Gressett brought the recording to Cash on January 12, 1968, the night before the two scheduled shows. Cash listened to it.
Glen Milborn Sherley had been born on March 9, 1936, in Oklahoma, to farm workers who relocated to California’s Central Valley in the 1940s. His path was troubled from early: he spent much of the 1950s and 1960s in and out of California’s correctional system for a succession of crimes including armed robbery. By 1968 he had been incarcerated at Chino, Soledad, San Quentin, and Folsom. He was serving time for armed robbery when Cash received his song.
Sherley had musical gifts. During his time in various prisons he had written and recorded songs, working with what was available in an institutional setting. “Greystone Chapel” was about the experience of faith inside a prison — the specific, difficult question of what religion means to people for whom the standard markers of a free life are unavailable. The song was not asking for pity. It was describing something real.
Cash listened to the recording. He decided to include the song in the next day’s performance. He and his band learned it overnight.
This is the most remarkable logistical fact in the story of the album. Cash heard a song for the first time on the evening of January 12. He performed it, in front of its author, to an audience of several thousand people, the following morning. The song closed both of the day’s shows.
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## January 13, 1968: The Morning Show