Folsom State Prison

On January 13, 1968, Johnny Cash walked onto the stage at Folsom State Prison in Represa, California, and opened with 'Folsom Prison Blues' — the song he had written sixteen years earlier as a twenty-year-old Air Force serviceman in Germany, imagining himself as a man who had shot someone in Reno just to watch him die. The recording of that performance, released as At Folsom Prison in May 1968, became one of the best-selling albums of his career and one of the most important live recordings in American music history.

Cash had actually first performed at Folsom in 1966, and had long believed in the value of playing for prison audiences — men who, he felt, understood the darkness in his music in a way that regular concert audiences could not. The 1968 recording, made by Columbia producer Bob Johnston with a minimal setup in the prison dining hall, captured something that studio recordings could not: the sound of two thousand inmates responding to a performer who was singing directly to their experience. The famous line 'I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die' drew one of the most visceral audience reactions in recorded music.

At Folsom Prison rescued Cash's commercial standing at a moment when it had been fading and defined the Man in Black persona that would sustain him for the rest of his career. Folsom State Prison, opened in 1880, is one of California's oldest penitentiaries. It is an operational prison and not open to the public, but the dining hall where Cash performed is preserved and visible to those on authorised visits. The album's success led directly to the 1969 recording at San Quentin.