I have been listening to my CD of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, and at one point on the CD, he asks for a glass of water, a comical repeat of his first appearance there when he also asked for a glass of water.
From the movie, I am aware that the water at Folsom was quite yellowed and Johnny repeatedly asks “You swear, this is water?” on the CD before he (I assume) drinks. Then he makes a comment that I still don’t get, he asks “Do you serve everything here in tin cups?”
Can someone fill me in on the joke? Were inmates routinely drug tested using tin cups or something?
It means what it says: inmates were not allowed glasses (for reasons that should be obvious). It’s possible that there was a switchover to plastic or paper cups, but tin cups had been used on prisons for a very long time (durable and difficult to turn into weapons) and the idea of using a tin cup was associated with being in prison.
I guess I’m still missing the joke, then…there was a lot of laughter in the audience on the recording, and people in the audience can be heard yelling “OH!” and “I GOT it!” So it’s clearly meant to be a joke, and it isn’t much of one if he’s asking prison inmates if they serve everything in tin cups…because of course they do.
And coming from his background, playing for this audience, I don’t picture JC being subtle.
I don’t think it’s really all that subtle, and it certainly wouldn’t be to an inmate. It’d be like saying “nice uniforms y’all got here” or something. Just a joke about being at a prison instead of a normal place.
I agree with this. There’s no need to have any extra layers for the joke, when it’s transgressive enough that someone ‘in there’ is having a go at the system, aka ‘Sticking It To The Man’. The biggest laughs on the prison records are from pretty straight forward jokes.
I may have this wrong, but here’s how I got the joke:
The quip on the album is from the second Folsom concert. The scene from Walk The Line was from the first concert. During the first concert, when they handed him a clear glass full of yellow water, he made the comment about how tough the inmates were and dropped the glass on the floor, shattering it.
To avoid a repeat performance at the second concert, the prison staff put the water in a tin cup. Mr. Cash figured out why pretty quickly.
The quip from the album is definitely from the second concert at Folsom, since it starts off with “Last time I was here, I asked for a drink of water. I don’t know what the hell it run off of, must have been off Luther’s boots or somethin’…” I didn’t realize he had dropped the first glass on the floor and broke it.