“The Way I Would Feel About San Quentin”: Johnny Cash & the Politics of Country Music
Daniel Geary
Abstract: Johnny Cash’s live prison albums, “At Folsom Prison” and “At San Quentin,” are signi½cant Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/142/4/64/1831586/daed_a_00234.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 and under-recognized social statements of the 1960s. Cash encouraged his listeners to empathize with prisoners by performing songs with prison themes and by recording the electric reactions of inmates to his music. Cash performed before a multiracial audience, and his music was popular with the counterculture as well as with traditional country fans. Cash’s albums and his prison reform activism rejected the law- and-order policies of conservative politicians who sought to enlist country music in their cause. An exam- ination of Cash’s prison records challenges the commonly held notion that country music provided the soundtrack for the white conservative backlash of the late 1960s.
We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee We don’t take our trips on lsd We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street We like livin’ right and bein’ free. –Merle Haggard, “Okie from Muskogee”
Country musician Merle Haggard’s 1969 hit “Okie from Muskogee” became an anthem of con- DANIEL GEARY servative backlash. The song contrasted the tradi- is the Mark Pigott tional values of the American heartland with psy- Assistant Professor of U.S. History at Trinity College Dublin. He is the chedelic drug use, anti-Vietnam War protests, sex- author of Radical Ambition: C. Wright ual liberation, hippie fashion, and campus unrest. Mills, The Left, and American Social Songs about “Okies,” whites who had migrated to Thought (2009) and is currently California from Oklahoma and nearby states dur- ½nishing a book on the Moynihan ing the Dust Bowl, had once been associated with Report controversy. His article left-wing folk singers such as Woody Guthrie. But “Racial Liberalism, the Moynihan when Haggard sang, “I’m proud to be an Okie from Report, and the Dædalus Project on ‘The Negro American’” appeared Muskogee,” he tied pride in white working-class previously in Dædalus. He was a identity to conservative attacks on the countercul- Visiting Scholar at the American ture and the New Left in a way that resonated with Academy in 2011–2012. the political messages of George Wallace, Ronald
© 2013 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00234 64 Reagan, and Richard Nixon. In live per- Until the late 1940s, the United States had Daniel formances, Haggard’s enthusiastic audi- no full-time country music station, but Geary ences waved American flags.1 by 1967, at least 238 stations played coun- Politicians and critics at the time viewed try full-time, and more than 2,000 sta- country as the musical language of a tions played some country. Sometimes white working class that was once a solid called “country and western,” the genre contingent of the New Deal Democratic had national appeal. But it also had a dis- coalition, but that defected in large num- tinctive regional character, identi½ed bers to the Republican Party beginning in with the South and Southwest. Its main the 1960s. However, while many New institutional centers were Nashville, Ten- Right politicians sought to capitalize on nessee, and Bakers½eld and Los Angeles the popularity of country music, the in Southern California.2 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/142/4/64/1831586/daed_a_00234.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 genre was not inherently conservative. The growing popularity of a musical The most popular country records of the genre identi½ed with the South indicated late 1960s challenged backlash politics. the increasing importance of this region Johnny Cash’s classic live prison record- in American culture and politics. Some ings, At Folsom Prison (1968) and At San scholars have connected the “south- Quentin (1969), rejected conservative calls ernization” of American culture to the for “law and order.” growth of a New Right that successfully We typically remember popular music fused populist opposition to liberal elites of the 1960s for its overt social messages; with militaristic patriotism, evangelical yet Cash’s prison albums have too often Christianity, and backlash against 1960s- been neglected as major political state- era social movements. Historians exam- ments of the time. At Folsom Prison and ining the rise of the New Right in the At San Quentin suggest that country music 1960s often point to the growing influ- could express populist resistance to New ence of the region where country music Right politics that drew on a different was most popular: the Sunbelt, an area conception of white Southern identity. stretching from the former states of the Like other genres of popular music, Confederacy to Southern California. From country was politically diverse. Even 1964 to 2004, every elected U.S. president “Okie from Muskogee” was more com- hailed from the Sunbelt. In the last few plicated than it seemed. Many fans may decades of the twentieth century, the have interpreted it as