On this day (January 1) in 1958, Johnny Cash played a free concert behind the walls of San Quentin Prison in California. It would be the first of many concerts Cash played for groups of incarcerated men. Later, his prison concerts would lead to a pair of hit albums. His first, though, was much more impactful in hindsight. That day, a young inmate named Merle Haggard saw the Man in Black perform and was inspired to chase his dream of country stardom.
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Cash never spent time behind bars. However, he remains more closely associated with prison than any other country artist. He released “Folsom Prison Blues” as the B-side of his first hit, “So Doggone Lonesome” in 1955. More than a decade later, in 1968, the live version of the song topped the country chart. That song was a single from his first live album, At Folsom Prison. The next year, he released his second live album, At San Quentin. Both albums went to No. 1.
Haggard, on the other hand, sang about being a criminal and doing time because he had lived that life. According to History, Haggard went to jail for the first time when he was 11 years old. He had several more run-ins with the law while he was still a juvenile. Then, in 1957, when he was 18, he caught a burglary charge and was handed a 15-year sentence. Fortunately, he only did two years of that sentence before being released. He was there long enough to see Johnny Cash perform and realize what he wanted to do with his life.
Merle Haggard Recalls Watching Johnny Cash Perform in Prison
Merle Haggard recalled seeing Johnny Cash perform at San Quentin during an interview with Dan Rather. “He’d been over in San Francisco having a party the night before and he’d sung or talked his voice completely off,” Haggard recalled. “He could just barely talk. I thought, ‘This guy’s in trouble. There’s five thousand men here, and he can’t talk and can’t sing.’ I was engrossed with wondering how he was going to pull this off,” he added.
As it turned out, the show went over well. It went so well, in fact, that it made Haggard a minor celebrity of sorts. “When Cash left, there was guys all over that yard with guitars. They all knew that I played, and there must have been 20 guys come up to me and say, ‘Can you show me how he did that intro on Folsom Prison Blues?’ Pretty soon, we were more popular, we had more clout, because we understood what that guy did,” Haggard said.
Four years later, in 1962, Haggard released his debut single, kicking off one of the most iconic careers in country music.
Featured Image by Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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