I hear the train a-comin"

On this day in 1968 Johnny Cash performed two concerts at Folsom Prison in California, one at 9:40 AM, the other at 12:40 PM. The album recorded from the two sets was released in May of that year and helped resuscitate the singer's flagging career. He was 35.

Cash wrote "Folsom Prison Blues" in 1955. It's about a man stuck in Folsom Prison for not listening to his mother. (She'd urged him not to play with guns, but he subsequently shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.) Johnny Cash appears three times in A Book of Ages. The most poignant anecdote is about the time he met June Carter. It was love at first sight, but as so often happens in country music, Miss Cash was already married.

So Lonesome I Could Cry

On August 15, 1952, Hank Williams bought the baby blue Cadillac he'd eventually die in. On August 16, “Jambalaya” hit #1. On August 17, he was jailed for public drunkenness in Alexander City, Alabama, where he was vacationing. He was 28. Williams appears seven times in A Book of Ages.