Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Gene Beley Journalist
Johnny Cash arguably became a country music legend on Jan. 13, 1968, when he played the historic “comeback” concert at California’s Folsom Prison. Born in Arkansas and with a lifetime of Arkansas connections, Cash is the topic of an exhibit, “1968: A Folsom Redemption,” and a series of related events this month and next at the Clinton House Museum in Fayetteville. Among the guest speakers on Oct. 2 is journalist Gene Beley, who accompanied Cash to Folsom.
Beley, now 79, answered these questions for What’s Up! from his home in Stockton, Calif.
Q. Where were you working and what were you covering in 1968?
A. Dan Poush and I were working for the Ventura Star-Free Press, the county’s only daily newspaper. I graduated from UCLA with a M.S. in journalism in 1967. Dan was the chief photographer. We often teamed up to do national magazine stories on our time off from the newspaper.
Q. How did the chance to go with Cash come about?
A. Dan called me one evening and said we had been invited to go to Folsom Prison with Johnny Cash. I asked him who invited us. He replied it was a minister and one of John’s best friends who Dan met at a New Year’s Eve party. Now that sounded off the wall and incongruous that a minister was one of bad boy John’s best friends, so I asked to meet the minister first before I confirmed.
Q. What is the single most vivid memory you have of that whole experience?
A. I admit I was a small town, star-struck kid at heart. When I first got to his parents’ home, John and June weren’t there. They had taken a walk. So my first sight of them was walking towards the trailer park with his turtleneck sweater and blue blazer looking like a movie star just stepped off the big screen.
The first impressions were he was
very down to earth. I began taking photos of him arm wrestling his nephew, Timmy Hancock, 6, at the kitchen table — one of my all-time favorite photos that showed him just being an uncle.
Q. What kind of interaction did you have with Cash and his wife?
A. Dan’s and my experience with John and June extended way past the Folsom Prison concert. We got to hang out with them at many other shows in California. John even mentioned me in his Madison Square Garden album with one of my
outrageous comments to him, but you’ll have to come to the “journalist in concert” to hear this one, as I’ll save that for the end of my talk!
Q. What did this opportunity do for your career?
A. At that time, not much. Our home newspaper, the Star-Free Press’s Managing Editor, Joe Paul, wasn’t too sure he even wanted to print my article with Dan’s photos! He had written so many negative stories about John over the years that he wasn’t ready for any Johnny Cash comeback redemption story.