THE 1000 BEST SONGS IN THE WORLD EVER.

428-Johnny Cash-San Quentin.

1969-Has never been released as a single in the UK.

Best Bit-At 1.42. Johnny Cash playing to a captive audience.

Johnny Cash was born J. R. Cash on February 26th, 1932, in Kingsland, Arkansas, United States, he died on September 12th, 2003, at the age of 71 of complications from diabetes. Cash suffered from drug addiction for long periods in his life which led to him being arrested on occasions for possession, although he never spent more than one night in prison, (on at least seven occasions) he had great empathy with the conditions that long term inmates had to endure during their custodial sentences.

Johnny Cash (see also best songs 857 and 199) is one of the worlds best selling artists with sales in excess of 90 million records, he wrote over 1000 songs, and there have been a total of 97 Albums released since 1957. Among the Albums released include 15 live recordings, of which four were recorded in prisons. Cash first performed at San Quentin (also his first ever prison performance) on January 1st, 1959. San Quentin State Prison is in California, United States, and first opened in July 1852. In the audience that day was an inmate by the name of Merle Haggard (1937-2016) who at the age of 18 had been sentenced to 15 years in San Quentin for burglary. Seeing Cash perform turned Haggard’s life around, and he went on to become one of Country Musics most successful acts with 38 Number 1 songs on Billboard’s Country Music chart. In 1969 when appearing on the ‘Johnny Cash Show’ Haggard told Cash that the first time he had ever seen him perform was at San Quentin, to which Cash replied ‘I don’t remember you being in that show Merle,’ to which Haggard responded,’I was in the audience Johnny.’

‘Johnny Cash at San Quentin’ was the 31st overall Album release by Johnny Cash, it was recorded on February 24th, 1969, and released on June 16th, 1969. His first recorded for release concert prison Album had been the previous year, the ‘Folsom Prison,’ Album, which had also been met with critical acclaim. There would be two more ‘prison albums,’ ‘Pa Osteraker’ recorded in 1972 in Sweden, and ‘A Concert Behind Prison Walls,’ recorded in 1974 at Tennessee State Prison, but not released until 11 days after Cash’s death, on September 23rd, 2003.

The concert at San Quinton in 1969 was filmed by the English television company ‘Granada’ as part of a documentary about prison life. The music that appears on the Album has been heavily edited due to timing limitations on vinyl LP formats, but reissues on other formats have seen the Album expanded. Two songs from the concert were both being performed for the very first time. ‘San Quentin,’ and the Shel Silverstein (1930-1999) (see also best songs 242) cover of ‘A Boy Named Sue.’

‘San Quentin I hate every inch of you. You’ve cut me and scarred me through and through, and I’ll walk out a wiser weaker man, Mister Congressman you can’t understand.’