In the most troubled year of a most troubled decade, Johnny Cash thought it would be a swell idea to take his tragicomic, country-gothic repertoire into one of America's hardest hard-time prisons and do a little show for the boys. What makes At Folsom Prison stand out is not so much the power of Cash's songs, or the tension that you can almost taste and smell coming off this record. No, it's the unspoken compassion Cash has for the inmates he is singing for. He didn't go there to preach, and he didn't go there to grandstand. He just figured that everybody deserves a good show now and then. And that's exactly what they got.

Tom Nord