Johnny Cash, Glen Sherley and Kristen Lamb

A Loose Connection: Folsom Untold and Rise of the Machines

I took a long walk while listening to Folsom Untold: The Strange True Story of Johnny Cash’s Greatest Album. I wanted to listen to Folsom because I’d recently read Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room (great stuff!) a novel about women in prison. Strangely though, the story of Johnny Cash, Glen Sherley, and music in Folsom connected to the book I’d just finished, Rise of the Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World by Kristen Lamb. Rise helps authors create their brands through social media.

Folsom appeared to me to have good examples of Lamb’s assertion that creatives will find connectors in unexpected places. These connectors can change the course of their careers.

Johnny Cash and Glen Sherley at Folsom Prison

In 1968, when Johnny Cash played and recorded live the concert that became the album At Folsom Prison, his career was waning. It was his idea to do concerts in prisons. Generally, his handlers thought that would be a disaster. One music producer, Bob Johnston (famous for working with Bob Dylan), decided to go ahead with it.

Fortunately for Cash, one of his best friends was the minister Floyd Gressett, who also worked at Folsom. Gressett knew a prisoner in Folsom, Glen Sherley, who had written the song “Greystone Chapel” about the chapel at Folsom. Gressett smuggled out a copy of the song and played it for Cash. Cash practiced it that night and played it as the last song of his Folsom double concert the next day. It was a hit with the prisoners and one of the popular songs from the album.

Four Loose Connections Restart a Career

This unexpected turn of events—that required someone in the music business who could get Cash a concert gig in Folsom, a prisoner there who was writing songs, and a minister who knew this and could get the music to Cash—depended on the sort of loose connections that Lamb suggests we all have whether we realize it or not.

Johnny Cash asked the then Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, to work to have Glen Sherley released. How did Cash know Reagan? He didn’t know him well, but before the Folsom Prison concerts, Reagan heard that Cash was rehearsing outside Sacramento and went to have pictures taken with him. Another loose connection. That was enough. Sherley was released, but with the stipulation that he had to live with Cash. He did.

Sherley later became a member of Cash’s band and had success in the country music business in his own right. This is not a perfect fairytale. Sherley died by suicide in 1978. HIs Wikipedia entry is just a short paragraph stating that he was unable to adjust to life outside of prison. According to Folsom Untold, Sherley’s drug addiction was insurmountable and may have been the reason for his suicide.

Seizing the Day

Digression: I also just happened to finish reading The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison. If you’ve been a pretty straight arrow all your life and worry that you have no drug or alcohol induced creativity, read it. Jamison discusses how deeply creative people (John Berryman being a significant example) have been stunted by addiction, much as it seems Glen Sherley was.

Think of the loose connections that returned Cash to stardom in the country music scene and that gave Glen Sherley the opportunity to leave prison and become a singer/songwriter. The right music executive, the minister who worked in prisons, the prisoner who happened to have written a song, the governor who happened to have taken photos with Cash. These are not deep connections. And yet, they worked together to create At Folsom Prison, Cash’s greatest achievement.

A Few Notes on Sources

Note: Folsom Untold: The Strange True Story of Johnny Cash’s Greatest Album is an Audible Original, so if you want to listen to it, go here. It’s less than two-and-a-half hours long. I was able to listen to it in a single long walk. It happens to be a February pick, so if you are an Audible subscriber, you can get it for free if you download it in the next ten days.

Kristen Lamb’s discussion of salespeople, mavens, and connectors and is based on Malcolm Gladwell’s discussion in The Tipping Point. I’m a fan of Gladwell’s work and discuss it here and here.