W.S. Holland was the drummer, and in one specific sense a historic figure: he is generally credited as the first full-time drummer to play with a country act, joining Cash’s band in 1960. Country music before Holland had typically used session drummers for recording and either session players or no drummer at all on the road. Holland’s presence on the Cash tour normalized the drum kit in a country context in a way that subsequent acts followed.
Carl Perkins — Carl B. Perkins, to distinguish him from Luther — opened the show at Folsom and contributed guitar throughout Cash’s set. He was, by 1968, a figure whose commercial peak was behind him but whose reputation as a musician and songwriter remained formidable. His “Blue Suede Shoes,” recorded at Sun in 1956, had reached the top of three different charts simultaneously — pop, rhythm and blues, and country — and had been covered by Elvis Presley in a version that outsold the original. The irony of Presley’s cover, which came out while Perkins was in a car accident recovering from surgery, contributed to a bitterness that took years to work through. By the time he joined Cash’s touring organization in the mid-1960s, he had made his peace with the arc his career had taken.
The Statler Brothers — Don Reid, Harold Reid, Phil Balsley, and Lew DeWitt — were a vocal group from Staunton, Virginia, who had joined Cash’s touring organization in 1964. Their name was borrowed not from the Statler Hotels chain but from a brand of facial tissues; it was chosen partly because of the consonance with their earlier name, the Kingsmen, which had trademark complications. They opened the Folsom shows and provided backing vocals throughout. Their own career would continue well beyond their association with Cash: they became one of the most commercially successful country acts of the 1970s and 1980s, winning multiple Grammy Awards and CMA Awards before their retirement in 2002.