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On this day in history, January 13, 1968, Johnny Cash performs live at Folsom Prison with all-star band

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On this day in history, January 13, 1968, Johnny Cash performs live at Folsom Prison with all-star band

Johnny Cash, backed by an all-star ensemble of talent, stepped on stage at California State Prison in Folsom on this day in history, Jan. 13, 1968. 

It proved one of the most legendary concerts in American music lore — ending with a song that made a star out of an inmate seated in the front row. 

The Folsom Prison performance turned into one of the top-selling albums of the 1960s, reinvigorated Cash’s career and left a lingering imprint on American pop culture. 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY, JANUARY 12, 1951, RADIO LEGEND RUSH LIMBAUGH ‘BORN TO BE A BROADCASTER’ IN MISSOURI

“The concert and its star bore into the international imagination and for various reasons never left it,” Rolling Stone said in May 2018, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the live album, “Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison,” released four months after the show.

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“Dressed in his trademark black … he paradoxically celebrated prison and outlaw life while creating a damning portrait of the prison experience that pricked the era’s concern for society’s outcasts.”

Johnny Cash performs live in Amsterdam, Holland in 1972. The celebrated performer brought the sounds of rural America to an international audience.  (Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns)

Cash performed two shows at Folsom Prison that day. 

He was joined on stage by wife and fellow country star singer June Carter Cash, rockabilly legend Carl Perkins on guitar, the Statler Brothers on vocals, plus his longtime touring band, the Tennessee Three. 

“Hello, I’m Johnny Cash,” the singer boomed in his gravelly baritone as the audience of inmates erupted in hoots and applause. 

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JOHNNY CASH IS KING IN NASHVILLE: HIS TUNES, LEGACY AND LEGEND RULE THE MUSIC CITY

He immediately kicked into “Folsom Prison Blues,” a signature Cash tune he had recorded more than a decade earlier. 

“I ain’t seen the sunshine/since I don’t know when/I’m stuck in Folsom Prison/and time keeps dragging on,” Cash croons. 

Cash was joined on stage by June Carter Cash, Carl Perkins, the Statler Brothers and his touring band the Tennessee Three.

He performed 18 more songs, according to a chronicle of the show at Setlist.fm. 

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The concert included many of his darkest dirges: “Cocaine Blues,” “Long Black Veil” and a cover of “Green, Green Grass of Home,” a prison anthem popularized by Porter Wagoner just three years earlier. 

UNITED STATES – June Carter Cash and Johnny Cash perform on stage.  (GAB Archive/Redferns)

It tells the tale of a man on death row envisioning his final ride, to be buried beneath an oak tree on a plot of family land. 

Cash closed the show with “Greystone Chapel,” written by Folsom Prison inmate Glen Sherley. 

The performer discovered the song the night before the concert. 

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“I got to the motel and a preacher friend of mine brought me a tape of a song called ‘Greystone Chapel,’” Cash told Life magazine in 1994. 

JOHNNY CASH’S SISTER SAYS THE ‘MAN IN BLACK’ GAVE ‘HIS HEART BACK’ TO GOD BEFORE HIS DEATH: ‘THERE IS HOPE’

“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.”

“Folsom Prison Blues” is the signature tune from the performance and became Cash’s first no. 1 country hit in five years.

“I announced, ‘This song was written by Glen Sherley’ … Everybody just had a fit, screaming and carrying on.”

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“Greystone Chapel” is one of 17 tracks from the two shows on the live album “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison” released in May 1968. 

DEC. 9, 2019: A copy of the record album, “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison,” for sale at an antique shop in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The vinyl record was released by Columbia Records in 1968. (Robert Alexander/Getty Images)

Sherley enjoyed a brief taste of stardom as a performer and songwriter on the strength of “Greystone Chapel” after being released from prison in 1971. 

But he descended back into crime and committed suicide in 1978. 

Merle Haggard was not an inmate at the Folsom Prison performance, despite common legend. 

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Haggard was, however, incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison in California when he saw Cash perform in 1958. 

“The electrifying quality of this album is that Cash sings of men with 99-year sentences to men with 99-year sentences.”

It was the first of at least 30 Cash prison performances, according to the Library of Congress.

“Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison” proved a huge hit. 

