The little-known song that Johnny Cash ripped off for ‘Folsom Prison Blues’
As the old saying goes, country music is three chords and the truth. With such a limited musical vocabulary on offer, claiming a tune is as facile as a chef claiming a recipe; it has more to do with how you cook it. With ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, Johnny Cash rustled up a delectable delight that proved revolutionary. The Man in Black courted darkness so readily with the gruff lyrics that suddenly bleakness seemed a fitting part of emerging pop culture.
However, darkness in a rather less fictitious sense also pervades the song’s inspiration. In fact, ‘inspiration’ is a little too kind, considering ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ is essentially ripped off like-for-like bar a little quickening of the tempo. The original track that sported the same melody and, indeed, stark lyrical similarities was ‘Crescent City Blues’ written by Gordon Jenkins and performed by Beverly Mahr. It released Jenkins’ Seven Dreams album in 1953, two years before Cash would surface.
So, how did this very liberal appropriation come to pass? Well, Cash was rattling off some tunes in an audition/recording session when Sun Records founder Sam Phillips thought his ears had just detected a hit. Cash promptly informed him that he had merely tweaked a track from 1953, and Phillips assured him that a ‘tweak’ was enough.
Cash later honestly stated: “At the time, I really had no idea I would be a professional recording artist; I wasn’t trying to rip anybody off.” His stance was simply that he had essentially upscaled an old cover like an endless stream of folk artists in every bar ever.
In fairness to Cash, by all accounts, his recollection of events was truthful. The would-be country star was just laying down some licks in the studio and subverted one of his old favourites to show Phillips what he could do in the hopes of making it as a musician and leaving the Air Force behind. In an era when copyright was looked at rather loosely, all it took was for the senior Phillips to say, ‘don’t worry’, and the rest is ancient history.
In the end, Phillips was right; the song became popular, and Jenkins eventually sued, settling on a payout of $75,000 in the early 1970s. While Cash undoubtedly made a hell of a lot more money from the song – and these days, even a negligible cross-over can see artists hold out for 50% – Jenkins was a music man, and he was happy to simply have his song immortalised by a classic.
At this juncture, it is also important to give credence to the fact that although Cash’s changes are minor, they transfigure the song entirely. After all, he edited in one of the finest lines ever written in the era: “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die”.
As Nick Cave proclaims: “Plagiarism is an ugly word for what, in rock and roll, is a natural and necessary — even admirable — tendency, and that is to steal. Theft is the engine of progress, and should be encouraged, even celebrated, provided the stolen idea has been advanced in some way. To advance an idea is to steal something from someone and make it so cool and covetable that someone then steals it from you. In this way, modern music progresses, collecting ideas, and mutating and transforming as it goes.”
However, as Cave adds in his concluding words: “But a word of caution, if you steal an idea and demean or diminish it, you are committing a dire crime for which you will pay a terrible price — whatever talents you may have will, in time, abandon you.” Furthermore, Cave would’ve done well to add to his wise words the important caveat that proper credits are also imperative.
