Streissguth, Michael

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Streissguth, Michael

PERSONAL: Married (wife a consultant and adjunct college instructor). Education: Purdue University, master's degree.

ADDRESSES: Office—Le Moyne College, 1419 Salt Springs Rd., Syracuse, NY 13214.

CAREER: Le Moyne College, associate professor of English.

WRITINGS:

Eddy Arnold, Pioneer of the Nashville Sound, Schirmer Books (New York, NY), 1997.

Like a Moth to a Flame: The Jim Reeves Story (includes compact disc), Rutledge Hill Press (Nashville, TN), 1998.

(Editor) Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader, Da Capo Press (Cambridge, MA), 2002.

Voices of the Country: Interviews with Classic Country Performers, Routledge (New York, NY), 2004.

Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece, Da Capo Press (Cambridge, MA), 2004.

Contributor to periodicals, including Journal of Country Music and Country Music.

SIDELIGHTS: Although in his day job Michael Streissguth is an English professor at Le Moyne College, it is through his moonlighting as a journalist and book-writer covering country music that he is best known. Voices of the Country: Interviews with Classic Country Performers collects some of the many interviews Streissguth has conducted over the years with country-music stars such as Loretta Lynn, Charley Pride, Eddy Arnold, Hank Locklin, and Chet Atkins. Describing the book as "both studious and revealing," a Bookwatch contributor added that Voices of the Country "reflect[s] … Streissguth's interviewing prowess."

Streissguth has created two books about late country-music legend Johnny Cash: Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader, which Streissguth edited, and Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece. The former title, which was released shortly before Cash's death in 2003, collects articles about and interviews with Cash that are drawn from throughout the singer's lengthy career. "Many of the pieces are thoughtfully written and full of anecdotes," Lisa Burrell commented in the American Prospect, and they well illustrate the changing ways in which Cash was perceived by the American public over the years. As Manchester Guardian contributor Steven Poole noted, Ring of Fire "is as much a history of a changing audience as a chronicle of the man himself."

Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison frames a brief overview of Cash's life and work in the context of his most famous album, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. This album was recorded live at California's maximum-security Folsom Prison on January 13, 1968, and it has been credited with launching Cash from a moderately respectable singer to an icon of country music. In this "lushly illustrated, note-by-note reconstruction" of that concert, as David Kirby described the work in the Chicago Tribune, Streissguth explains how Cash's performance actually went and how Cash's producers and sound engineers rearranged the recorded elements to make for a higher-energy sound. The album as released includes much crowd noise, including a prisoner yelling "Yeah!" when Cash sings the famous line, "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die." In reality, Streissguth reports, the prisoners listened in respectful silence to Cash's performance and only cheered between songs; the shout was cut from another portion of the recording and mixed in later. Streissguth also explains the social backdrop to the making of the album, including the history of Folsom Prison and the prison reform movement that was then gaining traction in American politics. In addition, Streissguth covers the significance of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prisonto the musician's subsequent career and to the resurgence in popularity of country music by mainstream listeners and—significantly for music history—by rock songwriters and performers during the 1980s and 1990s. This "lavishly illustrated" book, as Dave Szatmary described it in Library Journal, "will attract a general audience as well as Cash fanatics." Mike Tribby concluded in Booklist that Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison is "an important piece of pop, rock, and country-music historiography and … a fitting remembrance" of Cash.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Prospect, May 20, 2002, Lisa Burrell, "Big John," review of Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader, p. 38.

Booklist, September 1, 2004, Mike Tribby, review of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece, p. 37.

Bookwatch, September, 2004, review of Voices of the Country: Interviews with Classic Country Performers, p. 9; February, 2005, review of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison.

Chicago Sun-Times, October 10, 2004, Jonathan Yardley, review of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, p. 12.

Chicago Tribune, September 12, 2004, David Kirby, "Tale of an Artistic Turning Point: A Revealing Account of Johnny Cash's Concert at Folsom Prison in 1968," p. 3.

Chronicle of Higher Education, September 3, 2004, Richard Byrne, "The Inside Scoop of Johnny Cash's Jailhouse Concerts" (interview), p. A16.

Economist, September 18, 2004, review of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, p. 88.

Guardian (Manchester, England), May 10, 2003, Steven Poole, review of Ring of Fire, p. 31.

Library Journal, June 1, 2002, Eric Hahn, review of Ring of Fire, p. 154; September 1, 2004, Dave Szatmary, review of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, p. 153.

Publishers Weekly, August 23, 2004, review of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, p. 51.

Washington Post, September 23, 2004, Jonathan Yardley, "When the Jailhouse Rocked," review of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, p. C4.