Folsom Prison looms large in Johnny Cash's legacy, providing the setting for perhaps his definitive song and the location for his definitive album, At Folsom Prison. The ideal blend of mythmaking and gritty reality, At Folsom Prison is the moment when Cash turned into the towering Man in Black, a haunted troubadour singing songs of crime, conflicted conscience, and jail. Surely, this dark outlaw stance wasn't a contrivance but it was an exaggeration, with Cash creating this image by tailoring his set list to his audience of prisoners, filling up the set with tales of murder and imprisonment -- a bid for common ground with the convicts, but also a sly way to suggest that maybe Cash really did shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Given the cloud of death that hangs over the songs on At Folsom Prison, there's a temptation to think of it as a gothic, gloomy affair or perhaps a repository of rage, but what's striking about Cash's performance is that he never romanticizes either the crime or the criminals: if anything, he underplays the seriousness with his matter-of-fact ballad delivery or how he throws out wry jokes. Never before had his music seemed so vigorous as it does here, nor had he tied together his humor, gravity, and spirituality in one record. In every sense, it was a breakthrough, but more than that, At Folsom Prison is the quintessential Johnny Cash album, the place where his legend burns bright and eternal. (review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine at AllMusic). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Label: Columbia Serial: 495244 6 Title: Johnny Cash – At Folsom Prison Year: 1968 (1999 SACD) Track listing: 01. Folsom Prison Blues 02. Busted 03. Dark As The Dungeon 04. I Still Miss Someone 05. Cocaine Blues 06. 25 Minutes To Go 07. Orange Blossom Special 08. The Long Black Veil 09. Send A Picture Of Mother 10. The Wall 11. Dirty Old Egg-Suckin' Dog 12. Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart 13. Joe Bean 14. Jackson 15. Give My Love To Rose 16. I Got Stripes 17. The Legend Of John Henry's Hammer 18. Green, Green Grass Of Home 19. Greystone Chapel ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Converted to PCM using Weiss Saracon 24-bit/88.2KHz Converted to FLAC using foobar2000+flac 1.3.4 at level 8