Johnny Cash built his career around his reputation as an old-school outlaw, but the country singer never hesitated to mix a bit of fiction into his lyrics. He rose to fame with the 1955 song “Folsom Prison Blues” – a narrative tune about a murderer fleeing the law. However, as far as we know, Cash never committed murder, and the song was meant to be evocative, not truthful.
Biographer Michael Streissguth learned about the creation of “Folsom Prison Blues” for his 2004 book Johnny Cash: The Biography. It began while Cash was serving in the U.S. Air Force, stationed in West Germany. On the base, he saw the 1951 movie Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison. Cash came up with the infamous line “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die” so that the first-person voice in his song would be unsympathetic. He said: “I sat with my pen in my hand, trying to think up the worst reason a person could have for killing another person, and that’s what came to mind.”
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Cash wrote the song in 1953 but did not record it until 1955. He was stationed in West Germany until July of 1954, at which point he moved to Memphis, Tennessee with his first wife. “Folsom Prison Blues” was the third song Cash recorded at the Sun Records studio, and the one that catapulted him to mainstream success. Given the timeline, it seems unlikely that he made a trip to Reno during this time without any biographers digging up records of the trip. These days, no music historians seriously consider the idea that Cash committed a real murder – before or after writing this song.
Cash never seems to have claimed that the song was autobiographical, though he didn’t exactly go out of his way to tell fans it was fictional, either. In fact, a big part of the song’s legend is the 1968 live recording of Cash playing it at the real-life Folsom Prison, for an audience of inmates. Even that was contrived in some ways – according to Streissguth, producers added the sounds of the audience cheering in post-production, particularly just after Cash sang the line “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.” In truth, the audience was reportedly reserved, fearing that if they cheered too enthusiastically for Cash’s lyrics, the guards would hurt them.
Sadly, the most enduring legacy of “Folsom Prison Blues” is the debate over plagiarism. Cash borrowed the melody for the song from Gordon Jenkins’ 1953 song “Crescent City Blues,” and copied many of the lyrics as well. Cash’s song was more successful, but Jenkins was not paid or credited for it. Nearly two decades later, Jenkins sued Cash, and Cash paid a settlement of $75,000. However, fans often point out that the concepts of “plagiarism” in country music and folk music were very different at the time, especially for artists like Cash who had not broken into the mainstream yet. Many argue that Cash was doing an homage more than anything.