supportive of con- low-wage, union-hostile economy of the servative backlash, but Haggard meant region boomed while the Rust Belt de - his song to be tongue-in-cheek. “Okie” cayed. Politically, the Sunbelt is often as- satirically contrasted hippie drug use to sociated with strong patriotism, reinforced Muskogee residents’ consumption of by the heavy presence of military bases; “white lightning,” illegal high-proof li - traditional social values, derived from quor. Its spare instrumentation was atyp- evangelical Protestantism; and strong sup- ical of Haggard’s blues-inspired sound, port for maintaining white supremacy.3 and its lyrics were clearly over-the-top. Historian Dan Carter, for example, traces the modern conservative movement Many Americans associate 1960s pop- to the 1964 and 1968 presidential cam- ular music with rock-and-roll artists such paigns of the former segregationist gov- as Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hen- ernor of Alabama, George Wallace. In his drix. Yet the decade also saw tremendous presidential bids, Wallace combined pop- growth in the popularity of country music. ulist rhetoric against liberal elites and
142 (4) Fall 2013 65 Johnny unpatriotic antiwar protestors with coded ica.” Conservative politicians, he con- Cash & racial appeals to win signi½cant support tended, could appeal to white country the Politics of Country among the white working class, not only fans indignant that liberal elites ignored Music in the South, but also in states such as their problems and who were “tired of Ohio, Michigan, and California. Wallace hearing upper-crust talk about equal jus- embodied the politics of backlash; when tice for blacks.”6 liberal protestors heckled him with ob - New Right politicians sought to capi- scenities, he responded: “I have two four- talize on the growing popularity of coun- letter words you don’t know: ‘W-O-R-K’ try music during the 1960s. Wallace and ‘S-O-A-P.’”4 Though Wallace failed solicited country musicians’ endorse- to win the presidency, his rhetoric and ments, and country bands warmed up tactics were imitated by Richard Nixon, audiences at his campaign rallies. As gov- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/142/4/64/1831586/daed_a_00234.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 whose famous “Southern strategy” en - ernor of California, Reagan devoted a sured that previously solid Southern sup- week of the state’s calendar to “country port for the Democratic Party shifted just and western music.” Hoping to endear as solidly to support for the Republican himself to “Okie from Muskogee” fans, Party. Nixon claimed to speak for hard- Reagan of½cially pardoned Haggard for a working, patriotic Americans: a “silent crime for which he had earlier served majority” of the “forgotten Americans, the time.7 Some of the country hits of the non-shouters, the non-demonstrators.”5 late 1960s expressed messages of conser- New Right strategists and politicians vative backlash. Following the success of sought to enlist country music in their “Okie,” Haggard released “The Fightin’ struggle. In a syndicated 1971 news col- Side of Me” (1970), which attacked anti- umn, Kevin Phillips claimed country war protestors as unpatriotic. Tammy music for conservatism. “More and more Wynette’s country and western tunes people,” he declared, “are evidently ½nd - “Stand by Your Man” (1968) and “Don’t ing the ‘straight’ songs and lyrics of coun- Liberate Me (Love Me)” (1971) rejected try music preferable to the tribal war feminist demands for gender equality. dances, adolescent grunts, and marijuana Guy Drake’s “Welfare Cadillac” (1970) hymns that have taken over so many pop attacked liberal welfare programs, imply- stations.” Phillips, a key architect of ing that they bene½ted poor African Nixon’s Southern strategy, had coined Americans at the expense of hard-working the term “Sunbelt” in his influential 1969 whites. book, The Emerging Republican Majority, which identi½ed the region as a likely The growing popularity of country source of Republican gains. He claimed music did not always go hand-in-hand that Republican politicians such as Nixon with the rise of the New Right. In fact, the could learn from country music how to most popular country albums of the late capture the votes of disaffected working- 1960s rejected the conservative politics of class whites. Phillips declared country to backlash. Johnny Cash’s live recordings be the music of “the forgotten Americans,” at two notorious California prisons, At the hard-working citizens who “drive the Folsom Prison (1968) and At San Quentin trucks, plow the farms, man the ½elds, (1969), both reached number one on the and police the streets.” Ignoring country country music charts, the latter remain- music’s African American roots, Phillips ing there for twenty-two weeks. Both celebrated it as the “folk music of English- albums also had signi½cant crossover Irish-Scottish rural and small-town Amer- appeal that reached the very countercul-
