The 1999 Columbia/Legacy expanded edition added songs from the shows that had not appeared on the original LP, including “Busted,” “Joe Bean,” and the full “Legend of John Henry’s Hammer.” These additions gave listeners their first access to material that had been on tape since 1968 but had never been released. They filled out the picture of what the morning show actually contained.
The 2008 Legacy Edition went further, releasing both concerts in full sequence for the first time. This allowed listeners to hear the entire arc of both shows — to follow Cash through the full morning performance and the full afternoon performance, in the order they occurred, without editorial intervention. The 2008 release also included a documentary DVD that featured interviews with people who had been present at the January 13 shows, including members of the audience who were then free and able to speak on the record about what they had experienced.
The documentary dimension of the 2008 release confirmed something about the album that its listeners had already understood intuitively: that the Folsom recording was not just a musical document but a historical one. The people in that cafeteria — Cash, the band, Sherley, the other inmates, the guards — were participants in an event whose significance had accumulated over forty years. Their accounts of what it felt like to be there added texture to the recording that no post-production enhancement could have provided.
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## “Greystone Chapel” After the Album
The afterlife of “Greystone Chapel” as a song — after the album, after Cash’s fame, after Sherley’s death — is worth following.