Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Shows Getting Deluxe Box Set Treatment

Yesterday brought news of reissued Johnny Cash Christmas Specials, and today we learn the Man in Black's famed Folsom Prison concert will once again be re-released, this time in form of a 2CD/1 DVD box set. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: Legacy Edition, out October 14th via Columbia/Legacy, will feature the entirety of both of Cash's 1968 concerts from the California prison, totaling in 31 previously-unreleased tracks, including songs like "Blue Suede Shoes," "I'm Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail," "This Ole House" and even more duets with June Carter Cash. The DVD portion of the set contains footage from the shows, plus interviews with Merle Haggard, Roseanne Cash and even inmates who witnessed Cash's Folsom concerts. Adding to the allure of the box set is that the liner notes were penned by both Cash biographer Michael Streissguth, Steve Earle and Cash himself, which he wrote in 1999.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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