39adamstrand:Glen Sherley was an inmate at Folsom Prison in 1968 when Johnny Cash performed there. I

39adamstrand:

Glen Sherley was an inmate at Folsom Prison in 1968 when Johnny Cash performed there. In fact, Sherley was in the front row when Cash sang Sherley’s song “Greystone Chapel.”

“The night before I was going to record at Folsom prison,” Johnny Cash said, “I got to the motel and a preacher friend of mine brought me a tape of a song called “Greystone Chapel. He said a convict had written it about the chapel at Folsom. I listened to it one time and I said, ‘I’ve got to do this in the show tomorrow.’ So I stayed up and learned it, and the next day the preacher had him in the front row. I announced, ‘This song was written by Glen Sherley.’ It was a terrible, terrible thing to point him out among all those cons, but I didn’t think about that then. Everybody just had a fit, screaming and carrying on.”

Sherley was released from prison in 1971, and Cash was waiting for him at the prison gates. Cash tried to help Sherley, and hired him, but Cash became concerned about Sherley’s behavior and his threats of violence, that he fired him.

Sherley then worked for a cattle company and faded from public attention.

On 11 May 1978, he killed himself with a gunshot to the head.