Three chords. One muted string. A room at Folsom State Prison that had every reason not to clap.
The song that made Johnny Cash's career runs on a guitar trick simpler than anything in your practice routine, and harder to get right.
Song Breakdown
Only three chords hold this song together, and that’s exactly why it’s still one of the best songs a beginner can learn and one of the hardest to play well. Anyone can memorize E, A, and B7 in an afternoon. Almost nobody nails the feel on the first hundred tries, because the feel isn’t in the chords. It’s in a muted right hand doing an impression of a freight train, recorded live in a room full of inmates who had every reason not to clap.
That’s the version most people know: Johnny Cash, backed by the Tennessee Three plus Carl Perkins on rhythm guitar, recorded January 13, 1968, at Folsom State Prison in California. The song itself is older, Cash first cut it in 1955 for Sun Records, but the live take from behind those walls is the one that made it a No. 1 country single and a piece of American recording history.
This issue breaks the song down piece by piece: the technique that makes it chug like a train, the chart it was up against the week it came out, and a practice-ready chord chart so you can put your hands on it today.
Learning objectives
By the end of this issue, you will be able to:
Explain the palm-muted “boom-chicka-boom” technique Luther Perkins used to build Cash’s signature train sound
Play the alternating bass note pattern that gives the rhythm its forward motion
Understand the difference between Perkins’ lead part and Carl Perkins’ rhythm part on the Folsom recording
Place the song in its chart moment: what it was up against on the Hot 100 the week it was released
Play the E, A, B7, and E7 chord shapes and the turnaround from the tab below
