Sneak Peeks: "Johnny Cash's America" and "At Folsom Prison"

Johnny Cash's life is explored a new in a documentary that will air on the Bio Channel on October 23rd at 9 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT. Johnny Cash's America will also screen at the Country Music Hall of Fame, the American Cinematheque in Hollywood, the Memphis Indie Film Festival and the Paley Center in New York throughout October before coming to CD/DVD on October 28th. The film features interviews with Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp, Snoop Dogg and Al Gore, among others, and includes 27 Cash songs and some never-before-seen footage of Cash's 1965 TV show and sessions with Dylan. Click above for a clip of Vince Gill musing on the different kinds of artists Cash brought together.

Next week also sees the release of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: Legacy Edition, a deluxe box set version of Cash's most famous performance. The package comes with a DVD documentary about the show, which features interviews with band members and former Folsom inmates. "The pictures taken weren't exaggerated," explains Cash bassist Marshall Grant. "There was no joy in that prison." Follow the jump for a teaser.

Related Stories:
• Roseanne Cash Says Johnny Wouldn't Have Supported McCain
• Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Show Getting Deluxe Treatment
• The Immortals: Johnny Cash

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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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