The 1968 Album on Which Johnny Cash Became a Legend: At Folsom Prison Among the Most Important and Potent Statements of the 20th Century
Mastered on MoFi’s Mastering System: Mobile Fidelity Numbered-Edition 180g 45RPM 2LP Set Plays with Arresting Immediacy, Spaciousness, and Directness
1/4" / 15 IPS analog copy to DSD 256 to analog console to lathe
Johnny Cash already knew his way around Folsom Prison when he and his band stepped inside the institution’s forbidding walls on the morning of January 13, 1968 to record At Folsom Prison. He’d played there two years prior. But this time was different.
Cash took the stage that day for two shows amid a darkening sociopolitical atmosphere and a raging war in Vietnam, as well as the knowledge his career and health hung on by a thread. The Arkansas native shared many of the long odds and abject failures of the inmates for which he performed. The songs he chose, and the conviction with which he delivered them, say as much. The point at which Cash transformed from a country star into a legendary artist, and a bold statement about the American prison state and its commitment to rehabilitation, the triple-platinum At Folsom Prison remains one the most important, potent, and fabled records of the 20th century.
Mastered on MoFi’s renowned mastering system at its California studio and housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition 180g 45RPM 2LP set of At Folsom Prison veritably places you in the cafeteria with the hootin’ and hollerin’ prisoners with which Cash felt a mutual chemistry, sympathy, and spirit. A through-line to the no-frills rawness that helps make this landmark record among the most genuine documents ever committed to tape, this audiophile reissue presents what transpired that winter day with a fullness, directness, spaciousness, and dynamic absent prior editions.
You can hear it echo off the walls of the room; pulse through the Tennessee Three’s itchy, acoustic-based boom-chick rhythms; crackle in the announcements conveyed over the intercom; ring in the comedy of the off-cuff remarks and pair of novelty tunes; sense it in palpable energy that wells up within Cash and his audience. And you can experience it like never before via Cash’s knockout singing. The bedrock foundation of all his music, the singer’s baritone resonates with profound degrees of depth, pliability, and passion that underscore how much this appearance meant to him — and the extent he was living the narratives.
Indeed, every song on At Folsom Prison serves a purpose and speaks to the conditions — mental, emotional, physical, geographical, legal, social — the inmates confronted on a daily basis. Beginning with the explicit messages of the opening “Folsom Prison Blues,” Cash makes it clear he understands and shares many of their plights. Not for nothing did the myth of Cash having done hard time persist for decades once this record hit the streets. That’s how real it is, and how dedicated Cash remains to conveying every note with the same truth he invests in the impromptu comments he makes between and amid songs.
Tracks
Side 1:
Folsom Prison Blues
Dark as the Dungeon
I Still Miss Someone
Cocaine Blues
Side 2:
25 Minutes to Go
Orange Blossom Special
The Long Black Veil
Side 3:
Send a Picture of Mother
The Wall
Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog
Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart
Jackson – with June Carter
Side 4:
Give My Love to Rose – with June Carter
I Got Stripes
Green, Green Grass of Home
Greystone Chapel
UPC: 196588719011