AMG Review of At Folsom Prison/At San Quentin/America

Zac Johnson
All Music Guide

This Columbia box set of Johnny Cash's two prison albums (At Folsom Prison and At San Quentin) paired with his 1972 album America: A 200-Year Salute in Story and Song sort of makes sense -- the albums all come from the same period, and while the prison recordings are not really patriotic in the classic sense, they speak volumes about the American situation. Unfortunately, Folsom and San Quentin sound a little redundant when played back to back, and...well...America is just not a very good album. Some of the songs on the two live albums overlap and jumping from the ragged tense cell block atmosphere to the metered historical recordings on the third disc makes for a strange listen. Still, those two prison records are pretty spectacular, containing definitive versions of "Cocaine Blues," "Jackson," and the goofy novelty of "Dirty Old Egg-Suckin' Dog," "Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart," and "A Boy Named Sue." While neither of these can detract from the oddness of Cash's 40-minute history lesson, they're still American classics, and if you're a Johnny Cash fan with a three-disc-sized hole in your collection, you could do much worse than filling it with this.