The 500 - #88 - At Folsom Prison - Johnny Cash

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album #: 88

Album Title: At Folsom Prison

Artist: Johnny Cash

Genre:  Country, Rock

Recorded: Folsom State Prison, Folsom, California

Released: May, 1968

My age at release: 2

How familiar was I with it before this week: Somewhat

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #164 - dropping 66 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Cocaine Blues

I thought I knew this record. I certainly knew a lot of the songs. Folsom Prison Blues has been part of the Johnny Cash mythology for as long as I can remember, and Cocaine Blues wasn't unfamiliar territory either. The late Reverend Freddie and the Distillers, whom I wrote about in my Hank Williams post, used to perform both songs regularly. So when At Folsom Prison came up on my journey through The 500 Greatest Albums list, I figured this would be one of those records where I would be thinking all week about an angle to write about. Then, I fell into a research rabbit hole.

The more I read about At Folsom Prison, the more I realized how little I actually knew about it, even getting the title wrong for years. To me, it was "Live at Folsom Prison", which seems perfectly reasonable since it is, after all, a live album recorded at Folsom Prison. Except it isn't called that. The title is simply At Folsom Prison. No “Live.”

Folsom Prison, Folsom. California.

My mistake is an example of the tiny musical corrections this project keeps handing me – such as learning I've spent decades adding “The” to Eagles, Ramones and Pixies. None of those bands includes the definite article in their moniker.

I also had this image in my head of Johnny Cash essentially arriving at Folsom with his band and playing a concert for the inmates one evening. In reality, it was much more of a travelling country show. Carl Perkins, the man who wrote and first recorded Blue Suede Shoes, was there, as were The Statler Brothers; Cash's band; The Tennessee Three; and June Carter. In fact, those artists performed two concerts at Folsom on January 13, 1968, one in the morning and another a few hours later. Most of the performances from the first show appeared on the original album. Not bad for a morning shift.

Cash performing at Folsom Prison.

I knew June Carter was there because you can hear her voice on Jackson, her duet with Cash. However, I hadn't really thought about where the pair were in their lives at that particular time. We tend to look back at their story, knowing how it ends. They became “Johnny and June”-- one of those couples whose names seem naturally attached to one another. By the time I knew who Johnny was, June seemed inseparable from the image of the man himself. Indeed, they married -- but that wasn't the situation when they walked into Folsom that January morning 58 years ago.

Johnny and June.

Johnny had married his first wife, Vivian Liberto, 14 years earlier in 1954, and they had four daughters together. As Johnny's career took off, however, life on the road, his escalating drug use and his growing relationship with June helped tear the marriage apart. Walk the Line, the 2005 biopic with Joaquin Phoenix as Cash, Reese Witherspoon as June and Ginnifer Goodwin as Vivian, makes that troubled triangle one of the central stories of the film. By the Folsom period, Johnny and Vivian's marriage was over in everything but the legal formalities, while his relationship with June had become the central focus in his life.

Movie poster for Walk The Line.

In fact, James Mangold’s film Walk the Line begins with the Folson Prison concert. We see Cash backstage at Folsom before the movie moves backwards through his childhood, his first marriage, his early recording career, his drug problems, and his complicated relationship with June.

Joaquin Phoenix as Cash in Walk The Line's Folsom Prison.

Eventually the story swings back to Folsom, and we see Phoenix's Cash performing for the prisoners. The film, therefore, treats the concert almost as the destination. But it didn’t mean Cash’s turbulent life had come to an end. Just that events continued to unfold – but without Vivian.

Cash with his first wife, Vivian Liberto.

The movie covers Cash’s famous proposal to Carter on a concert stage in London, Ontario – interestingly only a few kilometers from where I wrote this post.

Mural depicting Cash's proposal on the exterior of
Canada Life Place in London, Ontario. 

Another fascinating aspect of the Folsom shin dig was the emergence of Glen Sherley, a musician who became part of the Cash legend.

He didn't come through the Folsom gates with Cash, Carter or Perkins. He was already on the other side a resident serving time for armed robbery. By 1968 he had spent considerable portions of his life as an inmate in the California prison system where he honed his skill as a songwriter.

One of Sherley's compositions was called Greystone Chapel, a song inspired by the chapel inside Folsom itself. He managed to have the song recorded, and a cassette tape found its way to Reverend Floyd Gressett, a minister who worked with prisoners and also happened to know Cash.