It was the No. 3-selling album of the year, behind “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” by Iron Butterfly and The Beatles “White Album.” Cash’s recording boasts more than 3 million in certified sales.

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“The electrifying quality of this album is that Cash sings of men with 99-year sentences to men with 99-year sentences,” the Guardian of London wrote in a contemporary review of the album.

A small portion of a wall of album covers at the Johnny Cash Museum in Nashville. Across from the album covers is a display of vinyl records representing Cash’s incredible 134 Billboard hit singles.  (Kerry J. Byrne/Fox News Digital)

“Folsom Prison Blues” is the signature tune from the performance and became Cash’s first No. 1 country hit in five years. 

The live 1968 version has supplanted in popular memory the original studio track, a minor hit that appeared on the artist’s debut 1957 album, “Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar!”

The lament of life behind bars resonated with the residents of notorious Folsom Prison. 

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“I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.” — Johnny Cash, “Folsom Prison Blues”

It is “one of the nation’s first maximum-security prisons built in the decades following the California Gold Rush,” according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“Throughout Folsom’s violent and bloody history, numerous riots and escape attempts have resulted in both inmate and staff deaths.”

Signage outside of Folsom State Prison. California State Prison, Sacramento, is a male-only maximum security state prison in the city of Folsom. The facility is also called New Folsom, which used to be its official name. The facility is located adjacent to Folsom State Prison with a staff of about 1,600 and annual operating budget of about $190 million. Opened in 1880, Folsom is the second-oldest prison in the state after San Quentin. (Axel Koester/Corbis via Getty Images)

“I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die,” Cash sings in the heinous lyrical hook of “Folsom Prison Blues.”

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Cash later explained the moment he wrote the violent verse.

He said, “I sat with my pen in my hand, trying to think up the worst reason a person could have for killing another person, and that’s what came to mind.”

The Folsom Prison audience cheered and hollered when he delivered the line on stage. 

For more Lifestyle articles, visit www.foxnews.com/lifestyle.

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Montana

Montana Lottery Powerball, Lotto America results for July 4, 2026

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The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.

Here’s a look at July 4, 2026, results for each game:

Winning Powerball numbers from July 4 drawing

17-38-46-50-69, Powerball: 20, Power Play: 2

Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.

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Winning Lotto America numbers from July 4 drawing

09-17-22-35-37, Star Ball: 05, ASB: 02

Check Lotto America payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from July 4 drawing

04-13-19-26, Bonus: 07

Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Montana Cash numbers from July 4 drawing

09-13-17-27-33

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Check Montana Cash payouts and previous drawings here.

Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results

When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?

  • Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
  • Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
  • Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
  • Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
  • Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
  • Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
  • Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
  • Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.

Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.

This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.



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Nevada

11 Nevada Towns With A Slower Pace Of Life

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11 Nevada Towns With A Slower Pace Of Life


Genoa was a Mormon trading post in 1851, a decade before Nevada was a state, and it has never been in a hurry since. Up and down the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada and out across the Great Basin, the towns that grew up around silver strikes, railroad water stops, and dam construction camps mostly emptied out when the work ran dry, and what stayed behind is a string of places where the clock loosened its grip. Opera houses still host the occasional show. Saloons still pour for whoever walks in. The eleven towns below trade Nevada’s neon for porch time, dark skies, and roads with almost nothing on them.

Genoa

Mormon Station State Historic Park in Genoa, Nevada. Image credit Ritu Manoj Jethani via Shutterstock

The Genoa Bar and Saloon has been pouring drinks since 1853, which makes it the oldest bar in the state, and most of its counter and fixtures date to the 1860s. That is the pace of the place in one building. Genoa itself is Nevada’s oldest permanent settlement, and Mormon Station State Historic Park preserves a reconstructed log trading post on the site of the original 1851 station, with a small museum and grounds that fill up for community events through the summer. Genoa Town Park carries the warm-month concert schedule. When the afternoon calls for it, David Walley’s Resort sits a short walk off, with mineral hot springs that have drawn soakers to this corner of the Carson Valley for well over a century.

Ely

Main Street in Ely, Nevada.
Main Street in Ely, Nevada.

