Folsom Prison Blues Solo (1955 version) Guitar Lesson

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By popular demand Nick shows each lick from Luther Perkins solo as played over the original recording of this Johnny Cash classic country hit.

Here is the abridged transcript:
A few years back I made a lesson on how to play Folsom Prison Blues that covered the solo played by session guitar legend Reggie Young when he worked with Johnny Cash in the Country Supergroup the Highwaymen.

Since then, a few site members have asked if I could make a lesson on how to play the solo as Luther Perkins played it on Johnny Cash’s original 1955 recording of this classic country blues tune. So here it is.

The 1955 recording came out in the key of F, but live footage of the Tennessee Three playing this, shows them playing it in E. Whether they had tuned their instruments up a half tone or whether the tape was speeded up at some point in the recording process, we may never know. But I’m going to play it in E on this lesson and suggest that, when you play along with the record you simply use a capo on at the first fret. Let’s break this down a lick at a time.

Over the E chord, Luther is working the E7 Arpeggio, sliding in from the flatted third at fret 8 to the major 3rd note G# here at fret 9 on the 2nd string. So, to understand this lick, just think of the Em chord played here with an Am shape being changed to the major shape and then adding the note that turns this into an E 7 chord.

Here’s the tab for those first two bars.The first phrase is then repeated and the fourth phrase adds the root and fifth of the chord like this . However, although this is how Luther played it, there is a different fingering for this that makes the transition to the next bar a bit easier to negotiate. Instead of coming back across this A shaped E major chord – use the notes from the D shape instead here at frets 4 and 5 like this. Here’s the tab for bars three and four…

Unless you have big hands, the next shape is the hardest bit to negotiate. This is based on a G shaped A major chord. Barring the second and third strings at fret 2 and adding the A note at fret 5 on the top string. And this is picked in very specific way – really a combination of picking and strumming: Down, Down-up, Up-down

This is played once like that, then again Down, Down-up, but then the next two notes are played as open strings while the fretting hand travels up the fretboard to play the next shape. The next shape can be thought of as the top three notes of an E shaped barre chord used to play A major at fret 5. This is picked like this strings 3, 2 1 in order, before we again pick the top two open strings backwards while shifting the hand up to the next chord shape.

We continue to follow the inversions of the A major chord up through the CAGED system by playing the D shape rooted on the A at fret 10 on the second string
This is picked exactly as the previous shape except for the last open note, which is picked on the third string instead of the second – something that only makes sense when we come to the next section of the solo. Here is the tab for the two bars of A.

Back to the E chord now and Luther played this by separating out the bass note
Open E – from the top part of the E major chord and picked this with the same syncopated rhythm: Down, Down-up, Up-down , but lifted the finger off the G string, effectively turning E major to Em on the last upstroke each time like this.
The last two bars of the solo bring us to the B7 chord and for one bar this is played with the exact same approach as we have just used on the E chord separating out the bass note here on string 5 at fret 2 and playing the rest of the chord with a Down, Down-up, Up-down action .Then he links back to the E with this riff …using a pre-bend and releasee on the note at fret 2 on the bottom string …before resolving to the open E note as we link back to the rhythm part.

Hope you enjoyed that and do contact me via the SGT site should you have any questions or would like a copy of the tab. For site members, you can download the tab and backing track from the links near the screen. See you again soon!