He's in the Jailhouse Now Trivia Quiz

Answer: Elvis Presley

If anyone could make prison life sound like fun it would likely be Elvis. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stroller wrote the song for Elvis's third movie, "Jailhouse Rock" but his straight rock delivery sent the single (backed with "Treat Me Nice") to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 list.

Answer: Hurricane

Dylan wrote the song about middleweight boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who, along with another man, was convicted of a triple murder in New Jersey in 1966. Dylan and Jacques Levy co-wrote the song in 1975 after several allegations were made that Carter did not receive a fair trial.

The success of the song caused a retrial, at which Carter was again found guilty. Finally, in 1985, a federal judge overturned the verdict, citing racism and concealing of evidence as factors.

Answer: Merle Haggard

This is a very sad song. The prisoner asked that a guitar-playing inmate sing and play a song that the prisoner's mother used to sing so he could imagine himself back home before he died. The single was a release from Haggard's fifth album of the same name and spent seventeen weeks on the country music charts, being at number one for two weeks on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart.

Answer: Johnny Cash

Cash wrote the song in 1953, while in the U.S. Air Force. He said he tried to imagine the worst reason for killing someone and that line is what came to mind. He recorded it at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee in 1955 and it became a modest hit on the country music charts.

It was again recorded during a live performance Cash did at Folsom Prison, California in 1968. That version was a big hit and won Cash a Grammy for "Best Country Vocal Performance, Male" at the 1969 Grammy Awards.

Answer: Bill Morrissey

In the song, the singer was "doing 10 to 20 in the frozen Granite State" of New Hampshire for killing a man he caught with his wife. He opined that he wouldn't mind stamping out plates that had "Vacationland" or "The Garden State" as mottos but the New Hampshire motto made him cry at night.

He suggested that if a man found himself in a similar situation he should shoot the offender in another state "where they've got a different license plate".

Answer: Chain Gang

All of these were Sam Cooke songs but "Chain Gang" was his second biggest hit, released in 1960. He wrote the song after seeing a prison chain gang working on a roadside while he was on a concert tour.

Answer: Take a Message to Mary

A stagecoach robbery gone bad resulted in life in prison for the singer, who asked a friend to make excuses to his fiancee Mary and not tell her he was in jail. The song was on the Billboard Hot 100 charts for 16 weeks in 1959. The singer wanted to let Mary down easy, as though she would be less hurt by his shipping out to a foreign land!

Answer: The Tijuana Jail

The theme of the song was a typical situation: a night of drinking and gambling leading to being taken to jail. They needed 500 dollars to get out and by the end of the song no one had sent bail money. They weren't the first California kids to have an unintended long stay in Tijuana, nor the last.

Answer: Green Green Grass of Home

Dreaming about going home, seeing his parents and his sweetheart, the prisoner realized that when he went home it would be in a coffin to be laid beneath the green grass of home. Porter Wagoner had the original country hit and it was quickly picked up by other country singers. Jones heard it on a Jerry Lee Lewis album and recorded his own version of it.

Answer: Merle Haggard

Merle Haggard scores twice in this quiz because his prison songs could have been autobiographical. He mentioned in interviews that he was likely headed toward spending most of his life in prison, but musical skills and being in Folsom Prison in California when Johnny Cash did a show for the convicts turned his life around.

The song was about a mother who tried to keep her son on the straight-and-narrow but he insisted on being rebellious. Many artists covered the song including the Grateful Dead, who performed it at Woodstock and over 300 times in concert over the band's career.