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Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece by Michael Streissguth

2022; Music Library Association; Volume: 79; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/not.2022.0111

1534-150X

Shelley L. Rogers,

Music History and Culture

Reviewed by: Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece by Michael Streissguth Shelley L. Rogers Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece. Revised and updated. By Michael Streissguth. (American Made Music Series.) Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2019. [xii, 160 p. ISBN 9781496823687 (hardback), $99; ISBN 9781496824905 (paperback), $25; ISBN 9781496824943 (e-book), price varies.] Illustrations, footnotes, bibliography, index. [End Page 252] Michael Streissguth is a noted music journalist and scholar on country music, particularly with regard to Johnny Cash. The first edition of the work under review was published in 2004 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Da Capo Press, which was later also responsible for Streissguth’s 2007 biography of Cash (Johnny Cash: The Biography) and a 2009 collection of essays on Cash (Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader), a work for which Streissguth was author and editor. Streissguth has also written and produced three documentary films, one of which is Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (directed by Bestor Cram [Northern Light Productions, 2008]) and clearly follows on the heels of the successful 2004 book. Indeed, Streissguth is also the founding chair of the Communication and Film Studies Department at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. The first edition of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison was received with critical acclaim in publications such as Booklist, Publisher’s Weekly, American Songwriter, and the Boston Globe. The book focused on Johnny Cash’s performances on 13 January 1968 at Folsom Prison in Represa, California (near Folsom). Cash gave two concerts that day to the enthusiastic appreciation of the prisoners: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Neither performance was filmed, but they were both recorded and photographed at the direction of Columbia Records for an upcoming album. The morning performance was deemed the superior show and formed the basis for the iconic album by Cash, At Folsom Prison, released by Columbia only a few months later, in May 1968. This was Cash’s first live album. It was received with unanimous approval by fans and critics alike, and it has gone down in history as one of the best live albums of all time. “His album created a visceral social statement for the ages,” Streissguth summarized, “one like no other uttered in the 1960s” (1st ed., 152; rev. ed., 119). Streissguth is not a stodgy writer; his prose is eloquent and engaging in telling the story of Johnny Cash, his band-mates, and June Carter on that January day. In the first chapter, Streissguth provides enough biographical background to help us place Cash in context for those performances. In the second chapter, Streissguth focuses on Folsom Prison’s history and inmates. The lengthy third chapter is the meat of the book, where Streissguth discusses Cash’s career up to that point and the concerts at Folsom. Although photographs appear throughout the book, the third chapter is especially replete with them. In the fourth chapter, we learn details of the album’s release and reception. In the final and fifth chapter, Streissguth discusses Cash’s legacy and the album’s place in history. Throughout the book, side-bar stories are artfully presented to illuminate special aspects, like his band-mates in “The Tennessee Two” (1st ed., 24; rev. ed., 12–13) and the song “Folsom Prison Blues” (1st ed., 92; rev. ed., 78–79). One might ask at this point, What is different in this revised and updated edition? The answer, in a nutshell, is: not much. The introduction was not changed to tell us what is new, nor was a preface added with that information. There are just enough differences for the University Press of Mississippi to get away with calling it “revised and updated.” This 2019 edition, coming along fifteen years after the first edition, might have produced an expanded version of the final chapter: Has public perception changed much since Cash’s death in 2003? Is his legacy regarded any differently? Has more scholarship about the Folsom Prison concerts been produced? What evidence do we have of Cash’s continuing influence? Streissguth does not address [End Page 253] such questions. The revised edition is organized into the same five chapters...