66 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences ture audience decried by advocates of now-legendary Sun Studios in Memphis, Daniel conservative country. With 6.5 million he began to perform at prisons. In fact, Geary records sold in 1969, the albums made Haggard attended a Cash concert while a Cash the best-selling musical artist in the prisoner at San Quentin in the late 1950s. world, eclipsing even the Beatles.8 For years, Cash tried to convince his record Cash’s records rebuked the conserva- label, Columbia, to produce a live prison tive politics of “law and order,” a slogan album. Finally, Columbia agreed to record used by Wallace, Reagan, and Nixon to At Folsom Prison, a Cash performance held call for crackdowns on criminals and pro- in Dining Room 2 at Folsom Prison on testors. In a 1966 campaign speech, Rea- January 13, 1968. After Folsom climbed gan declared: the charts, Cash and Columbia followed with the 1969 release of the even more Let us have an end to the idea that society is Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/142/4/64/1831586/daed_a_00234.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 popular At San Quentin.10 responsible for each and every wrongdoer. The records’ crossover success owed We must return to a belief in every individ- partly to Cash’s musical style, which ual being responsible for his conduct and appealed to audiences who did not nor- his misdeeds with punishment immediate mally listen to country. His deep, gravelly and certain. With all our science and so - voice, his hard-bitten persona, and the phistication . . . the jungle still is waiting to spare, monotonous “boom-chicka-boom” take over. The man with the badge holds it sound of his band, the Tennessee Three, back.9 created a grittier feel than the smoothly As Cash rehearsed at a Sacramento produced country-pop sound of Nashville hotel on the eve of his concert at the nearby and the Grand Ole Opry. Indeed, Cash’s Folsom Prison, he received a visit from style was more similar to that of rougher- Governor Reagan to wish him luck. How- edged California country musicians such ever, Cash’s lyrics clearly rejected Rea- as Haggard. Cash’s Memphis rockabilly gan’s emphasis on tough punishment for roots brought him closer to rock ’n’ roll lawbreakers. Cash’s records cut against than most country performers. On the the politics of law and order by encourag- prison records, Cash was backed not only ing listeners to identify with men behind by the Tennessee Three, but also by leg- bars. His songs articulate what it would endary early rocker Carl Perkins, who had be like to be in prison, and the recorded ½rst performed the iconic hit “Blue Suede reactions of inmates to Cash’s perfor- Shoes” (1956). mances literally gave them a voice on the In addition, Cash embraced folk music, albums. unlike most country musicians. On his A common misperception of Cash was prison records, Cash performed traditional that he had done hard time. In fact, he songs, featured June Carter and the Carter had spent only a few nights in jail. How- Family, and emphasized ballads and songs ever, he had written songs about prisons of social protest. Cash also maintained a from the beginning of his career. He public friendship with Bob Dylan (who co- wrote his famous “Folsom Prison Blues,” wrote “Wanted Man” on At San Quentin). released in 1956, years earlier while serv- By performing prison-themed songs be- ing with the army in Germany; at that fore an audience of inmates, Cash placed time, Cash had never stepped foot in Fol- himself in a longer tradition of American som, but he had recently seen a movie set roots music. Prison songs had a long his- in the prison. In 1957, just two years after tory in American folk music, reflecting Cash was signed by Sam Phillips at the fascination and often sympathy with men
142 (4) Fall 2013 67 Johnny driven to crime by dif½cult economic cir- from Cash’s banter with prisoners and– Cash & cumstances and with outlaws who de½ed most of all–the enthusiastic responses of the Politics of Country social convention. Prisons were also key prisoners to songs intended to express Music sites of musical production in twentieth- their condition. century folk music. The pioneering folk Cash’s dynamic rapport with his audi- musicologists Alan and John Lomax be- ence featured prominently in one of the gan recording prisoners at Southern pen- second album’s few new songs, “San itentiaries in 1933. Most famously, they Quentin.” Cash introduced the song as encountered Huddie Ledbetter at a Loui- his effort to articulate the experience of siana penitentiary and subsequently pro- prisoners: “I was thinking about you moted his career as the folksinger “Lead guys yesterday. Now I’ve been here three Belly,” sometimes forcing him to perform times before and I think I understand a Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/142/4/64/1831586/daed_a_00234.