“Folsom Prison Blues (Live)” by Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash wrote "Folsom Prison Blues" in 1953, working from material by Gordon Jenkins, and first put it out as a single in 1955; it later turned up on his debut album, Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar!. It welds together two folk staples, the train song and the prison song, and it became one of his signature tunes.

This is the live one, and the audience is the whole point. In 1968 Cash played it for the inmates of California's Folsom State Prison, recording the show for his Columbia album At Folsom Prison, and that performance went to number one on the country charts and 32 on the Billboard Hot 100 the same year. It also won him the Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance, Male, in 1969.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.