Johnny Cash: The Life (36 page)

Well, not really.

Cash was getting more rest and healthier meals, thanks to June’s and Maybelle’s cooking, than he had in ages, and his pattern of recovery continued throughout the month. The gaunt addict look went away. Cash gained at least thirty pounds. A thrilled Marshall Grant proclaimed, “Old John is back.”

Cash ended the year with a brief California tour that included a November 28 stop at the 6,300-seat Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. He looked great with the extra weight, and his voice sounded stronger than it had in ages. Carl Perkins was so inspired by what he saw in his friend that he walked onto the beach north of L.A. the day after the Shrine show and threw a bottle of bourbon into the ocean. He made a pledge to God that he would never take another drink.

As the musicians headed home for Christmas shows, everyone hoped for the best, but Grant knew the moment of truth was at hand when he learned on December 22 that the divorce from Vivian had become final. Even though John had signed off on it, Grant feared the worst—and sure enough he heard from June that Cash, deeply depressed, was off to Chattanooga, where he again turned to drugs, telling a musician friend, “This is the worst day of my life.”

Folsom was just twenty-two days away.

AS FAR BACK AS HIS
Air Force days, Cash had paused each New Year’s Eve to go over the highs and lows of the year and to set a few goals. He would eventually commit those thoughts to paper, but he was still keeping them in his head in 1967—and he was badly shaken by the way things had been going. Even when his personal life was hopelessly messed up, he had usually been proud of his music. No longer. He realized that he hadn’t felt good about an album since the
True West
package.
Everybody Loves a Nut
was fun, but a side step.
Carryin’ On
was lazy, and with
Shining Sea
he had mostly just gone through the motions.

With the Folsom date nearing, he asked himself if he could regain the discipline and drive. Even the question frightened him. As he put it much later, “If I couldn’t pull myself together for an album I had been wanting to make for years, I didn’t know if I could ever find my way again.”

Cash credited Bob Johnston with helping him overcome his fears.

“Bob kept telling me I was an artist,” Cash told me. “He would sit me down and say, ‘Cash, you and Bob Dylan are different. You’re “fuckin’ artists.” You don’t just make records. You make records that mean something to you and the people who hear them.’ I liked the sound of the word ‘artist,’ and he helped me understand I needed to put everything I had into the Folsom album.”

Typically, concert albums in the 1960s were stocking stuffers to a large extent, just another way of packaging a singer’s greatest hits. But Cash and Johnston had no interest in anything so conventional. Johnston wanted to capture Cash’s dynamics in a way that hadn’t been done since the Sun days. Cash wanted to reestablish his creative passion.

In the early days of January 1968, Cash was searching for songs that would speak to the men in Folsom, the maximum-security prison near Sacramento. Because the date was so close, he had to rely on songs he knew or had already recorded rather than search for tunes the way he had for his earlier concept albums.

During the process, Cash once again demonstrated his ability to immerse himself in his subject matter, a sensitivity so strong he could virtually take on the personality of the people he was singing about. When recording
Ride This Train,
he’d transformed the hard work and determination he saw in the people in Dyess into a series of songs which reflected that same spirit in the country at large. In
Bitter Tears,
he related to the underdog plight of Native Americans. But he had never empathized with his themes as completely as he would at Folsom.

Cash knew what it was like to be in jail, to stand before his loved ones in handcuffs, and to walk through the seedy parts of town in search of drugs. He knew the deep pain of breaking his mother’s heart and the numbing ache of facing a future without hope. He identified with the lingering anti-authority rage of someone who felt he had been treated unfairly by the legal system. He believed he had been set up in El Paso—targeted because of his fame—and he’d felt helpless against the courts during the divorce proceedings.

Marshall Grant realized Cash was serious about the album when he arranged for everyone, including the Tennessee Three and the Statler Brothers, to arrive in Sacramento a day early so they could rehearse in a banquet room at the El Rancho motel. “It made a big impression on us all because John usually had no patience for rehearsals,” Grant said.

As it happened, Governor Ronald Reagan was holding a $500-a-plate fund-raising dinner at the motel, and many of the guests peered into the La Fiesta Room to see what all the noise was about. When Reagan himself stopped by to say hello, Cash took advantage of the moment to introduce his father. He was still trying to show Ray that he had amounted to something.

When Grant saw the set list Cash had put together, he was surprised not to find a lot of hits. He couldn’t imagine John not doing “I Walk the Line”—which he had performed at every show since 1956—or “Ring of Fire.” The bassist was even more surprised when Cash pulled out a tape, given to him a few hours earlier by Reverend Gressett, and played a song called “Greystone Chapel,” a spiritual about God’s mercy in reaching out to even the forsaken sinners in Folsom. Cash was especially intrigued because it was written by a Folsom inmate, Glen Sherley.

