The “most exciting” American audience Johnny Cash ever played to: “Just them and me”
Over the course of his extensive and illustrious career as ‘the Man in Black’, Johnny Cash played to an unimaginable number of people, forming all sorts of different audiences spanning the races, genders, and nationalities of the entire globe. Nevertheless, there was one audience that always stood out.
If live performance represents the absolute pinnacle of musical expression, then audiences inarguably play a key role. We have all been to concerts where the artist’s performance is near-flawless, but through no fault of their own, they are playing to a dismal, disinterested crowd, and it invariably impacts the entire experience. Thinking back to the greatest live performances of all time, audiences have always been essential in giving the artist something to bounce off, impress, and connect with.
From the folk purists of Newport to the centre stage of Saturday Night Live, Johnny Cash performed for about as many different audiences as an artist of his expansive ilk ever dreamed of. Yet, throughout the entirety of his career, there was only one audience that stood out to Cash as one he would go back to time and time again without losing its sheen: prison audiences.
Despite Cash’s ‘outlaw’ image, cultivated largely by his promoters and record label as a means of creating a sense of mystique around the songwriter, Johnny Cash was never a long-term prisoner in any institution in America. Sure, he had more than a few run-ins with the law, largely as a result of the drug addiction that came exceedingly close to providing an early end to his career back in the 1960s, but those charges rarely extended past a night spent in a local slammer.
Nevertheless, Johnny Cash often claimed to be able to identify with the prisoner population of the United States, for a multitude of reasons. In many ways, Cash saw himself in many of those incarcerated audiences, realising that – were it not for the privilege of being a successful musician – his addictions could very easily have seen him end up in overalls breaking rocks in the beating sun. So, in addition to his usual touring schedule, Cash also performed in a selection of prisons.
“A prison audience is the most exciting in the world,” the songwriter once declared. “The men are with you, feeding you every second, maybe because they need you so bad.” According to Cash, though, the appeal of a prison show extends far beyond having a quite literally captive audience to perform for.
“I gave them a stiff shot of realism, singing about the things they talk about, the outside, shooting, escaping, girlfriends, and coming to the end,” he said. “They knew it was for them. Just them and me.”
Most famously, Cash performed at San Quentin State Prison in early 1969, forming the basis for his utterly iconic Johnny Cash At San Quentin live album, but the Californian prison was far from being the only place where the ‘Man in Black’ sought to entertain the inmates. In fact, his first prison gig took place over a decade prior, in 1957, and formed one of well over 30 prison shows to take place over the course of his career.
Across the entirety of that career, it would appear as though those prison performances always reflected ultimate highlights in the artistic output of Johnny Cash, as well as the pinnacle of his performing career – a fact itself reflected beautifully in live recordings like At San Quentin.
