Which song includes the line 'I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die'?

“Folsom Prison Blues” includes the line “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.” The song is one of Johnny Cash’s signature recordings and helped establish his enduring connection with stories about prisoners, outsiders, and troubled lives.

Cash wrote the original song in 1955 after watching the film Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison while serving in the U.S. Air Force in West Germany. He later explained that he was trying to imagine the worst possible reason for someone to kill another person, which led to the famous Reno line. The song’s narrator is imprisoned in California’s Folsom Prison, even though the shooting occurred in Nevada; Cash described that geographic inconsistency as “poetic license.”

Cash recorded the song at Sun Studio in Memphis on July 30, 1955, with guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant. The original recording combined country, rockabilly, and rock-and-roll elements. In January 1968, Cash performed it at California’s Folsom State Prison, and that intense live version became the centerpiece of the album At Folsom Prison.

The song is sometimes confused with “I Walk the Line” or “Ring of Fire,” two other famous Cash songs, but neither contains the Reno lyric.