Greystone Chapel inside Folsom Prison.

On January 12, 1968, the night before the concerts, Cash listened to it, loved what he heard and decided he wanted to perform the song the following morning. He stayed up late that night learning it.

The best part of the story is that Glen Sherley apparently knew none of this as he took his place among the inmates to watch Cash perform, completely unaware that during the previous night one of the biggest stars in country music had been sitting in a motel room learning his song.

Sherley in attendance at Folsom Prison show.

Sherley watched as Cash tore through songs about prisons, trains, murder, loneliness and bad decisions, many of them describing lives that the men sitting in front of him understood well.

Near the end of the concert, Cash introduced another song and explained that it had been written by someone right there inside Folsom Prison. Then he said the man's name: Glen Sherley.

Cash shaking hands with Sherley.

Cash's bass player, Marshall Grant, later recalled Sherley essentially melting into his seat as the prisoners around him erupted. Suddenly, the guy sitting among them wasn't simply another inmate. Johnny Cash was standing onstage about to sing something he had written.

Because Columbia was recording the concert, Sherley's moment didn't stay inside Folsom. Greystone Chapel became the closing song on At Folsom Prison, meaning that this unknown prisoner's composition travelled beyond those gates even while its writer couldn't.

You'd think that would be the wonderful little piece of trivia at the end of Glen Sherley's story, but it wasn't. Sherley kept writing behind bars, and in 1971 another of his songs, Portrait of My Woman, was recorded by country star Eddy Arnold. Arnold didn't bury it on an album either. The song became a single and the title track of his Portrait of My Woman album. Sherley also got the extraordinary opportunity to record an album of his own while incarcerated at Vacaville, Prison. The Folsom prisoner whose song Cash had unexpectedly performed was slowly becoming a legitimate country songwriter without having built anything resembling a normal life outside prison.

There seemed to be a remarkable redemption story forming, and Cash tried to help make it happen. When Sherley was paroled in 1971, Cash didn't simply congratulate him and move on. Sherley became associated with Cash's House of Cash publishing operation and eventually joined Cash's touring organization.

For a while, the story must have seemed almost too perfect: an imprisoned songwriter has one of his songs unknowingly passed onto Johnny Cash; he hears Cash perform it inside a prison; has another song recorded by Eddy Arnold; gets released and finds himself welcomed into the professional country-music world.

Unfortunately, real life refused to provide a Hollywood ending. Sherley struggled badly outside prison. Years of incarceration hadn't prepared him for the schedules, expectations and pressures of life on the road. His behaviour became increasingly unpredictable, his relationship with members of Cash's organization deteriorated, and eventually that extraordinary second chance fell apart. His music career faded, his personal life deteriorated and, in 1978, Glen Sherley died by suicide at the age of 42.

Sherley's story changes At Folsom Prison for me. The mythology of the record naturally revolves around Johnny Cash walking into that prison dressed in black, facing a room filled with inmates and delivering that famous introduction, “Hello, I'm Johnny Cash.” That's the image that survived, and Walk the Line helped introduce it to another generation. But what I hadn't appreciated before digging into this album was how many other stories were unfolding in that room.

The 500 - #100 - Odessey and Oracle - The Zombies

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #100

Album Title: Odessey and Oracle

Artist: The Zombies

Genre: Chamber Pop, Baroque Pop, Psychedelic Pop

Recorded: EMI and Olympic Studios, London, England

Released: April, 1968

My age at release: Three

How familiar was I with it before this week: A couple of songs

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #243 - dropping 143 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: A Rose For Emily

Right from the start, something didn't sit right when I first saw this record coming up on Rolling Stone Magazine's 500 Greatest Albums list. Then it hit me. Odessey and Oracle is spelled wrong. Initially, I assumed the missing "y"  a  psychedelic statement but, as it turns out, it was just a typographical error.

The album cover designer, Terry Quirk, who was a friend of Zombie's bassist Chris White, made the mistake. By the time it was noticed, the record was ready for release and the band was on the verge of breaking up. In fact, the five members were already investigating new careers.

• Vocalist Colin Blunstone was training to be an insurance broker/clerk. 
• Drummer, Hugh Grundy had lined up a job in banking. 
• White, who was also the primary songwriter, planned to return to his studies to become a teacher. 
• Organist Rod Argent and guitarist Paul Atkinson were weighing the options of returning to university, or pursuing music with a new group. (They would chose the latter and the rock group Argent was formed in 1969).

