Stripes," and Curly Putnam's "Green, Green Grass Of Home."
    As mentioned, the bulk of the first show (which began at 9:40 a.m.) comprised the original LP.  Segments that were not used – some announcements by old friend L.A. disc jockey Hugh Cherry, cameos by Carl Perkins ("Blue Suede Shoes") and the Statler Brothers ("This Ole House"), "I'm Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail," and a duet by Johnny and June on Ray Charles' "I Got A Woman" – have all been restored on this Legacy Edition.  [The 1999 expanded edition restored "Busted," "Joe Bean," and "The Legend Of John Henry's Hammer," which were all previously unissued prior to that.]
    Johnston chose only two songs from the second show to weave into the LP, Johnny's "I Got Stripes" and his duet with June on "Give My Love To Rose," both original compositions.  But the producer felt that Johnny was struggling "to recapture the dynamism of the earlier show… even as his energy drained," and so virtually the entire show was set aside.  That included multiple cameos by Perkins and the Statlers, and multiple duets with June.  Johnny did not sing any songs at the second show that he had not sung at the first show.
    "Recorded days before the Tet Offensive in Vietnam," Streissguth writes, "and a few months before the shocking assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the album's performances and Cash-penned liner notes urged listeners to remember the caged men, much like King shone the spotlight on disenfranchised blacks and the voiceless poor.  The album also tapped into the yearnings of late sixties music fans around the world who wanted from their music more viscosity, more depth, more reality, more rebellion.  At Folsom Prison gave it to them – songs performed with unrelenting passion, a performer who would let nobody stand in his way, and a look at a failing prison system."


JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON: LEGACY EDITION
(Columbia/Legacy  )
(recorded Jan. 13, 1968; originally issued May 1968, as Columbia 9639;
first expanded edition CD issued Oct. 1999, as Columbia/Legacy CK 65955)

Disc One – Show One:
Hugh Cherry
1.    *    Opening announcements
Carl Perkins
2.    *    Blue Suede Shoes
The Statler Brothers
3.    *    This Ole House
Hugh Cherry
4.    *    Announcements and Johnny Cash intro
Johnny Cash
5.        Folsom Prison Blues
6.        Busted
7.        Dark As A Dungeon
8.        I Still Miss Someone
9.        Cocaine Blues
10.        25 Minutes To Go
11.    *    I'm Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail
12.        Orange Blossom Special
13.        The Long Black Veil
14.        Send A Picture Of Mother
15.        The Wall
16.        Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog
17.        Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart
18.        Joe Bean
Johnny Cash with June Carter
19.        Jackson
20.    *    I Got A Woman
Johnny Cash
21.        The Legend Of John Henry's Hammer
22.    *    June's Poem
23.        Green, Green Grass Of Home
24.        Greystone Chapel
25.        Closing announcements

Disc One – Show One:
Carl Perkins
1.    *    The Old Spinning Wheel
Hugh Cherry
2.    *    Opening announcements
Carl Perkins
3.    *    Matchbox
4.    *    Blue Suede Shoes
The Statler Brothers
5.    *    You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith, Too
6.    *    Flowers On The Wall
7.    *    How Great Thou Art
Hugh Cherry
8.    *    Announcements and Johnny Cash intro
Johnny Cash
9.    *    Folsom Prison Blues
10.    *    Busted
11.    *    Dark As A Dungeon
12.    *    Cocaine Blues
13.    *    25 Minutes To Go
14.    *    Orange Blossom Special
15.    *    The Legend Of John Henry's Hammer
Johnny Cash with June Carter
16.        Give My Love To Rose
Johnny Cash
17.    *    Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog
18.    *    Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart
19.    *    Joe Bean
Johnny Cash with June Carter
20.    *    Jackson
21.    *    Long-Legged Guitar Pickin' Man
Johnny Cash
22.        I Got Stripes
23.    *    Green, Green Grass Of Home
24.    *    Greystone Chapel
25.    *    Greystone Chapel
Hugh Cherry
26.    *    Introduces Johnny's father, Ray Cash and Floyd Gressett and closing
        announcements

    *    indicates previously unissued track.

Disc Three: DVD – Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison
New documentary film includes exclusive footage from behind the walls of Folsom Prison, unpublished photographs by the legendary Jim Marshall, and new interviews with Merle Haggard, Rosanne Cash, Marty Stuart, and former inmates who witnessed the concert.

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Johnny Cash’s America
Category: Music

People who agree on little else can agree on Johnny Cash. He carried a unique ability to reach all people at once. He was admired by prisoners and presidents, by preachers and punks. Cash was a man of God who spoke for the condemned. Johnny Cash's America looks at the unifying vision he carried with him through 50 years in music.

From the filmmakers behind "Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story," this acclaimed documentary (and accompanying soundtrack) looks at The Man in Black in a whole new light. How did Cash navigate the issues of his day, and what can we learn from his example? Here are gathered a broad spectrum of Americans—politicians, musicians, writers, family—to reflect on the power and meaning of Cash's extraordinary life.

This documentary features many never before seen performances capturing Cash across the years and in all circumstances. Intimate, revealing, and provocative, Johnny Cash's America shines a new light on a musician, an entertainer, an American.

DVD

Full-length documentary includes interviews with:

Al Gore

Bob Dylan

Snoop Dogg

Sheryl Crow

John Mellencamp

Lamar Alexander

Rosanne Cash

Tim Robbins

and many others.

