"I shot a man in Reno..."

[MacCruiskeen]

One of the most criminal myth-making episodes on record concerns the 'live' recording of Johnny Cash's song "Folsom Prison Blues." When he sings "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die" the room full of real prisoners, and some real murderers, was dead silent. To create excitement, Sony added cheers of delight as the line was delivered.

The source is Michael Streissguth’s book "Johnny Cash at Folsome Prison."

http://doc40.blogspot.com/2008/05/two-cash-facts.html

[IanEye]

hey, i went to the link and someone noted that the Stalin 'fact' was off a little

i would also note that Sony didn't own Columbia Records when that album was originally released so while cheers may have been dubbed in later, it wasn't Sony's decision

thanks.

[MacCruiskeen]

Thanks, Ian. You know your labels better than I do! But whoever did that dubbing, it was a deeply shitty thing to do.

The cheering and whooping on that line always made me shudder a bit. 'Christ, they really think killling is COOL...' Well, we live and learn. What kind of bastard would you have to be to dehumanise those anonymous prisoners even more than they had been already? To "create excitement" by making them sound like monsters, just as Johnny Cash was making a valiant point of respecting their humanity?

[Jeff]

The cheering and whooping on that line always made me shudder a bit. 'Christ, they really think killling is COOL...'

Yeah, me too. I'm glad to know it was dubbed. And appalled as well.

[Seamus OBlimey]

:: WARNING - PSYOP INSINUATED - CREATE NEW THREAD TO DISCUSS ::

What kind of bastard would you have to be to dehumanise those anonymous prisoners even more than they had been already?

Your average record producer kind?

:: WARNING - PSYOP INSINUATED - CREATE NEW THREAD TO DISCUSS ::

[tKl]

Johnny Cash is the Devil.

He was on Columbo once.

[IanEye]

Johnny Cash is the Devil.

He was on Columbo once.

That is a great episode! I love how they use the song "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" in it.

[battleshipkropotkin]

From: http://steelbrassnwood.livejournal.com/75673.html

" In his book, Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece, Michael Streissguth mentions that Cash's famous song "Folsom Prison Blues" was largely plagiarized from an earlier song by a man named Gordon Jenkins, who won a considerable settlement from Cash in 1969 after the Live at Folsom Prison album was released.

I went in search of the original, which turns out to be very hard to find. It was part of a very strange concept album that Jenkins -- an arranger and bandleader who worked with Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong and others -- recorded in the early 50s. The original is an "album" in the true sense of the word, a four-disc collection of seven-inch 45s called Seven Dreams. It's a schmaltzy and portentous set, narrated by Spike Lee's father, the bass player Bill Lee, in which the "dreamer" has a sequence of seven dreams, in which he finds himself on a boat, on a train, with a beautiful girl in a meadow, and so on. The narration is embarrassing, the tunes are mostly awful, and it's quite clear why no one has ever bothered to release this on CD -- it's a heavy-handed concept album that makes the worst rock opera sound like Mozart.

The song in question is part of "The Second Dream: The Conductor," in which the dreamer finds himself the conductor on a train. There are three songs in this segment, interwoven with narration, and in the last one, the train comes to a stop and he steps out onto the back of the caboose to smoke a cigarette. From a shack beside the tracks, he hears a song."

I have the Seven Dreams LP. The similarities are shocking.

[Seamus OBlimey]

Hark! Is that the sound of myths exploding?