The typo should have been an exclamation mark on a short and forgettable career. Instead, it marked an important milestone for the group. Sixty five years after forming in St. Albans, England, The Zombies remain one of the most beloved bands of The British Invasion.

They had enjoyed moderate success with the hit She's Not There from their debut record Begin Here, but The Zombies never quite broke through the way many of their British Invasion peers did. By the time they entered the studio in 1967, the band was running low on money, momentum and optimism. However, this is what made Odessey and Oracle special. It was forged by a group that more or less thought the end had arrived. Instead of chasing trends or desperately searching for a hit, they simply made the album they wanted to make. It was one filled with gorgeous harmonies, imaginative arrangements and songs that often disguised loneliness, regret and uncertainty, set within delightful melodies structured like finely crafted Baroque-Pop symphonies.

A Rose For Emily, described as a "whirling mini-symphony"
by Irish Independent critic Ed Power, is one of several
gorgeous tracks on the record.

Throughout the beautiful arrangements, the thing that stood out to me was White's bass work. Rather than simply following the chord changes or reinforcing the melody, he frequently slipped into what musicians call a countermelody, which is defined as an independent musical line that complements the song while charting its own course. It's a style of bass playing I've always loved. Some of my favourite bassists include Geddy Lee of Rush, Chris Squire of Yes, John Entwistle of The Who and Steve Harris of Iron Maiden They built entire careers on the idea that the bass could be more than a supporting instrument.

So, I decided to do a little research into the history of countermelody or, as it is sometimes called, contrapuntal bass playing. Fittingly, for the Baroque Pop record Odessey and Oracle, the origins of countermelody can be traced all the way back to the most famous Baroque composers, Johann Sebastian Bach. 

In Bach's music, every voice had its own identity. Rather than one melody sitting on top of simple accompaniment, multiple melodic lines, including the bass line, would weave around one another, each contributing to the whole while maintaining its own character. 

Johann Sebastian Bach

Centuries later, jazz bassists began creating walking bass lines that moved independently beneath the melody. However, in the early days of rock and roll the bass was often relegated to a simpler role, dutifully outlining the chord changes and staying out of the way. That changed when Elvis Presley's bass player, Bill Black, introduced a slap technique that brought rhythm and energy to tracks, including That's All Right.

Bill Black (right) performing with Elvis.

Then along came players like James Jamerson at Motown records who is credited with transforming the bass from a time-keeping instrument to one that provided a melodic voice. Jamerson filled songs with inventive runs and syncopated rhythms that seemed to have a conversation with the main melody. He became a massive influence on Beatle Paul McCartney who increasingly treated the bass like a melodic instrument, particularly on one of my favourite Beatles' songs, Something.

Sheet music for Something shows the complexity
of the bass melody.

By the late 1960s, musicians were pushing the idea even further. Not only was Chris White of The Zombies creating subtle countermelodies on Odessey and Oracle, John Entwistle of The Who was playing complex bass runs that often sounded like the lead guitar operating in the lower register. It is surprising how much is going on when listening to an isolated track of his bass work on the song Won't Get Fooled Again.

From there, progressive rock embraced the concept wholeheartedly. Chris Squire of Yes turned the bass into a second lead instrument, while Geddy Lee of Rush filled every available space with intricate melodic runs that somehow never overwhelm the songs.

Geddy Lee on the cover of Bass Guitar magazine
(October, 2019).

Heavy metal adopted the idea in its own way. Steve Harris of Iron Maiden used galloping, highly melodic bass lines that often carried as much momentum as the guitars. Listening to Harris, you get the sense that the bass isn't following the song so much as pulling it forward.

Steve Harris of Iron Maiden.

Today, contrapuntal bass playing can be heard across genres -- from progressive rock and metal to indie rock and modern jazz. Yet the basic idea remains the same as it was in Bach's day -- music becomes more interesting when the bass stops blindly following everyone else and starts having a conversation of its own.

Odessey and Oracle finally found an audience after The Zombies had already given up on it. When the album was released in 1968 it barely made a ripple and the band broke up, with most members moving into "civilian life". Then, the strangest thing happened. A rock radio station in Boise, Idaho, introduced the record's final track, Time Of The Season, into regular rotation. It quickly found an audience, and by the spring of 1969 it was sitting near the top of the American charts.

Album jacket for the single, Time Of The Season.

