Post by erik on Feb 17, 2024 19:57:35 GMT -5
This week's Pop Music Albums Spotlight looks at a hugely successful live album made in 1969 by one of the titans of American music (country music especially), the Man In Black, Johnny Cash.
AT SAN QUENTIN (Johnny Cash; CBS; 1969)
Throughout his entire career, Johnny Cash represented the genre of country music like few others before him in that genre, and really like nobody since. Having started his career in 1955 with the legendary Sam Phillips’ Sun label in Memphis, the very one that launched Elvis Presley that same year, Cash, with his chugging “freight train” sound, established a template for a form of country music that appealed to pop and rock audiences who, especially in the late 1960’s, would otherwise have been repelled by the country genre’s right-wing political and social attitudes. Songs like “I Walk The Line”, “Folsom Prison Blues”, “Ring Of Fire”, “Understand Your Man”, and many others made him a legend in his own time, though maybe to his detriment in many ways (like Elvis, Johnny had an addiction to prescription drugs that wrecked his marriage to Vivian Liberto, a marriage that resulted in the birth of his daughter Rosanne, who achieved significant country and pop success beginning in 1981).
One of the signature things that J.C. did during the 1960’s was do benefit concerts inside some of the roughest prisons in America. His famous 1968 live album At Folsom Prison found considerable favor with country and pop music fans of the time, resulting in a big live hit recording of “Folsom Prison Blues”. Though hugely patriotic in his own way, Cash was also known for having great sympathy for those who found themselves in prison because of unfortunate circumstances, and he often railed against America’s prison system.
Then in early 1969, he made a second prison album, At San Quentin, the infamous California state prison where he had performed in 1960, and where future country music superstar (but then jailbird) Merle Haggard was in the audience. This album turned out to be arguably the biggest-selling album of his illustrious career, partly because, besides his country and pop crossover successes in music, he also had a top-rated TV variety show he did from the stage of Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, a show that introduced the otherwise insular country audience to counterculture favorites like Bob Dylan and Linda Ronstadt. Cash was also a champion of cult songwriters, especially Shel Silverstein, who was known in his spare time as a writer of children’s literature, but who also wrote some fairly colorful and, at times, morbid songs. One of Silverstein’s compositions, “A Boy Named Sue”, made it onto this particular album; and it became Cash’s biggest pop crossover, just missing #1 on the Hot 100 in August and September 1969, while hitting #1 on the country chart for five weeks. At San Quentin also enjoyed a five-week reign at #1 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart, and a mind-busting 20-week stay at #1 on that same publication’s Country Album Chart.
Cash, though he would continue to have his personal issues even after having married June Carter in 1968, remained a favorite of both country and rock audiences well into the 1970’s; and during the 1990’s, he was even rediscovered, via sparse recordings produced by Rick Rubin, as an Americana icon. In 1980, at the age of 48, he was incredibly enough the youngest person to date to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame; and in 1992, he was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The man known as “The Man In Black” passed away on September 12, 2003 at the (surprisingly young) age of 71.
AT SAN QUENTIN (Johnny Cash; CBS; 1969)
Throughout his entire career, Johnny Cash represented the genre of country music like few others before him in that genre, and really like nobody since. Having started his career in 1955 with the legendary Sam Phillips’ Sun label in Memphis, the very one that launched Elvis Presley that same year, Cash, with his chugging “freight train” sound, established a template for a form of country music that appealed to pop and rock audiences who, especially in the late 1960’s, would otherwise have been repelled by the country genre’s right-wing political and social attitudes. Songs like “I Walk The Line”, “Folsom Prison Blues”, “Ring Of Fire”, “Understand Your Man”, and many others made him a legend in his own time, though maybe to his detriment in many ways (like Elvis, Johnny had an addiction to prescription drugs that wrecked his marriage to Vivian Liberto, a marriage that resulted in the birth of his daughter Rosanne, who achieved significant country and pop success beginning in 1981).
One of the signature things that J.C. did during the 1960’s was do benefit concerts inside some of the roughest prisons in America. His famous 1968 live album At Folsom Prison found considerable favor with country and pop music fans of the time, resulting in a big live hit recording of “Folsom Prison Blues”. Though hugely patriotic in his own way, Cash was also known for having great sympathy for those who found themselves in prison because of unfortunate circumstances, and he often railed against America’s prison system.
Then in early 1969, he made a second prison album, At San Quentin, the infamous California state prison where he had performed in 1960, and where future country music superstar (but then jailbird) Merle Haggard was in the audience. This album turned out to be arguably the biggest-selling album of his illustrious career, partly because, besides his country and pop crossover successes in music, he also had a top-rated TV variety show he did from the stage of Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, a show that introduced the otherwise insular country audience to counterculture favorites like Bob Dylan and Linda Ronstadt. Cash was also a champion of cult songwriters, especially Shel Silverstein, who was known in his spare time as a writer of children’s literature, but who also wrote some fairly colorful and, at times, morbid songs. One of Silverstein’s compositions, “A Boy Named Sue”, made it onto this particular album; and it became Cash’s biggest pop crossover, just missing #1 on the Hot 100 in August and September 1969, while hitting #1 on the country chart for five weeks. At San Quentin also enjoyed a five-week reign at #1 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart, and a mind-busting 20-week stay at #1 on that same publication’s Country Album Chart.
Cash, though he would continue to have his personal issues even after having married June Carter in 1968, remained a favorite of both country and rock audiences well into the 1970’s; and during the 1990’s, he was even rediscovered, via sparse recordings produced by Rick Rubin, as an Americana icon. In 1980, at the age of 48, he was incredibly enough the youngest person to date to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame; and in 1992, he was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The man known as “The Man In Black” passed away on September 12, 2003 at the (surprisingly young) age of 71.