"Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison" by Johnny Cash (March, 1968)

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!

Memorial Album by Hank Williams (September 1956 UK)

Dad's Take:

I don't care who thinks we're silly
You be daffy and I'll be dilly
We'll order two bowls of chili
Settin' the woods on fire

This album was assembled and released a couple years after Williams died too young in the back seat of a Cadillac. I couldn't find a US release date, other than "1955" (with two more songs), but our book lists a September, 1956 UK release date, so we're going with that release.

I'm not a country music fan, but I like Hank Williams and some of the other old-school country artists. Williams might not have invented western music, but he brought a new emotion and heart to the genre. This is back when there wasn't a lot of difference between country & western and folk. It's American roots music, and it lies at the bottom of nearly everything that came after in rock 'n' roll, whether it's Buddy Holly (and by extension, The Beatles), Bob Dylan, CCR, or the Eagles. Without Hank Williams, today's popular music, whether country, rock, or whatever else, would be a very different place.

This is a fine collection of eight Hank Williams classics. It might have been a mistake to follow "Your Cheatin' Heart" with the nearly identical "You Win Again," to open the album, but other than that, I have no complaints.

Every drawn-out word is a hillbilly cry, every bit as sad as Sinatra was in the wee small hours. Sinatra cried in a city bar, where Williams sat alone by the fire out on the ranch, but both lamented their plight. When Williams is cheerful, as in "Settin' The Woods On Fire," "Hey, Good Lookin'," or "Jambalaya" (which was apparently on the 1955 release but not on the only one we could find, and which is very much missed on this record), the joy fills his voice just like the cries of the sad stuff.

Bottom line for me is, whether you like country music or not, no American popular music education is complete without a good strong dose of Hank Williams. This album is as good a place as any to start.

Brad's Take:


This isn't a style that I usually listen to on my own, but I enjoyed this memorial album. The tempo and guitar style to some of the songs aren't much different than the Chet Atkins album we reviewed before this, but with vocals and a band, it makes it different enough.

If you have this on as background music, you'll think it's all upbeat and cheesy fun country songs, but when you pay attention to the lyrics, you hear that Hank had his ups and downs in relationships:

If you missed me half as much as I miss you
You wouldn't stay away half as much as you do
I know that I would never be this blue
If you only loved me half as much as I love you

Like my dad said, whether you're a fan of country music or not, Hank Williams would definitely have to fit into the curriculum of The History Of American Music. Artists like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash might have never gotten as popular as they did without Hank Williams' success.