Folsom Prison Blues
Folsom Prison Blues is a country song by Johnny Cash, the recorded this on July 30, 1955, the Tennessee Two and So Doggone Lonesome published with the B-side at Sun Records, under the production of Sam Phillips on 15 December of the same year. The single reached the fourth place in the country charts.
History
Cash wrote the song while serving in the U.S. Air Force in Landsberg am Lech, after seeing the movie Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison in 1951. The majority of the text took cash literally the piece Crescent City Blues by Gordon Jenkins in 1953, was for suing for plagiarism after he recorded the song for his live album At Folsom Prison again, and made a compensation payment of $ 75,000 Jenkins.
Cash's new performance at the Folsom State Prison reached number one on the country charts, and in 1969 he received the Grammy Award for the song in the category of Best Male Vocal Performance - Country.
Action
The song combines two well-known motifs of classic folk and country music, namely trains and convicts. The nameless protagonist tells that he life sentence incarcerated in Folsom State Prison in California, because he has a man killed in Reno, just dying to see him, even though his mother always told him that he will always be a good boy and never with should play weapons.
He imagines what it would be to take the train, he hears from afar to freedom. He also says that it mentally tortures him when he thinks about that rich people drinking coffee and smoking cigars were sitting in the first class compartment. The narrator hates to sit in prison, but he knows that he belongs there.
Recordings and musicians involved
The original version, which started cash for Sun -Times, was with Luther Perkins on lead guitar, Marshall Grant on bass and himself occupied him on rhythm guitar.
The second recording for his live album At Folsom Prison was busy as well, but now was also WS Holland on drums and Carl Perkins as second guitarist here.
In the third recording for the subsequent album At San Quentin, the late Luther Perkins was replaced by Bob Wootton.
The film Walk the Line
For the biopic Walk the Line Joaquin Phoenix Actor cash recorded the song. On the same soundtrack but can be heard than the one used in the film another version.