At the Nevada Northern Railway Museum, the locomotives are not models behind glass; the collection is one of the most complete original short-line operations left in the country, and the steam excursions run on the same track the copper trains used. That is Ely’s main event, and it sets the tempo. The Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park, just outside town, preserves six beehive-shaped stone kilns that fed the smelters during the mining boom, close enough to reach for an afternoon. The White Pine Public Museum fills in the rest, with mining, ranching, and Native history. Back on Aultman Street, the Hotel Nevada and Gambling Hall has anchored downtown since it opened in 1929, when it was briefly the tallest building in the state, and it still pours a cold one for anyone coming in off Highway 50.

Tonopah

The Mizpah Hotel in Tonopah, Nevada.
The Mizpah Hotel in Tonopah, Nevada. Image credit Travelview via Shutterstock

On a clear, moonless night at the Clair Blackburn Memorial Stargazing Park, you can pick out more than 7,000 stars with your eyes alone. Most cities show you 25 or 50. The park, off Highway 95 with concrete pads laid out for telescopes, is reason enough to time a visit around the new moon. By day, the Tonopah Historic Mining Park spreads across 100 acres of the original silver works, with tunnels and headframes from the boom that built the town. The Mizpah Hotel, restored and operating since its 1907 opening, holds the Pittman Café for breakfast and the Jack Dempsey Room for a sit-down dinner, named for the heavyweight champion who once worked the hotel as a bouncer.

Virginia City

Aerial scenic view of the historic Main Street in downtown Virginia City, Nevada.
The historic Main Street in downtown Virginia City, Nevada.

The Comstock Lode silver strike of 1859 turned Virginia City into one of the richest mining centers in the West almost overnight, and the wooden boardwalks and stacked 19th-century storefronts climbing the hillside are what the money left behind. The Virginia and Truckee Railroad runs short excursions along the old mining route, and the Chollar Mine tour takes you underground into the works themselves. The Bucket of Blood Saloon has been serving since 1876, built on the footprint of an earlier saloon right after the Great Fire of 1875 cleared the block. It is an easy place to lose a slow afternoon over a beer.

Boulder City

Downtown streets of Boulder City, Nevada.
Downtown streets of Boulder City, Nevada. Image credit gg-foto via Shutterstock

Gambling is illegal here by city ordinance, one of only two Nevada towns where that is true, a rule that traces straight back to why the town exists. The federal government built Boulder City in the early 1930s to house the workers raising Hoover Dam, laying out organized streets and civic buildings, and the planned layout still shapes a walkable downtown. The dam itself draws most visitors, best taken in without rushing. The Boulder City-Hoover Dam Museum, inside the historic Boulder Dam Hotel, tells the Depression-era construction story, and the Coffee Cup Café is the institution where locals linger over breakfast. At Hemenway Park, desert bighorn sheep come down to graze against the backdrop of Lake Mead country.

Caliente

Downtown street in Caliente, Nevada.
Downtown street in Caliente, Nevada.

The Caliente Railroad Depot, a restored Mission Revival building from the Union Pacific era, now does double duty as the town’s visitor center and the anchor of its main street. The name comes from the hot springs that first drew settlers, and cottonwoods shade a town that sits well off the southern Nevada rush. Two miles south, Kershaw-Ryan State Park tucks shaded picnic areas, spring-fed wading pools, and trails beneath steep canyon walls. The Barnes Canyon trail network gives mountain bikers and hikers desert terrain to work through at their own speed, and Meadow Valley Wash supports cottonwood stands and wildlife unusual for country this dry.

Eureka

Aerial view of the tiny town of Eureka, Nevada on Highway 50.
Overlooking Eureka, Nevada, on Highway 50.

Sixteen smelters once belched enough smoke over Eureka to earn it the nickname “Pittsburgh of the West,” back when 9,000 people and a hundred-odd saloons crowded the canyon. About 600 people live here now, and the boom-era buildings have the streets mostly to themselves. The Eureka Opera House, built in 1880 on a block cleared by the previous year’s fire, still stages performances under its restored interior. The Eureka Sentinel Museum occupies the original 1879 newspaper building, presses and type cases left where they sat. The Jackson House Hotel has put up guests since the 19th century, and the Owl Club Bar and Steakhouse feeds travelers and locals along Highway 50, the stretch a magazine once branded the Loneliest Road in America.

