Seventy Years Ago, Johnny Cash Recorded ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and Became a Folk Hero for the Ignored and Downtrodden; Smithsonian Magazine, July 30, 2025

Raj Tawney, Smithsonian Magazine; Seventy Years Ago, Johnny Cash Recorded ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and Became a Folk Hero for the Ignored and Downtrodden

"Throughout his five-decade career, Cash performed for thousands of incarcerated people across the country, appearing in-concert at over 30 prisons, where he’d always include “Folsom Prison Blues” in his set. By showing them his respect, the inmates often felt he was one of their own and treated him in kind. Though he’d been arrested seven times for minor offenses, some due to his struggles with substance abuse, he never served prison time. Yet somehow, he found a way to relate to and empathize with prisoners while the rest of society turned their backs on them. He even testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on prison reform in 1972 and continued to advocate for prison conditions with six sitting presidents."