“I’m gonna sing this tomorrow,” Cash announced to the group. “Let’s go through it.” Turning to Gressett, he added that he’d like to meet the writer.

Though the rehearsal lasted until nearly midnight, Cash was up by six the next morning and back in the banquet room, going over the lyrics to a couple of songs, including “Greystone Chapel.” He was taken not just with the song but with the idea that an inmate had turned his trials into something so uplifting.

When Cash arrived at Folsom that morning, the prison looked as still as a cemetery. Its massive stone walls appeared capable of preventing any sound from escaping to the outside world. “Coach” Lloyd Kelley, the superintendent of recreation, ushered Cash and his touring party—all dressed in stylish black suits—through a series of gates into a large courtyard, where long lines of inmates, dressed in their blue denim shirts and pants, were waiting. Several nodded or waved as Cash headed to a temporary dressing room. On the way, he peeked into the cafeteria where the show would be held. The room looked like an aircraft hangar, with its slanted ceiling and concrete floor. Instead of long dining tables commonly shown in prison films, prisoners sat at tables for four secured to the floor. A banner across the front of the stage read
“Welcome Johnny Cash.”
The first of two concerts—which would begin at 9:40 a.m.—was still two hours away.

In the dressing area, Kelley thoughtfully warned Cash not to worry that the prisoners weren’t enjoying the show if they didn’t stand up or rush the stage. Conditions at Folsom were tense because some inmates had held a guard at knifepoint just two weeks before, and the convicts had been told that the concert would be stopped if anyone left his seat. Guards with shotguns would watch the concert from an overhead ramp.

Just before showtime, Cash huddled with Johnston and with his DJ friend Hugh Cherry, who was going to emcee the concert, about how to introduce Cash. Cherry assumed he’d give John a big welcome, but Johnston vetoed that idea. He told Cash just to walk out onstage and introduce himself to kick things off on a more personal level.

As Carl Perkins warmed up the audience a few minutes later with “Blue Suede Shoes,” Cash stood against one of the cafeteria walls, where he could watch Perkins while getting a feel for the crowd’s mood.

“I knew this was it, my chance to make up for all the times when I had messed up,” he told me later. “I kept hoping my voice wouldn’t give out again. Then I suddenly felt calm. I could see the men looking over at me. There was something in their eyes that made me realize everything was going to be okay. I felt I had something they needed.”

Cash’s sense of well-being wasn’t entirely spontaneous—it was also chemically induced.

As he waited onstage for Cash, Marshall Grant was apprehensive because he knew that amid the pressure, John had again turned to drugs before leaving the El Rancho. He could see it in the distant look in Cash’s eyes. It wasn’t as bad as on his worst days, but it was troubling.

Johnston saw it too as they drove to the prison together.

“Just as we turned off the highway,” he recalls, “we passed this sign that said something to the effect of all visitors being subject to searches, and I looked over and John was frantically going through his pockets, so I knew he had been carrying some [pills]. When I later asked him, he said, ‘I took more pills that morning than I ever had in my life.’ He was scared.”

“Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.”

The roar was chilling as Cash uttered the opening line that would become a concert trademark.

Instantly, Perkins and the Tennessee Three began to play “Folsom Prison Blues,” and many in the audience moved their lips as they sang along silently. Several howls and shouts saluted the song’s most dramatic line:
I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.

In this setting, the changes Cash had made years before to Gordon Jenkins’s lyrics were especially striking. Members of the audience nodded when he sang about how time keeps
dragging on and about the torture of being stuck in prison while that train keeps moving down the line.

Sensing the crowd’s enthusiasm, Cash threw himself into the performance. Grant would describe what followed as Cash’s most captivating performance to date. He put such intensity into his vocals that his voice became strained at times, but the atmosphere was electric as Cash prowled the stage between verses with the pent-up tension of a caged panther.

In a bold bit of sequencing, he moved from one of his best-known numbers to two tales of blue-collar struggle that hadn’t been hits for him: Harlan Howard’s “Busted” and Merle Travis’s “Dark as a Dungeon.” The audience knew “Busted” from the Ray Charles hit, but Cash’s stripped-down treatment felt truer to the desperation of a man struggling to put food on his family’s table. He followed with a lovely, intimate treatment of “I Still Miss Someone,” the ballad that was such a favorite of his that it would be appearing on one of his albums for the fourth time.