Narrated by Academy Award Winner^® Chris Cooper

Directed by Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon

Main Program Running Time: 90 minutes

20 minutes of Bonus Material

CD

1. Come Along And Ride This Train (previously unreleased)

2. Pickin' Time

3. Five Feet High And Rising

4. Big River

5. Cry, Cry, Cry

6. All Of God's Children Ain't Free

7. Big Foot

8. Don't Take Your Guns To Town

9. Folsom Prison Blues (live)

10. Singing In Vietnam Talkin' Blues

11. What Is Truth (live) (previously unreleased)

12. Man In Black

13. Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)

14. Children, Go Where I Send Thee (live) (previously unreleased)

15. Ragged Old Flag

16. Song Of The Patriot

17. This Land Is Your Land (live) (previously unreleased)

18. I Am The Nation (previously unreleased)

Order your copy now from Amazon!

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Johnny Cash Essential 3.0 Available Now
Category: Music

For a limited time, now more Essential music from your favorite artists!

In addition to all the hits on Discs 1 and 2 of these best-selling Essential collections, Limited Edition 3.0 CDs feature these additional hits and fan favorites!

* Each Essential Limited Edition 3.0 expanded 3-CD set features the biggest hits and best-loved songs from superstar artists, including material not previously available in an Essential package.

* Definitive, career-spanning and comprehensive, The Essential 3.0 series features all of the must-have selections from the biggest names in music history—now with a 3rd disc!

* Now available for the first time in eco-friendly cardboard packaging.

* Limited Edition 3.0 disc features "I Got Stripes" and "Understand Your Man."

Limited Edition 3.0 titles in stores August 26, 2008 and available for purchase from Amazon!

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News!!!

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..> ..> ..> ..>..>..> Johnny Cash  TV Show DVD From the summer of 1969 to the final  show in March of 1971 (58 episode in all), The Johnny Cash TV Show not  only exposed an American audience to an eclectic array of musical talent, but  also helped establish Johnny Cash as a true artist, humanitarian and a  larger-than-life legend. The 66 performances contained on this new Best-Of DVD  showcase the spectrum of incredible performances that Johnny hand-picked to be  on his show, many for their first network appearance. Hosted by Kris Kristofferson, the Deluxe DVD also includes includes new  interviews with John Carter Cash, Marshall Grant, Hank Williams Jr., musical  arranger Bill Walker and hairstylist Penny Lane. Features Perfomances by James  Taylor, Derek and the Dominos, Merle Haggard, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and more!  Johnny Cash  @ legacyrecordings.com Johnny Cash  Radio Each week Johhny Cash.com brings you a brand new Johnny Cash Radio program  featuring interviews with Johnny's family, friends, colleagues and associates.  In addition, you'll hear rare Cash interviews, great music and even a few songs  available nowhere else. Go to JohnnyCash.com  and tune in today! Fall  T-Shirts at JohnnyCash.com Our friends at JohnnyCash.com  have new, incredible designs formen, women and children. Whether shopping for  yourself, a gift for a friend or loved one or early Christmas shopping, you'll  find the widest selection in JohnnyCash.com's  Shop!

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God's Gonna Cut You Down nominated for CMT Award

"God's Gonna Cut You Down" is nominated for the CMT Music Awards Wide Open Country Video of the Year!! This is a fan-voted award so let your voice be heard and help Johnny win!!

Vote Now!

Click here to see other nominated artists.

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Rick Rubin Nominated for a Grammy!

Rick Rubin has been nominated for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical at the 49th Annual Grammy Awards for his work on Johnny Cash's album American V: A Hundred Highways and the song "God's Gonna Cut You Down". He is also nominated in the same category for his work on albums from Neil Diamond, The Dixie Chicks, and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Click here to see other nominees.

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Johnny Cash's "Boy Named Sue" Video Now Available On iTunes!

Johnny Cash's live video performance of "Boy Named Sue" is now available on iTunes.

7:54 AM - 7 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

Johnny Cash, "A Boy Named Sue Video" Now Available To Watch!

Check out the video of Johnny Cash performing "A Boy Named Sue" for the first time ever, live at San Quentin Prison in 1969!  What began as a recital of Shel Silverstein's poem, evolved into the debut of the classic Johnny Cash tune.  See the footage that's included in the CD/DVD remastered and re-issed, Johnny Cash At San Quentin (Legacy Edition).  See below for yourself!

Play Johnny Cash's   "A Boy Named Sue" from the DVD included with Johnny Cash's "At San Quentin (Legacy   Edition)."

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Check Out the Johnny Cash EPK!

Click Here to check out the Johnny Cash EPK. Windows Media Player is required.

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Watch "God's Gonna Cut You Down"
Category: Music

You can now watch the video "God's Gonna Cut You Down" at MTV.com!!

Johnny Cash "God's Gonna Cut You Down"

The following people appear in the video:

Iggy Pop

Kanye West

Chris Martin

Kris Kristofferson

Patty Smith

Terrence Howard

Flea

Q-Tip

Adam Levine (Maroon 5)

Chris Rock

Justin Timberlake

Kate Moss

Sir Peter Blake

Sheryl Crow

Dennis Hopper

Woody Harrelson

Amy Lee (Evanescence)

Tommy Lee

Dixie Chicks

Mick Jones

Sharon Stone

Bono

Shelby Lynne

Anthony Kiedis

Travis Barker

Lisa Marie Presley

Kid Rock

Jay Z

Keith Richards

Billy Gibbons

Corinne Bailey Rae

Johnny Depp

Graham Nash

Brian Wilson

Rick Rubin

Owen Wilson

Currently listening : American V: A Hundred Highways By Johnny Cash Release date: 04 July, 2006

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