Dad's Take:
You pretty much know what you're going to get from a Johnny Cash album. And this has exactly what you'd expect. We are releasing the 1999 reissue, which contains three more songs than the original release ("Busted," "Joe Bean," and "The Legend of John Henry's Hammer." There's also a 2008 Legacy Edition, which contains both shows Cash played that day, along with a DVD.
My mom had this album on a reel-to-reel tape and I listened to it often as a kid. So it brings back good memories. But you definitely have to like Johnny Cash to listen to this. The one knock on his unique sound is that it doesn't vary that much from song to song. Still, this deserves its classic status as one of the great live albums.
From the opening "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash" that leads into the classic "Folsom Prison Blues," through the rest of the 19 tracks, you get everything you want from the man in black. Whether he's singing standards like "Busted" or "Green Green Grass of Home" or showing his funny side in songs like "Dirty Old Egg-Suckin' Dog" and "Flushed From the Bathroom of Your Heart," Cash provides a set list aimed squarely at the prisoners in the audience. His audience interactions are brilliant and personal. He's not afraid to sing about criminal acts, including drug use and murder, and even suicide by prison guard, topics some performers might shy away from, considering the audience. He sings about justice ("Cocaine Blues") and injustice ("Joe Bean"), and about missing the people back home, as well as the hardships of life behind bars, subjects close to his audience's hearts. And the inmates love it. They go nuts in several places on this record. The result is a live concept album, and it's a good one.
It's a lot of Johnny Cash in one sitting for me, but it makes it clear how he reached legendary status. His career was lagging before he released this record, without a hit for a few years, but it became a sensation and led to a new peak.
I was kind of dreading this one. I generally like my Johnny Cash in smaller doses. But I enjoyed the album more than I expected, and almost as much as I did as a kid. I remember his San Quentin album a little better with its tons of hits, but I like the concept album nature of this one more, I think.
Brad's Take:
I've never been a big Johnny Cash (which probably isn't very surprising, if you've followed our blog at all and realized that I'm not the biggest folk music fan) so, like my dad, I was kind of dreading listening to this too. Hence our two month hiatus.
The album kicks off with Johnny's low voice saying, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash." This is definitely Johnny Cash. He's doing what he does and he's doing it well.
It's fitting for him to be performing these songs at a prison. His lyrics were probably never as relatable in any other setting. For example: "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die" or "I took a shot of cocaine and shot my woman down."
The recording quality of this album is fantastic. It sounds clear and it's mixed very well. Sometimes live albums, especially older ones, are mixed terribly. Maybe this version we're listening to is remixed and remastered though. I'll have to find out. But regardless, I'm impressed with the quality.
In the end, I'm still not a Johnny Cash fan, but this is a fun performance. The overly-responsive crowd, Johnny $'s humor between songs (and sometimes in the middle of songs), etc. make this fun to listen to. But being a double disc album, it feels a little too long to me.
And thank goodness someone got the man a drink of water!
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