Johnny Cash – At Folsom Prison / Johnny Cash & Carl Perkins – I Walk The Line / Little Fauss And Big Halsy
Grant Alden
Posted On November 1, 1999
Johnny Cash didn’t shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die, and though he spent a few nights in jail, he never went to prison. Except for January 13, 1968, to record At Folsom Prison and, in February 1969, At San Quentin (the latter producing his only top-10 pop hit, Shel Silverstein’s “A Boy Named Sue”).
Since 1975, Cash’s two prison performances have been available as a double LP or CD, but in a pre-millennial rush to groom to its classic catalog, Columbia has buffed up Folsom Prison, adding three tracks (“Busted”, “Joe Bean”, “The Legend Of John Henry’s Hammer”) and a note from Steve Earle.
Joining Folsom Prison in the first batch of the new American Milestones series are expanded versions of Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man (reissued just two years ago by Koch), Merle Haggard’s Big City, Marty Robbins’ Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs, and Willie Nelson’s Stardust.
The prison population has changed some in the last 30 years, and it’s hard to imagine how Cash’s set list, composed of about every prison song he could come up with, would go over today (say, “25 Minutes To Go”?), much less be allowed. But in the late 1960s, the Man in Black could do little wrong, at least in public.
Don’t misunderstand: This was anything but an insensitive performance, and it remains a classic. Even Cash’s brusque introduction, “Hi, I’m Johnny Cash,” comes off tenderly, and his sympathies are clearly (and profanely) with the inmates, not the guards. Because he did so obviously play to the crowd, studio versions of these songs will be vocally more precise (especially “Long Black Veil”), but little could match the emotion of this hour. And it’s the rowdiest duet with June Carter of “Jackson” I’ve heard.
A year later, in 1970, Cash recorded soundtrack albums for two ill-fated films. He recut his 1956 hit “I Walk The Line” for John Frankenheimer’s film of the same name, but somehow Gregory Peck was cast as a rural Tennessee sheriff and nobody much believed that. Then again, nobody really bought Robert Redford as a renegade dirt track motorcycle racer in Little Fauss And Big Halsy, so we’re left with two pretty fair soundtracks to pretty awful movies.
Carl Perkins’ name on the album cover is slightly deceptive; he plays guitar on Little Fauss and wrote several of the songs (including the title number), but sings only on an alternate version of “True Love Is Greater Than Friendship”.
Neither soundtrack is a landmark achievement, but both have their moments. Cash’s recitation of “The World’s Gonna Fall On You” is just plain weird (and begs to be sampled), while the song cycle (re)constructed for I Walk The Line deserved a better film.