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 in prison clothes.11 While Cash’s prison little bit about how you feel about some records avoided the exploitative element things. . . . I tried to put myself in your of the Lomaxes’ work, they traded on this place and I believe that this is the way I folk music tradition of viewing prisons as would feel about San Quentin.” The sites of musical and sociological authen- inmates’ responses backed Cash’s claim ticity. to speak for California prisoners. When Folsom is essentially a prison concept Cash sang the ½rst line of the song, “San album. Its set list mixes Cash’s own com- Quentin, you’ve been living hell to me,” positions with traditional folk songs and the audience clapped, yelled, and whis- combines songs with explicit prison tled. The subsequent lines, “San Quentin, themes with songs about the trials of I hate every inch of you,” and “San labor and love, which take on new mean- Quentin, may you rot and burn in hell,” ing in a prison context. Though the mate- received even louder reactions. Song- rial for San Quentin more closely replicated writers often take the perspectives of oth- Cash’s normal touring show, it included a ers, but rarely are their imaginations so healthy dose of prison-themed songs powerfully con½rmed by the people their such as “San Quentin,” “Wanted Man,” songs are about. Men behind California and “Starkeville County Jail.” The excite- prison walls were a powerful collective ment of both recordings lay less in the presence on Cash’s records, reminding originality of the material than in the listeners that they were not just the con- context of the live performance. Cash ceit of a singer, but a very real part of wanted At Folsom Prison to be “the kind of American society. thing that has all the realism of a real By articulating the perspectives of pris- prison–the clanging steel doors and oners, Cash recognized them as “forgot- other sounds inside the big walls.”12 The ten Americans” who differed from the records did not exactly reproduce Cash’s silent majority valorized by New Right concerts; for example, producers altered politicians. Cash’s exclusive focus on men the order of songs and drew material in prison dovetailed with the New Right from separate performances held on the discourse of the “forgotten American,” same date. Nevertheless, the albums de - almost always imagined as a male, blue- manded that listeners place themselves collar worker. However, by combining his alongside the prisoners as an audience rebellious individuality and hard-bitten for Cash’s music. The records’ distinctive persona with empathy and sensitivity, sound came not only from the live re - Cash’s version of masculinity differed cording of Cash and his band, but also from conservative advocates of “hard
68 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences hat” politics. In contrast with law and (if embellished) personal story, which Daniel order rhetoric that demonized prisoners, included drug abuse and exaggerated Geary Cash’s records stressed the humanity of accounts of his prison record and which inmates and encouraged his listeners to ended in rescue by the love of a good empathize with them. Cash’s liner notes Christian woman, June Carter Cash. for the Folsom record referred to “the When Cash pled for compassion and convicts–all brothers of mine.” Like New redemption for prisoners, he sharply crit- Right politicians, Cash used the language icized the New Right emphasis on im - of populism, speaking in the name of the prisonment as a solution to social prob- common man. Yet rather than attacking lems. The song “San Quentin” drove this out-of-touch liberal elites, Cash targeted point home, posing the question, “San prison of½cials, the wealthy (“rich folks Quentin, what good do you think you Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/142/4/64/1831586/daed_a_00234.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 eating from a fancy dining car” torment do?” and declaring, “Mr. Congressman, the narrator of “Folsom Prison Blues”), you can’t understand.” Cash’s advocacy and government of½cials who ignored of prison reform did not stop with his prisoner welfare. songs. He outspokenly supported efforts Cash tapped into a left-oriented South- to clear up abuses, to improve the condi- ern politics, with roots in late-nineteenth- tions of prisoners, and to reevaluate century populism as well as in the New whether long-term con½nement was the Deal, that reflected his own biography. At best method for rehabilitating prisoners. the end of the San Quentin concert, the In 1972, Cash testi½ed on these issues be- concert announcer introduced the audi- fore the U.S. Congress, appearing before ence to Cash’s father, Ray Cash, described a Senate subcommittee with Glen Sher- as a “badland farmer from Dyess, Arkan- ley, the Folsom prisoner who had written sas.” Dyess was a New Deal resettlement “Greystone Chapel,” and whose parole community where the Cash family had Cash had helped secure. Here, Cash con- relocated during the agricultural depres- nected himself to a broader prison reform sion of the 1930s. Johnny Cash was al - movement that urged that prisons be ways grateful for the assistance his family sites of rehabilitation rather than retribu- received, and he felt that the government tion. should help those similarly in need. Cash’s prison albums also rejected New The prison albums’ messages of shared Right politics by reaching out to one of humanity and personal redemption sprang the targets of law and order rhetoric: the in part from Cash’s evangelical Protes- counterculture. Columbia