As we approached the tall, grey stone walls I couldn’t tell how high they were. Fifteen feet? Twenty feet? Thirty feet? However tall, they were a pole vaulters dream. Especially from the inside.
Getting out of the old, dirty, stinky prison bus, I stepped out with the other five, and was immediately “greeted” by a prison guard. “All right everybody, empty your pockets, take off your belts, and your shoes. Then put your stuff in these metal boxes.” The guard wasn’t smiling.
As I look back, it happened so long ago that memory is cloudy, and sometimes clogged. Just like most other days these days.
At first we were escorted into a medium sized wire cage. Trapped like pigeons. It was a good sign that we weren’t in handcuffs. It was noon time, and I asked the guard, “What’s for lunch?”
“You’ll be getting Folsom Prison’s finest,” he gruffly said. “A bologna sandwich, an apple, and a bottle of water.”
I didn’t mind, because I was too nervous to care. It seemed like lunch went fast, and that’s because I knew what was head of us, sort of. I had a fuzzy concept, but reality was about to confront me head on.
Thirty minutes later we were escorted into the gigantic main yard of the prison, and there it was. A wooden structure that reminded me of the gallows, but without any wood going up high in the air with rope nooses dangling down. The guard said, “Now you boys get on up those steps, and get ready.”
Dale went up first, took a quick look around, and said to the rest of us, “Hey, you guys won’t believe this. Get up here and take a look!”
When the rest of us got up there on that wooden structure we could plainly see it. Yep, there it was. Rope. Clothesline rope. White, thin rope that was stretched out in front of us, horizontally, for about ten yards, from left to right in our view, and about five yards away from where we were standing. “I wonder what that’s for?” Jim said. “Yeah, me too,” remarked Tony. The other Tony followed up, “Maybe they were measuring something?”
Finally I asked the prison guard about the rope, and he said, “You’ll see.”
Just then out of the corner of my eye (left one) I saw it. I mean I saw them. And them were coming, and fast. First one, then two, then four, then eight, then sixteen, and then thirty-two. And finally they were all standing in front of us. About one thousand I figured, give or take. And you know what? They were now all standing just in front of us, not more than five yards away, on the other side of the white, thin, flimsy clothes line rope.
“You see? That’s what the rope is for,” said the prison guard, smiling. “That rope is there to keep you safe,” he chuckled.
“What the, what the, what the heck good is that?” Dale said under his breath, even though I could hear him. Then he looked at me and said, “Well, it will have to do. But I’m saying a prayer just in case.” And I said to Dale, “Me too.” Jim piped in, “Well, there are some guards out there among the prisoners.” But then Tony piped-up, “Yep, there are guards, but they don’t have any guns.”
Soooooo, by now there were fifteen hundred prisoners standing right in front of us. Yep, we could see the whites of their eyes. Nobody was smiling (including us). I said to Dale, “We’d better do something quick.” So Dale picked up his guitar, I picked up my banjo, Tony picked up his mandolin, Jim picked up his bass, and the other Tony got something percussive. We went into a super-fast version of “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” It went over fairly well, with mild applause. And some of our blue denim audience even broke into a smile. Then it was “Dark Hollow,” “If I Had the Wings of an Angel,” (good audience response on that one) and a number of other standards. The audience looked semi-appreciative, and happy to be out of their cells into the fresh air hearing some live music. After 30 musical minutes went by, I said to Dale, “Do you think it’s time to unveil our secret weapon?” He said, “Okay, but don’t forget that we have two secret weapons.” That’s when Dale put down his acoustic guitar, picked up his electric guitar, plugged it in, and started the introduction to the song, “Folsom Prison Blues.”
Now you have to realize that Johnny Cash had been at exactly the same place, and approximately the same time of day, just a few years earlier where we were now standing. You’d had to have a certain something to play that song in that place, in front of that audience, not too long after Johnny Cash was there doing the same thing.
But I have to stop here and tell ya that our lead singer, Dale Hopper, could have made a full time living singing country songs in Nashville. He comes from Montana, has a quality voice, plays a mean guitar, and to put it bluntly, when he sings it’s like he has swallowed a microphone. Boy Howdy, when he sings, people stop what they are doing and listen.
So at the end of “Folsom Prison Blues,” the audience came alive. Clapping, cheering, giving us the “thumbs-up,” and smiles as wide as the clothesline rope that separated us from them. All we could hear
was, “More, more, more!” So I was thinking that it couldn’t get any better than this. I was wrong.
If you have a memory better than mine, you may remember that I previously related that we had TWO secret weapons with us at the time. We had one song to go before we finished our set and were to be released from stone walls and steel bars. And so we said, “Okay Donna, you’re up!”
What we had done successfully is to bring our guest lady singer into Folsom Prison without being noticed by anybody but two prison guards. We did this by keeping Donna inside of the rest of us boys in the band, while we were walking all the way up to and onto the wooden stage, and where we were performing.
Now Donna was, well, she was real, real easy on the eyes. And when she stepped up to the front of stage, grabbed the microphone from Dale and started singing, “Stand By Your Man,” the applause and noise level from the prisoners was so loud you’d think Gabriele had just flown in with his trumpet and was about to blow down the mammoth cold, grey, tall, prison walls that were in front, behind, and to the left and right of us.
You know how entertainers say, “Leave you audience wanting more!” Well that’s what we did. After Donna’s song we stopped playing, put our instruments in their cases, and stood by on the wooden stage while the prisoners were escorted back to their cells. This time they weren’t running.
After the prisoners were gone from the main yard, and escorted to their living quarters, one of the prison guards said, “Okay, you folks can go now. Thank you very much.”
It was with a collective sigh of relief from our band that things went well. We walked down the steps of the stage, and then walked toward freedom’s gate. As we were going through the gate, from up above, three stories high, out of a small, barred window of the Bastille, we heard a husky male voice say, “Goodbye Donna! See you soon….”
Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ve been in prison.
