PSYCHO'S RECORD PILE
Johnny Cash- Johnny Cash At San Quentin (Original LP Release) (1969)

My folks had mostly comedy records when I was a lil’ tyke, and tended to ignore music in general, save for the occasional oldies station blaring on the transistor in the kitchen. My Mom maintained something (sort of) resembling a family record collection. (Dad thought that buying records was “foolish”, like a lot of other things- long story, and not the time or place for telling it now.)

What few musical releases were on hand comprised of folks like Sammy Davis Jr. and Peggy Lee, and myriad collections of Christmas classics, with the occasional contemporary country offering such as Lynn Anderson’s “Rose Garden” and “Roger Miller’s Greatest Hits”.

And “Johnny Cash At San Quentin”. Some kids would be embarrassed to admit that they played the shit out of even just one of their parents’ records, but this was one that I nearly wore out, and lo and behold, the LP I grew up listening to is this season’s sound du jour, thanks to the recent release of the (entertaining, but mostly inaccurate and bullshit filled) motion picture “Walk The Line”.

As a naïve, impressionable kid, I loved every fuckin’ thing about this record: among other things, there's the stripped down chugga-chug of the band, driven by Carl Perkins’ smooth guitar runs (trademarked by Luther Perkins, who had died about seven months previous to this concert), Cash’s relentless shit talking, verbally clawing in on the prison authorities’ skin (sometimes good naturedly and mostly not), and a few barreling renditions of Cash classics like “I Walk The Line” and “Folsom Prison Blues” performed with a tempo that must have been laid down and never restored from Cash’s pep pill days. Even the relatively dorky numbers, like the gospel tunes and the duet with June Carter Cash on John Sebastian’s “Darling Companion”, are performed with such a level of sincerity and vivacity that even the most arrogant purveyors of cool will kick their own asses in self-loathing at the admission that they may have actually enjoyed what they heard.

The (British) Granada TV special that this album is forged from is a fine time capsule of interviews with San Quentin inmates and an interesting perspective of the era’s Death Row atmosphere. Unfortunately, the documentary does no justice to Cash’s performance as it chops the actual concert into terse particles and we only get mostly halfed-or-worse segments of practically all of the songs that made the final cut. A more accurate title for the TV special may have been “Life In San Quentin (with special guest Johnny Cash).”

Nah, if you want to feel the true atmosphere of the actual show that went down between those walls and guard towers, you will have to listen to this record from start to finish. And even though the first vinyl release is changed around (with the set list “corrected” and extended on the later CD re- issue,) it may be worth it to hit the nearest used record store and pick up the original article. Shit, the original LP was at Number One for 20 straight weeks, so in any big city it couldn’t be THAT hard to scare up a copy.