Johnny Cash sang it as only Johnny could do, with such emotion that it made the listener think that the vocalist was there. It’s the account of a prisoner who decided he was going to take on the impossible wall. He didn’t make it.
He was in prison for a robbery that he believed would have made him the money to win the girl. It was a letter from her while he was in prison that snapped the circuit breaker of right thinking.
I’ll just give you the first and last stanza and you can look up the rest:
There’s a lot of strange men in cell block ten
But the strangest of em’ all
Was a friend of mine who spent his time
Starin at the wall…
Starin at the wall…
Well there’s never been a man who shook this camp
But I knew a man who tried
The newspapers called it a jailbreak plan
But I know it was suicide…
I know it was suicide…
What gets into someone’s head that leads to a prison? What gets into someone’s head that causes him to believe suicide is the only way out? Of all the sad songs, I believe this to be the saddest of them all.
There is a better way.
But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted; you consider their grief and take it in hand. The victims commit themselves to you; you are the helper of the fatherless.
Think about it.
Gary