"Hello. I'm Johnny Cash." That opening line, so deadpan and needless-- everybody, especially in Folsom, knows who Johnny Cash is-- may be the genesis of the Man in Black myth, even more so than the song "Man in Black". Making such a humble introduction, Cash sounds larger than life-- definitely larger than prison-- and he delivers an electric, excited performance on his signature Sun hit.

Egged on by W. S. Holland's driving snare and Luther Perkins' breakout guitar solos, Cash gives a shout-out to the Razorbacks ("Soo-ey!") and after the second verse laughs a playful heidi-ho. But as the song progresses, his freewheeling energy becomes hurried and dogged, and he sounds like a truly desperate man, as haunted by the idea of confinement as any of the inmates-- a measure of how deep his identification with his audience went. The fear in his voice still resonates decades later, long after the man has died and the Man in Black has become a canonical American figure. --Stephen M. Deusner