Records actively tantism, a religious orientation more promoted At Folsom Prison and At San often associated with conservative poli- Quentin in the underground press, where tics. Cash insisted that prisoners deserved it received positive reviews from Voice compassion even if they had made poor and Rolling Stone. Both records appealed choices; he felt prisons should be places to a late-1960s rock audience that prized of rehabilitation rather than punish- authenticity in its music, having rejected ment. At Folsom Prison concludes with a much of American mass culture as ar- gospel rendition of “Greystone Chapel,” ti½cial. More important, Cash’s prison written by inmate Glenn Sherley, that albums captured a broader masculine asserts the equal right of all men to God’s rebelliousness in American society, a mercy: “the doors to the house of God rejection of authority evident among are never locked.” Cash’s redemptive mes - men who burned their draft cards or sage jibed with his own widely publicized grew their hair long. Joking with his audi-
142 (4) Fall 2013 69 Johnny ence in Folsom, Cash remarked about the audience included with the lps adver- Cash & prison guards, “Mean bastards, ain’t tised this fact by showing faces of many the Politics of Country they?” During his San Quentin concert, colors. Music Cash was infamously photographed flash - Moreover, the prisons where Cash per- ing his middle ½nger. The active cheers of formed lay at the center of the late-1960s the prison audience to Cash’s anti- confrontation between law and order authoritarian banter and lyrics added to politics and the black power movement. the albums’ appeal, as its producers well San Quentin, located in Marin County, understood. On the Folsom album, after near the Black Panther Party headquar- the famous line “I shot a man in Reno just ters in Oakland, was a particularly sym- to watch him die,” producers spliced in a bolic choice. A near race riot occurred at prisoner yelping with delight.13 San Quentin in 1967, prevented only Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/142/4/64/1831586/daed_a_00234.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 when guards ½red upon the prisoners. Advocates of conservative country por- That same year, the Black Panthers de - trayed it as a genre that appealed to manded “freedom for all black people in whites only, but Cash’s prison audiences jail” in their ten-point program, claiming were racially mixed. In his prison records that all black inmates were political pris- and his public statements, Cash avoided oners. Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver had explicit engagement with the racial poli- been imprisoned at both Folsom and San tics that de½ned the 1960s. A writer for Quentin, an experience he discussed in The New York Times charged, “Cash will his best-selling 1967 memoir, Soul on Ice. not talk much of the contemporary poor, In 1968, Panther Party founder Huey of civil rights and civil wrongs, of black Newton was imprisoned in San Quentin, people and Chicanos. Perhaps many of the charged with voluntary manslaughter for down South country folk who buy his killing a police of½cer.16 platters would rather not hear about It was to Cash’s credit that he eschewed those subjects.”14 The writer’s conde- the radical California prison reform move- scending depiction of country music fans ment’s outlandish demand for the release and his assumption that only people of of all prisoners and its delusion that pris- color made up the “contemporary poor” oners were urban revolutionary guerril- would have delighted populist conserva- las. However, unlike the Black Panthers, tives on the lookout for liberal elitism. Cash failed to explicitly connect inhu- But the writer had a point in that Cash mane prison conditions to institutional- had never directly confronted racism ized racism. Nevertheless, if Cash’s pop- against African Americans. ulism emphasized class injustices at the Nevertheless, Cash implicitly rejected expense of racial ones, it clearly rejected the racial politics of white backlash, espe- the racial backlash politics of the New cially in his prison albums. His rock and Right. The conservative call for law and roots influences more openly displayed order was always in part a racially coded their debt to African American musical call for cracking down on African Ameri- traditions than did most country music. can radicalism and criminality. Cash’s At Folsom and San Quentin, Cash per- emphasis on prisoners’ humanity ex - formed before prisoners of all races. One tended to black and Chicano prisoners, as scholar estimates that when Cash played well as to white ones. The popularity of San Quentin in 1969, 30 percent of pris- Cash’s prison records served as an inspi- oners were African American and 18 per- ration for black blues artist B. B. King, cent were Hispanic.15 Photographs of the who recorded a concert at a majority-