Unfortunately, by the time Time of the Season climbed the charts, The Zombies no longer existed. However, this was not the end of their collective Odyssey. The band reunited briefly in 1991 and later returned for a remarkable second act that introduced their music to a new generation of listeners.

This autumn, they will perform at the third Begin Here Festival in St. Albans, England, the city where their journey began more than six decades ago. Four of the band's five original members will be part of the celebration. The only absence will be guitarist Paul Atkinson, who died of cancer in 2004. Chris White will be present, playing his countermelodic basslines at 83 years of age.

The 500 - #114 - Disraeli Gears - Cream

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album #:114
Album Title: Disraeli Gears
Artist: Cream
Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Blues Rock, Hard Rock
Recorded: Atlantic Recording Studios, New York, U.S.A.

Released: November, 1967
My age at release: 2
How familiar was I with it before this week: Quite
Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #170, dropping 56 places

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Sunshine Of Your Love

At the risk of sounding like a cranky old-timer, I’d like to take you back to a time when buying concert tickets didn’t involve a glowing screen or a stable internet connection. Long before Ticketmaster.com, and even before phoning in an order became the norm, a ticket buyer had to show up...in person...to claim a spot in a line where you hoped to secure a seat at to upcoming show.

In London, Ontario, in the 1980s, that ritual almost always led to one place: Sam The Record Man, in the heart of downtown. It was there, amid the racks of vinyl, that music fandom required patience, persistence and, sometimes, a 5 a.m. arrival time, even in cold or rainy weather.

A ticket line-up outside Sam The Record Man in London. 
This location predates the one I visited, half a block away

It was a chilly spring morning, around 6 o’clock in 1986 when my longtime chum Jeff Ceaser and I arrived at the front doors of Sam’s, determined to be first in line. Our mission was clear -- get tickets to see the supergroup GTR at Toronto’s legendary Massey Hall that summer.

GTR promotional photo - the rest of the band
featured three talented, but lesser known, British
Musicians - Max Bacon, Phil Spalding and Jonathan Mover.

GTR were a short‑lived British rock outfit built around two guitar heroes from our favourite bands – Steve Howe, a founding member of Yes and Steve Hackett, lead guitarist for Genesis from 1970 to 1977, who hooked up with Bacon, Spalding and Mover. This was an irresistible proposition for teen-age prog-rock obsessives like us.

The five-man group’s debut, self-titled record had spawned an oddly pop‑leaning single, When the Heart Rules the Mind. This was a song clearly engineered for radio success and unbeknownst to us at the time, destined to become a one‑hit wonder, relegated to the dustbin of Gen X music memory.

We suspected our pre-dawn arrival would put us first in line, but as we approached the record store, we spotted two figures in the doorway alcove. Disappointed, we made our way to their location and then realized that we recognized them. I didn't know Scott (Lupasko) or Dave (Adamick) well, as they were a few years younger. But I had interacted with them casually at their various part-time high school jobs. They had worked at a burger place and a gas station in the mall beside our high school. They were also well regarded as talented musicians and music lovers, so it wasn't surprising to find them lining up for tickets to see the two guitar virtuoso

The Steves (Hackett and Howe) who's union
created the "supergroup" GTR - an abbreviation of Guitar.

As the four of us chatted, waiting for the record store and ticket booth to open four hours hence, I really began to connect with them. They were friendly, intelligent and knowledgeable, with terrific and varied tastes in music. "A couple of good blokes" as my British cousins would say. Somewhere in our conversations I revealed that I wrote poetry that could become song lyrics and they mentioned they had formed a band and were looking for a lyricist and singer. Perhaps I could bring my poetry, my voice and maybe even my saxophone to a music rehearsal space to jam with them.

Shot of Scott (left) and Dave in our high-school smoking pit with friends.

Some time later, I found myself making my way to a dilapidated part of the city, a largely abandoned pocket of industrial buildings and warehouses tucked beneath an overpass and hard up against the Canadian National (CN) railway tracks that cut through London. It was the kind of place that felt forgotten, vaguely forbidding, and perfectly suited to loud music and...dubious, if not criminal, choices. The buildings are still there, but the neighbourhood has been thoroughly transformed. What was once grit and rust has since been scrubbed clean and gentrified, now home to craft brewpubs and boutique fitness studios and rock-climbing gyms.

