REVIEW: Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash at San Quentin (The
Complete 1969 Concert)
- Don Share
It's hard to improve upon perfection, the old saying goes, but Columbia/Legacy have certainly done so here.
Johnny Cash at San Quentin was, with its immediate predecessor, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, perfect proof of Cash's legendary talent, courage, humor, and faith. Cash, who'd seen the inside of a jail himself, had frequently performed for prisoners (one of whom, pardoned by California Governor, Ronald Reagan, would become a star in his own right: Merle Haggard) - talk about your tough audiences! The original album, issued in 1969, was filled with ready-to-snap tension, an air of palpable danger which made the album seem more rock than country. The reissue gives us the whole show, and what a show it was.
Nowadays, if you put Johnny Cash onstage with the likes of June Carter Cash, the Carter Family, Carl Perkins, and the Statler Brothers, you'd have a country Woodstock, a major event. But in '69, these stars put on a show for society's outcasts without hoopla, just the desire to give the badguys a break for an hour, and maybe supply some inspiration, along the way. June Carter Cash's harrowing notes superbly document the terror and conviction it took to accomplish this; but, of course, the music tells it best.
After a string of fine tunes like "Big River," "Wreck of the Old 97," "I Walk the Line," and "Darlin' Companion," Johnny fusses around and someone fetches him the sheet music given him the day before to a song written by an inmate in the crowd. Johnny allows as how since he couldn't read the music, he came up with his own. The result is the amazingly moving, "I Don't Know Where I'm Bound." Identifying with the crowd, he sings about his own incarceration next, in "Starkville City Jail." It cheers everyone up. But when his notebook is brought to him, and he unleashes the newly-composed "San Quentin," this very real hell finally breaks loose. "San Quentin, I hate every inch of you!" He has to play the song twice. The second time, the prisoners are really roaring. He changes a word in one of the lines, and this time he sings, "San Quentin, you've been livin' hell to me. / You've galded me since 1963." An incredible moment, amazing as the famous "Judas" taunt made to Dylan in 1966.
A song he co-wrote with Dylan, "Wanted Man," is next, and it's sublime. And then... "A Boy Named Sue." A novelty hit when the album came out, today, because it seems less funny, you can really hear what the song must've meant to these men: it's all about justified anger and tough love. Then Cash slips in a few inspirational songs - "Peace in the Valley," and some tunes with the Statler Brothers singing like heaven's choir. There's a rip-roaring version of "Folsom Prison Blues," and "Daddy Sang Bass," a nod to the heroic Carl Perkins, modestly lurking in the band, and at last, a closing medley which features a snippet of a TV theme called "The Rebel," to leave 'em on their feet.
Cash performed all this with infinite rage and tact. He asks a guard to get him a glass of water, knowing that the men will hoot. He thanks the warden for letting him perform, knowing that the men will jeer. He gives everything, anything, just to connect, to give comfort but also strength. As Haggard said of the prison show he'd witnessed, Cash "captured the entire prison."
This is a remarkable album, and while there's plenty of essential Cash music available, this is the one that shows what his wife, June, meant when she said of that night that she could feel the electricity in his hands.