70 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences black Chicago penitentiary in 1970 (re - years, scholars have tried to comprehend Daniel leased in 1971 as Live in Cook County Jail) the nuances and contradictions of Cash’s Geary and became involved in prison reform political statements during the late 1960s. activism, helping create the Foundation However, as historian Michael Foley has for the Advancement of Inmate Rehabili- argued, Cash’s political signi½cance lay tation and Recreation.17 At least one not in any particular ideological stance member of Cash’s prison audience even he adopted, but rather in his broader interpreted him as sympathetic to black “politics of empathy” that allowed him radicalism. When Cash began playing “San to bond with and articulate the feelings Quentin” in the prison of the same name, of working-class Americans.19 an African American convict raised a This was dramatically true of At Folsom clenched ½st, the black power salute.18 Prison and At San Quentin, when in em- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/142/4/64/1831586/daed_a_00234.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 pathizing with a multiracial group of for- The political signi½cance of Cash’s gotten Americans, Cash rebuked the New prison records has often been missed Right politics of conservative populism. because Cash himself never hewed to a Cash not only rejected the politics of law consistent ideology. Though Cash clearly and order and its racial connotations, but rejected efforts to tie country music to also made common cause with counter- conservative politics, he also disappointed cultural rebels. His classic records remind liberals, particularly for his refusal to us not to generalize about the politics of a consistently criticize the Vietnam War. musical genre and the social group and For example, when Cash performed at region it represents. Country music was the Nixon White House in 1970, he en- never the monolithically conservative couraged patriotic Americans to rally music that Republican leaders claimed it behind the war effort, only to then con- was. When Cash performed at the White found Nixon of½cials by performing House, he refused the request of a Nixon “What is Truth?”–a song that sympa- of½cial that he play “Welfare Cadillac” thized with antiwar youths. In recent and “Okie from Muskogee.”20
endnotes 1 Peter La Chapelle, Proud to be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 2 Bill C. Malone, Country Music, U.S.A., 3rd rev. ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), 267. 3 For a recent collection of essays that stresses the political and cultural diversity of the region, see Michelle Nickerson and Darren Dochuk, eds., Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Space, Place, and Region (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 4 As quoted in Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 240. 5 Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995). 6 Kevin P. Phillips, “Revolutionary Music,” The Washington Post, May 6, 1971; and Kevin P. Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1969). 7 La Chapelle, Proud to be an Okie, 143. 8 Leigh H. Edwards, Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 20.
142 (4) Fall 2013 71 Johnny 9 As quoted in Lou Cannon, Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power (New York: PublicAffairs, Cash & 2003), 216. Reagan’s prison policies as governor, however, were considerably more moder- the Politics ate than his rhetoric. of Country Music 10 The de½nitive account of the Folsom concert is Michael Streissguth, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece (Cambridge, Mass.: De Capo, 2004). See also John Hayes, “Man of Sorrows in Folsom,” Radical History Review 98 (2007): 119–135. 11 Benjamin Filene, Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 47–75. 12 As quoted in George Carpozi, Johnny Cash Story (New York: Pyramid, 1970), 93. 13 Interestingly, the record company cut the line from the radio version of “Folsom Prison Blues” in the wake of Robert Kennedy’s assassination, fearing that its violent overtones would alienate audiences. See Streissguth, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, 89, 136–138. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/142/4/64/1831586/daed_a_00234.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 14 Tom Dearmore, “First Angry Man of Country Music,” The New York Times, September 21, 1969. 15 Jonathan Silverman, Nine Choices: Johnny Cash and American Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), 96. 16 See Eric Cummins, The Rise and Fall of California’s Radical Prison Movement (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994). Newton’s conviction was later overturned. 17 Ulrich Adelt, Blues Music in the Sixties: A Story in Black and White (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rut- gers University Press, 2010), 28. 18 Ralph J. Gleason, “Johnny Cash at San Quentin,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 26, 1969. 19 Michael S. Foley, “A Politics of Empathy: Johnny Cash, the Vietnam War, and the ‘Walking Contradiction’ Myth Dismantled,” Popular Music and Society, 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10 .1080/03007766.2013.798928. 20 Nan Robertson, “Cash and Country Music Take White House Stage,” The New York Times, April 18, 1970.
72 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences