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25 Minutes to Go
Sound Beat
English - November 08, 2023 10:00 - 5 MB - ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsSociety & Culture History sound history recorded belfer wax cylinders syracuse university audio archive Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Johnny Cash got a little help from a beloved children's book author on this one.
This live version of “25 Minutes to Go” is from Johnny Cash’s 1968 Columbia LP At Folsom Prison. The song gives a minute-by-minute description of a man awaiting the hangman’s noose.
Two thousand Folsom prisoners attended Cash’s famed performance at the prison a year earlier; however, Death Row residents were not allowed. On performing a song about an execution at a prison, Cash said, “I was trying to get things close to the bone.”
Who wrote the song that Cash used to accomplish this? None other than beloved children’s author Shel Silverstein, who also wrote the Cash classic “A Boy Named Sue.”
This episode was co-written by Syracuse University student Josh Daghir as part of the Sound Beat Class Partnership.
Image: “Folsom Prison, East Gate”. The image is in the public domain.