How To Play Folsom Prison Blues
By Johnny Cash

Welcome to this How To Play Folsom Prison Blues By Johnny Cash page where you'll find the song lyrics below along with an acoustic demo tutorial which will show you how I play this song.

This song became a #1 hit for Cash back in 1968, and the inspiration came from a 1951 film called Inside The Walls Of Folsom Prison. Johnny also listened to a song called Crescent City Blues from a 1953 slbum by Gordon Jenkins.


Although Johnny did write the song Folsom Prison Blues, he was later sued by Jenkins and settled out of court because some of the lines and melody were taken from the Jenkins song without permission or credit being given.



A simple 3 chord song typically played in the key of E, A and B7. You can also throw in an E7 as well before going from the E to the A chord. As you'll notice, Im playing with a capo on the first fret but a capo isnt required. It just moves the pitch of the song up a little higher if you dont happen to have a deep Johnny Cash voice. voice.

                 
Free Tab Available


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Full Tutorial - .wmv format - 8 min 26 sec

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Once we get past the intro riff (see below), you can play note-dn-up-dn-up-dn-up-note-dn-up-dn-up-dn-up-note ... in a quick up and down motion. On the A chord you can also play a 1-2-3 bass riff .. like this (open E - Gb - open A). I play this with my thumb. And on the B7 Im playing bass notes, which is back and forth between the root note of B and the Gb, which is the bass note.

In the second verse you can also hammer on the A string as you'll see me do. I chose to wait til this verse but you can put it in right at the beginning if you'd like.

How To Play Folsom Prison Blues By Johnny Cash Picking

I have 2 seperate picking sequences in this demo. The first one you'll see me playing a hammer on with my index finger while on E as well as doing a quick shuffle strum while playng the E7 chord. From there I move up to thje A chord on the 5th where you can play down over the D-G-B-and E string to get that 1-2-3-4 section.

I move up a few frets to pick up a 7th note. Then back on the B7 chord you can play the B note 3 times on the A string like this ... A --2-2-2-- followed by the D string twice D --1-1-- and back to the A string once A -2- and finish with D--1--- , A--2-- A--0--, and a quick slide on the top E string like this E --3-2-0 and keep strumming.

The second time around Im doing something a bit similar except its up on the fretboard a bit higher. And of course the run at the end is a standard 6 note bluegrass run (usually in G) using the top string for 3 of the notes Gb-G-G# .. the A string for 2 of them Cb-Db and the D string for the final E note on the 2nd fret.

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How To Play Folsom Prison Blues By Johnny Cash

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