After showing his tender side, Cash injected the show with the raw, rowdy humor that he figured the prisoners must employ themselves to combat the hard prison life; he had certainly turned to it a lot in his own dark times. Besides, he knew the men wanted to be entertained as well as touched by somber themes. Cash had included “Cocaine Blues” on
Now, There Was a Song!
but in a sanitized version that carried the title “Transfusion Blues,” because the record company warned that DJs wouldn’t play any song with “cocaine” in it. This time Cash didn’t hold anything back in the story about a man who shot his unfaithful woman dead while under the influence of whiskey and cocaine.

Every Cash fan in the crowd knew about the El Paso arrest, and most assumed he had written “Cocaine Blues,” because of the references to “takin’ the pill,” running into trouble in Juárez, and being sentenced to the Folsom pen. Yet the original song—written in the 1940s by T. J. “Red” Arnall—also contained references to both “the pill” and Juárez. Cash changed only the prison locale, but not by much; Arnall had used nearby San Quentin. To add to the song’s hard-boiled tone, Cash altered a line about shooting a woman down to shooting “that bad bitch down.”

It was that “bitch” line, which Cash delivered with particular relish, that signaled to the inmates that Cash was as unruly and crazy as they were—and they whooped and hollered. He pushed things even further with the gallows humor of “25 Minutes to Go,” and the response again was roaring. Next came a ballad titled “I’m Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail.” Written in the 1930s, the tune appealed to Cash because of a narrative twist: the “baby” of the title referred not to a girlfriend or wife but to a son who had gone astray. He forgot some of the song’s words near the end and turned to “Orange Blossom Special” to regain his momentum.

To establish a more personal mood, Cash let the band leave the stage while he sat on a stool and sang three ballads, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar—“Long Black Veil,” “Send a Picture of Mother,” and “The Wall.” Then he returned to what he called the “entertainment portion” of the show: “Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog,” “Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart,” and “Joe Bean.”

June then joined him, bringing an immediate touch of sexual tension to the show. Despite her modest black dress that came down to the top of her knees, the prisoners let loose some catcalls. They sang “I Got a Woman,” which was followed by “The Legend of John Henry.” In one of the show’s few miscues, June then tried to lighten the mood again by reading one of the comedy bits that worked well on the country circuit, but it was a waste of time.

Cash tried to rebound with “Green, Green Grass of Home,” the most popular prison song in country music in the 1960s, but his version was curiously timid, possibly because he was thinking ahead to the morning’s wild card, “Greystone Chapel.”

“This next song was written by a man right here in Folsom Prison, and last night was the first time I’ve ever sung this song,” Cash told the crowd. “We may be a little rough on it today. We’ll definitely do it again on our next show…because…it may be released as a single. I’m not sure. Anyway, this song was written by our friend Glen Sherley.”

As the convicts whooped it up, Cash looked down at Sherley, who had been given a seat in the front row of tables.

“Hope we do your song justice, Glen.”

As he expected, the crowd was delighted to hear a song written by one of their own. The moment took Cash back to his Baptist roots, when he first heard about the saving grace of God. When he finished, Cash reached down and shook Sherley’s hand, then headed backstage. Johnston was already mapping out the second show, which they had scheduled in case anything went wrong during the first one. The program had run long, Johnston explained, so there was no need to do everything again. Cash decided to drop a few songs, but he said he’d also like to try a couple of new ones. They were still talking when Reverend Gressett interrupted them. He wanted to introduce Glen Sherley.

Cash shook Sherley’s hand again and the pair chatted for several minutes. Cash wanted to know about the man’s background. Why was he in Folsom? (Armed robbery.) Had he written a lot of songs? (Hundreds.) How long was his sentence? (Five years to life.) Cash promised to keep in touch.

At the second show, Cash dropped a few numbers, as planned, while adding “Give My Love to Rose,” “I Got Stripes,” and “Long-Legged Guitar Picking Man.” The performance ran smoothly, and everyone was in high spirits as they all left the grounds. Cash was still fixated on Sherley. He told Gressett that he’d like to help get the inmate paroled.

Not everyone, however, had fallen for Sherley. Hugh Cherry and Marshall Grant both sensed he was a hustler who had found the perfect mark. “John always tried to see the best in people, especially an underdog,” Grant said. “Hustlers could pick up on that miles away and they would always hit on John, and he’d fall for it every time.” Al Qualls, a Florida banker and friend, once told Cash he had a speech defect: “You can’t say, ‘no.’”