2025 Google Street View photo of the warehouse we used as a jam space.

I should have known I was out of my depth the moment I arrived. As I climbed the stairs to the rehearsal space, I could already hear Scott, Dave and their drummer, Chris Johnson. They were sensational. The three of them were effortlessly noodling their way through an improvised blues jam, locked in and clearly far more accomplished than I’d dared to imagine. I really should have feigned an illness and quietly retreated. But with youthful bravado fully deployed, I pressed on, stepping into the concrete bunker of a studio clutching my juvenile, but heartfelt, lyrics in one hand and my saxophone in the other.

Me (right) in 1986. Dave O'Leary (also a talented musician)
to the left.

It didn't take long for us to realize that my saxophone playing was not a fit. I am an okay player, but only if I have the sheet music and a few hours to practice. However, I was unable to transpose on the fly and my horn, tuned to E-flat, didn't work with the band’s instruments, effortlessly being jammed in a variety of keys. Since then, I have learned to carry a handy chart with me and use it as a cheat sheet during jams, but still prefer to know the music and have the score on a stand in front of me.

Transposition Chart.

"Why don't you sing a couple songs?" was the next suggestion. A Battle of the Bands was to be held at Mingles Tavern in a month and the trio was rehearsing two well known ‘60s songs. The first was Voodoo Chile, an acid rock classic from The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and the second came from this week's Cream record, Disraeli Gears, a psychedelic blues rock track dubbed Sunshine Of Your Love.

Cover jacket for the single, Sunshine Of Your Love.

Disraeli Gears was the second studio recording from British hard and psychedelic rock pioneers Cream. I wrote a brief account of the band in my July, 2024, post for their third record, Wheels of Fire, which appears at position #205 on The 500. I'll write again about the group in 13 weeks when we get to their debut record, Fresh Cream (#102).

Fresh Cream album jacket (1966).

The title, Disraeli Gears, has its origins in a misheard expression. When recording in 1967, guitarist Eric Clapton mentioned to a member of the band's crew that his bicycle had "derailleur gears" -- a term for the shifting mechanism on a multi-speed bike. The crew member, Mick Turner, either genuinely misheard Clapton or playfully riffed that they were "Disraeli Gears", named after Victorian British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881).

Back in that concrete and metal jam space, I tried my best to sing. In retrospect, I should have tackled Sunshine Of Your Love in my own voice, instead of trying to mimic Cream bassist and vocalist Jack Bruce. I think I could have pulled it off. That said, I was clearly not up to the level of talent that surrounded me. I was more than a weak link, I was a gear (Disraeli or derailleur) that needed to be replaced. Saving further embarrassment, I sacked myself before the Battle of the Bands event at Mingles. Dave, Scott and Chris soldiered on with Dave singing Cream and Hendrix songs that afternoon...far better than I’d managed. I was happy for their success, despite my bruised ego.

Entrance to Mingles and Talbot Inn, long since demolished to
make space for the city's Junior A Hockey rink and concert venue - 
now dubbed the Canada Life Centre.

The trio would go on to form their first band, Aura. They were all still high-school age In fact, they needed to wear special wrist bands when playing at Mingles to alert staff they were not of legal drinking age -- 19 in Ontario, Canada.

Poster for a performance by Aura, May 1988.

Not long after, the group expanded and rebranded as Poor Folk, now a five‑piece. Dave and Scott remained on guitar and bass, while Chris stepped out from behind the drum kit and into the spotlight as lead vocalist. The lineup was completed by Chris’s brother Mark on guitar and Tom Sanford on drums.

Poor Folk, Sanford is not with the band at this time, pictured
far left was temporary drummer Brent Blazieko.

For a time, Poor Folk became a weekly fixture at Hanover’s, a local pub in the Westmount Mall complex, which also housed the burger joint and gas station where Scott and Dave worked. Poor Folk developed a dedicated following, which was not surprising because each member of the band was impressively talented. They provided me with indisputable evidence that my most appropriate role in their musical ecosystem was that of an applauding audience member.

Westmount Mall in 1975, featuring the loveable, but tough, 
Cliff who was the security guard throughout my high-school years.

I've stayed in touch with Scott over the years and finally got a chance to reconnect with him last summer when he visited Canada. He and Dave went on an epic world travelling adventure after university and both landed in England to explore the music scene. It is there where they ultimately settled -- Scott in York and Dave in Essex, just outside London. I appreciate the help Scott gave me, through numerous text messages and shared pictures, as I wrote this post and tried to retrace a 40-year-old memory that began with a five-hour wait, and conversation outside Sam The Record Man in downtown London.