I hear the train a comin’
It’s rolling round the bend
And I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when,
I’m stuck in Folsom prison, and time keeps draggin’ on
Great version of this Johnny Cash classic.
I love to go to the studio and stay there 10 or 12 hours a day. I love it. What is it? I don’t know. It’s life.
~Johnny Cash
You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.
~Johnny Cash
Lyle Lovett Inducts Johnny Cash into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
I Walk The Line – 1956:
“Hello, I’m Johnny Cash”
“Folsom Prison looms large in Johnny Cash’s legacy, providing the setting for perhaps his definitive song and the location for his definitive album, At Folsom Prison. The ideal blend of mythmaking and gritty reality, At Folsom Prison is the moment when Cash turned into the towering Man in Black, a haunted troubadour singing songs of crime, conflicted conscience, and jail.”
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine (allmusic.com)
One of the best live albums in recording history was taped on this date in 1968, hell, it’s one of the best albums period. Today it is it’s 46 year anniversary.
| Released | May 1968 October 19, 1999 (re-release) October 14, 2008 (Legacy Edition) |
|---|---|
| Recorded | Live at Folsom State Prison, January 13, 1968 |
| Genre | Country |
| Length | 55:56 (re-release) |
| Label | Columbia |
| Producer | Bob Johnston (original) Bob Irwin (re-release) |
Continue reading Jan 13: Johnny Cash recorded “At Folsom Prison” in 1968
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Sam Phillips was not just one of the most important producers in rock history. There’s a good argument to be made that he was also one of the most important figures in 20th century American culture. ~Richie Unterberger (allmusic.com) If you’re not doing something different, you’re not doing anything. |
| Great Sam Phillips documentary in two parts(Host: Billy Bob Thornton): |
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Continue reading Jan 05: The late Sam Phillips was born in 1923
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Well Nashville had country music but Memphis had the soul
Lord, the white boy had the rhythm and that started rock and roll
And I was here when it happened don’t you all think I ought to know
I was here when it happened, yeah, yeah, yeah
I watched Memphis give birth to rock and roll, Lord, lord yeah.
~Carl Perkins (Birth Of Rock And Roll)In the early years, when the King [Elvis Presley] and the Four Horsemen [Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins & Roy Orbison] reigned over American music, Memphis music was the life force of teenage rebellion. It influenced clothing styles, created movie idols, helped end a war in Vietnam, and eventually changed the politics of a nation unaccustomed to listening to the voices of youth. By 1985, three decades after that rebellion had been hatched in the tiny studio of Sam Phillip’s Sun Records, popular music had gone through many cycles, as had the artists who invented it, but seldom had the music, or the artists who created it, ever returned to it’s birthplace.
~James L. Dickerson (Goin’ Back to Memphis: A Century of Blues, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and Glorious Soul)
Johnny Cash (Lewis, Perkins & Orbison) – We Remember The King:
As the swift bird flies o’er the mountains
How we wished, we were there at its wings
No Sir, by far, to a friend, we have lost We remember the King
We remember (we remember the King)
We recall (we recall everything)
We will treasure all of the gifts, that he did bring
We remember the King
Continue reading Class of 55: Memphis Rock & Roll Homecoming