It was the oppo­site of super­star rock con­certs, or even a sweaty, dark stage like that at CBGB’s in New York. But the din­ing hall at Fol­som Prison was the set­ting for a con­cert that would give John­ny Cash, on the verge of a career col­lapse, a sec­ond chance on life. And it would become one of the unlike­li­est venues in the his­to­ry of coun­try music.

Noth­ing was the same after this unlike­li­est of turn­arounds. After the album record­ed at this gig, Cash would be hur­tled into super­star­dom. He’d get his own nation­al TV show. And instead of being a drug and alco­hol casu­al­ty, he’d take on the man­tel of elder states­man with a hint of dan­ger. No, he’d nev­er killed a man in Reno just to watch him die, but when he sang it in that long drawl, you could believe so. None of the orig­i­nal artists that played on Sun Records had a sec­ond act quite like Cash.

And that’s all down to the deci­sion to play a con­cert at California’s Fol­som Prison, in which he had set one of his most famous songs from 1953.

In Polyphonic’s nine minute mini-doc above on the mak­ing of this clas­sic album, he tries to piece togeth­er what makes the Fol­som Prison album so spe­cial.

You might not think of the album as a rad­i­cal piece of late ‘60s music sim­i­lar to The White Album or Beggar’s Ban­quet, but it is. For it was birthed with the help of pro­duc­er Bob John­ston, who had a try-any­thing atti­tude that was very much in the air in 1968. The record­ing is raw and very, very live sound­ing. The audi­ence of pris­on­ers is a part of the mix. Cash’s voice is sim­i­lar­ly raw and flubs and mis­takes were kept in. (But as the video points out, some of the audi­ence nois­es were edit­ed for greater impact, like a ‘whoop’ after Cash’s infa­mous “Reno” line.) June Carter’s sweet voice con­trasts with Cash’s, but there’s an air of ten­sion to the duets, as these men prob­a­bly haven’t seen a young woman in the flesh for a very long time.

There’s also the empa­thy of the entire project. Cash sings like he’s one of them, and his songs are of iso­la­tion and lone­li­ness. He even sings a song writ­ten by an inmate called “Grey­stone Chapel.” While so many acts at this time were strip­ping away artifice–think of Bob Dylan’s turn away from his psy­che­del­ic mid-‘60s height–Cash beat them all to it with unadorned hon­esty, humor, and in the mid­dle of a prison, a sense of joy.

This year marks the 50th anniver­sary of the album, and the racial make-up of Fol­som has changed–it’s gone from a major­i­ty white prison to one pop­u­lat­ed by African-Amer­i­cans, Lati­nos, and Asians.
And while coun­try music would not get the same recep­tion now as it did then, the biggest change is that pris­on­ers make the music them­selves. In a Los Ange­les Times arti­cle about the prison, “the musi­cians at Fol­som have formed hip-hop, hard rock/heavy met­al, Latin rock, alt-rock, smooth jazz and pro­gres­sive rock ensem­bles with­in Folsom’s walls.” One recent artist to vis­it and per­form was hip-hop musi­cian Com­mon.

But none of that would have hap­pened with­out Cash’s his­toric vis­it. As he told the Times’ Robert Hilburn about that moment, “I knew this was it. My chance to make up for all the times when I had messed up. I kept hop­ing my voice wouldn’t give out again. Then I sud­den­ly felt calm. I could see the men look­ing over at me. There was some­thing in their eyes that made me real­ize every­thing was going to be okay. I felt I had some­thing they need­ed.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John­ny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First Time, 1971

John­ny Cash’s Short and Per­son­al To-Do List

Watch John­ny Cash’s Poignant Final Inter­view & His Last Per­for­mance: “Death, Where Is Thy Sting?” (2003)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

The cul­tur­al law that we must indulge, or at least tol­er­ate, the quirks of genius has much less force these days than it once did. Noto­ri­ous­ly per­fec­tion­is­tic Stan­ley Kubrick’s fabled fits of ver­bal abuse, for exam­ple, might skirt a line with actors and audi­ences now, though it’s hard to argue with the results of his process. Many oth­er exam­ples of artists’ bad behav­ior need no fur­ther men­tion, they are now so well-known and right­ly reviled. When it comes to anoth­er leg­en­dar­i­ly demand­ing auteur, Glenn Gould was as devot­ed to his art, and as dogged­ly idio­syn­crat­ic, as it gets.

But the case of Gould presents us with a very dif­fer­ent pic­ture than that of the artist who lash­es out at or abus­es those around him. His eccen­tric­i­ties con­sist­ed main­ly of her­met­ic habits, odd attach­ments, and a ten­den­cy to hum and sing loud­ly while he played Bach, Mozart, Schoen­berg, or any num­ber of oth­er clas­si­cal com­posers whose work he re-inter­pret­ed. While Leonard Bern­stein praised Gould as a “think­ing per­former” (one with whom Bern­stein sharply dis­agreed), he was also a par­tic­u­lar­ly noisy per­former, a fact that bedev­iled record­ing engi­neers.

