The beginning of the disc one is new material as Los Angles radio DJ Hugh Cherry handles announcements. Then the supporting acts perform: Carl Perkins with his classic “Blue Suede Shoes” followed by The Statler Brothers “The Ole House.”
Backed by arguably the best backing trio ever in country music, the Tennessee Three, Cash opens, as the original album did, with “Folsom Prison Blues.” He then wisely chooses many other songs his audience will identify with from the two previously mentioned to “Joe Bean” who is going to be hanged for a crime he didn’t commit. Cash closes the set with Glen Sherley’s “Greystone Chapel.” Sherley was a Folsom inmate at the time and wrote about the prison’s church.
Yet, the set is not all prison songs. Although Merle Travis’ “Dark As A Dungeon” is about a coal mine, the audience can identify with the lyrics “Where danger is double and pleasures are few/ Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines.” Also, two funny love songs by Cowboy Jack Clement, “Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog” and “Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart,” have a serious subtext about affairs of the heart.
About half the unissued material is Cash alone with his guitar singing somber songs. “The Long Black Veil” is what a man’s wife wears because he went to jail and was hung rather than give his alibi “I’d been in the arms/ of my best friend’s wife.” In “Send A Picture of Mother” a man requests upon his brother’s release not to mention that his escape attempt will forever keep him in jail. “The Wall” is about a man who commits suicide trying to escape jail. While there was no doubt many a tough and hardened man in the audience, it’s hard to believe all eyes were dry after these songs.
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