Gardnerville

Overlooking Gardnerville, Nevada.
Overlooking Gardnerville, Nevada. Image credit G Chapel via Shutterstock

Basque sheepherders settled the Carson Valley, and their cooking is still the reason to plan dinner in Gardnerville, served family-style at long tables in the valley’s old boarding-house tradition. The town grew as a ranching center under the Sierra Nevada, and the Carson Valley Museum and Cultural Center, housed in a former high school, lays out that agricultural and pioneer history. Lampe Park gives the community its gathering ground, with a quiet stream and walking paths and a calendar of seasonal events. Jobs Peak rises over the whole valley, a granite wall that turns gold at the end of the day.

Wells

Looking out over the landscape in Wells, Nevada.
Landscape surrounding Wells, Nevada. Image credit Famartin – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

The Angel Lake Scenic Byway climbs out of the desert flats into the East Humboldt Range, ending at a glacial lake cupped high against the peaks, good for a morning of fishing or a slow walk along the alpine shore. Wells grew up as a railroad town, and the Front Street Historic District still shows the bones of that era, when this was a working junction on the transcontinental line. The Trail of the 49ers Interpretive Center on 6th Street covers the emigrant routes that funneled through here on the way west, the California Trail travelers who passed through long before the rails did.

Winnemucca

Downtown street in Winnemucca, Nevada.
Downtown street in Winnemucca, Nevada.

The Humboldt River made Winnemucca a crossing long before the railroad came through, and the Humboldt Museum tells that regional story through Native, ranching, and transportation exhibits. The town’s other inheritance is Basque: sheepherders settled here in numbers, and the dining room at the Martin Hotel still serves the lamb and the family-style spread that the town celebrates each summer at its Basque Festival. The Winnemucca Sand Dunes draw the off-road and open-desert crowd just outside town. For something quieter, Water Canyon climbs along a running stream into terrain more rugged than the valley floor lets on.

Lovelock

Downtown Lovelock, Nevada.
Downtown Lovelock, Nevada. Image credit Ken Lund via Flickr

The Pershing County Courthouse is round, one of the few circular courthouses still in use anywhere in the country, and it sits at the center of town with its early-20th-century architecture intact. Behind it, Lovers Lock Plaza invites visitors to clip a padlock to a chain as a token of commitment, a small local tradition that has become the town’s signature stop. The deeper history is just outside town at Lovelock Cave, where excavations turned up evidence of human use going back thousands of years. Rye Patch State Recreation Area, along the reservoir on the Humboldt River, handles the boating, fishing, and lakeside afternoons.

Wide Open Spaces And Unhurried Places

What these towns share is not scenery so much as arithmetic: the work that built them mostly left, and the people who stayed kept the opera houses, the saloons, and the depots running at a fraction of the old traffic. That is why a steam train in Ely or a 7,000-star sky over Tonopah feels unhurried in a way a manufactured attraction never quite manages. The pace was not designed. It is what is left when the boom moves on and the place decides to stay anyway.

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New Mexico

First July 4 display at Miles park for 250th honors America and New Mexican identity

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First July 4 display at Miles park for 250th honors America and New Mexican identity


The City Different’s Fourth of July celebration began a little differently this year.

Instead of gathering near Santa Fe Place mall as residents have for years, thousands spread across Franklin E. Miles Park for the city’s first Independence Day celebration at the new venue. They came to watch a drone show debut, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding by blending American symbols with ones signifying New Mexican identity, followed by the traditional fireworks.

The move to Franklin E. Miles Park followed months of debate after the former venue became unavailable due to construction tied to a new hotel. And for some nearby residents, the change exceeded expectations.

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Lewis and his son Aidan Herrera make their way in matching patriotic garb towards live music by Lumpy on Saturday, July 4, 2026, at Franklin E. Miles Park.



‘A learning curve’



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Nathan Montoya, 3, catches a ride with Carlos Montoya while skateboarding at Franklin E. Miles Park during the Fourth of July celebration on Saturday.


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‘Santa Fe should be proud’







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Pop-its fireworks entertain children as they are thrown against the ground during July 4 celebrations Saturday at Franklin E. Miles Park.



‘We’re the City Different’



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Lana Bolin of Lumpy serenades the crowd during Fourth of July celebrations Saturday at Franklin E. Miles Park.


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