As music crit­ic Tim Page says in the inter­view clip at the top, the habit of hum­ming also trou­bled Gould, who saw it as a lia­bil­i­ty but could not play at his best with­out doing it. “I would say that Glenn was in sort of an ecsta­t­ic trans­port,” dur­ing a lot of his per­for­mances. “When you look at him, he’s almost auto-erot­ic…. He is clear­ly hav­ing a major and pro­found reac­tion to it as he is also mak­ing it hap­pen.” The trait man­i­fest­ed “from the begin­ning” of Gould’s life, his father Bert once said. “When you’d expect a child to cry, Glenn would always hum.” (He may or may not have had Asperger’s syn­drome.)

“On the warm sum­mer day of the first record­ing ses­sion” of his first record­ing of Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, writes Edward Roth­stein at The New York Times:

He arrived at the record­ing stu­dio wear­ing a win­ter coat, a beret, a muf­fler and gloves. He car­ried a batch of tow­els, bot­tles of spring water, sev­er­al vari­eties of pills and a 14-inch high piano chair to sit on. He soaked his arms in hot water for 20 min­utes, took sev­er­al med­ica­tions, adjust­ed each leg of his chair, and pro­ceed­ed to play, loud­ly hum­ming and singing along. After a week, he had pro­duced one of the most remark­able per­for­mances of Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions on record.

See a young Gould fur­ther up play J.S. Bach’s Par­ti­ta #2, loud­ly hum­ming and singing expres­sive­ly as though it were an opera. Anoth­er of Gould’s incur­able quirks also threat­ened to be a detri­ment to his per­for­mances, espe­cial­ly after he renounced per­form­ing live and retreat­ed per­ma­nent­ly to the stu­dio. Gould insist­ed on per­form­ing for over 21 years on a “chair that has become an object of rev­er­ence for Gould devo­tees,” explains the pod­cast Lud­wig van Toron­to. Gould was “obsessed” with the chair and “wouldn’t per­form on any­thing else.”

In the video above, you can see Gould defend the diminu­tive chair—built by his father for his child­hood practice—telling a TV pre­sen­ter, “I’ve nev­er giv­en any con­cert in any­thing else.” The chair, he says, is “a mem­ber of the fam­i­ly! It is a boon com­pan­ion, with­out which I do not func­tion, I can­not oper­ate.”

Along with his exact­ly spec­i­fied height for the piano, over which he hov­ered with his chin just inch­es from the mid­dle C, a rug under his feet, and a very warm stu­dio, which he often sat in wear­ing win­ter clothes, Gould’s chair is one of the most dis­tinc­tive of his odd­i­ties. The chair is “one of the most famous musi­cal objects in the his­to­ry of clas­si­cal music,” Kate Shap­ero writes at Gould inter­view site Unheard Notes. But it caused con­sid­er­able con­ster­na­tion in the stu­dio.

Now resid­ing in a glass case at the Nation­al Library of Cana­da, Gould’s chair is so dilap­i­dat­ed that “the only thing that kept it from falling apart,” says Lud­wig van Toron­to, “is some duct tape, screws, and piano wire.” Even before it acquired the noisy hard­ware of the met­al brack­ets hold­ing up its two front legs, Gould’s ani­mat­ed play­ing made the chair rock and creak in dis­tract­ing ways. But while Gould’s unin­ten­tion­al accom­pa­ni­ments turn some peo­ple off, his true fans, and they are mul­ti­tude, either find his vocal­iza­tions charm­ing or com­plete­ly tune them out. (They dis­ap­pear when he begins per­form­ing above.)

Gould’s “singing authen­ti­cates and human­izes his per­for­mances,” com­pos­er Luke Dahn argues. “It reveals a per­former so entire­ly absorbed in the music’s moment and reminds us that this is a per­for­mance, even if with­in the con­fines of the stu­dio.” His unusu­al qual­i­ties “dis­tin­guish his record­ings from those of count­less note-per­fect record­ings avail­able today that take on a fab­ri­cat­ed, ster­ile, and even robot­ic qual­i­ty. (Is per­fec­tion ever very inter­est­ing?)” Like the great­est musi­cal innovators—John Coltrane espe­cial­ly comes to mind—Gould has wide appeal both inside his genre cir­cles and far out­side them.

“I can put him on for hours,” says not­ed Gould devo­tee John Waters, “he’s like nobody else. He was the ulti­mate original—a real out­sider. And he had a great style, the hats and the gloves and so on.” What­ev­er the ori­gins of Gould’s quirks, and what­ev­er his mis­giv­ings about them, Gould lovers per­ceive them not as flaws to be over­looked or tol­er­at­ed but essen­tial qual­i­ties of his pas­sion and utter­ly unique per­son­al style. See him “say some­thing orig­i­nal” about Beethoven above, then deliv­er a tremen­dous per­for­mance, most­ly hum free but total­ly enthralling, of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 17 in D Minor—a piece whose nick­name cap­tures Gould’s musi­cal effect: “The Tem­pest.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glenn Gould Plays Bach on His U.S. TV Debut … After Leonard Bern­stein Explains What Makes His Play­ing So Great (1960)

Hear the Famous­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Con­cert Where Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces Glenn Gould & His Idio­syn­crat­ic Per­for­mance of Brahms’ First Piano Con­cer­to (1962)

Lis­ten to Glenn Gould’s Shock­ing­ly Exper­i­men­tal Radio Doc­u­men­tary, The Idea of North (1967)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness