Art as an Escape

Music exists in every population and place on earth, including prisons. On the whole, prison music possesses a deep sense of wistfulness and an even deeper humanity: it was a way for the most disenfranchised members of society--including black men, drug addicts, and female inmates--to voice their experiences and emotions. This story map explores the music created at prisons throughout the American South, in particular Parchman Prison, Texas State Prison, and the Narcotic Farm.

Alan Lomax, pictured above, was an American folklorist and musicologist. He began his career in 1933, when he worked with his father, John Avery Lomax, to expand upon the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress. He and his father gathered thousands of field recordings of folk musicians throughout the United States, Haiti, and the Bahamas (The Association for Cultural Equity). For the next 20 years, Alan Lomax would continue to build upon his vast collection of recordings, including those of black prisoners in the South, which he believed captured the essence of America:

"In language, content, and function, these songs are as American as the Mississipi River. They were born out of the very rock and earth of this country, as black hands broke the soil, moved and reformed it, and the rivers of stinging sweat poured upon the land under the blazing heat of Southern skies” - Alan Lomax

In 1947 and 1948, Lomax traveled to the Mississippi State Penitentiary--also known as Parchman Prison--to record its inhabitants' work songs, releasing the album "Negro Songs from the Mississippi State Penitentiary" ten years later. Up until that point, the inmates' songs (like the men themselves) had been completely cut off from the outside world. The songs existed as a form of catharsis rather than showmanship for the men, who spent their sentences working on a vast state-owned cotton plantation. Though the album went largely unnoticed by mainstream society, critics heralded it for its intimacy and authenticity. In 1958, music critic Eric Larabee wrote that "it is worth noting the world of deprivation and sorrow the world [of jazz] came from," lauding the album for its exploration of said bleak world (Harper's Magazine). Though the music Lomax recorded at Parchman was not popular, it captured the plight of men who society had oppressed and exploited, and for that the recordings were--and are--immeasurably important.

Today, people take issue with Lomax's paternalistic, condescending attitude towards the singers--for instance, he recorded their speech and lyrics phonetically, whereas his words (also spoken with a southern accent) were written in proper English (Scarborough). However, Lomax did form genuine friendships with many of the men he recorded, and, by the mere act of listening, he granted prisoners an agency they had not been afforded before in their incarcerated lives (Mullen). In general, the practice of applying modern social conventions to historical circumstances is a tricky one.

Alan Lomax described the prison environment as "the dark, fertile soil which gave rise to the blues," and the songs he recorded at Parchman were both practical and poignant (Parchman Farm). Many originated from the slave-era South, and were sung under parallel conditions of brutal unpaid labor. The Song "Go Down Old Hannah," for instance, derived from Texas sugar-cane plantations (Shelton). "Old Hannah" is the sun, who the exhausted prisoners address directly in the chorus when they sing, "Don't you rise no more." Many other songs convey a similar despair:

Tangle Eye's Blues: "I left Mae Willie and the baby in the courthouse cryin' / 'Daddy please don't go'"

Stewball: "I'm's a poor boy down in trouble / And a long way from home"

Murder's Home: "Ain't got long, oh Mama, ain't got long / I ain't got long, Lord, I ain't got a long in the murderer's home / Pray for me, oh Mama, pray for me"

Music allowed prisoners to retain their humanity, to be complex and vulnerable in the face of a world that ostracized and villainized them. Through song, the men asserted their "ineradicable dignity” and expressed their will to survive, no matter how cruel the circumstances of their lives (Wolterstorff 259).

Beyond offering catharsis, the means to voice and take solace in their shared sorrow, these songs also allowed men to work more efficiently and cooperatively. Indeed, wardens actually encouraged inmates to sing because of the economic advantage it provided: paradoxically, the prisoners' expression of their humanity only underscored their profitability to their supervisors.

Work was so integral to the songs, in fact, that a song's structure and content depended largely on the type of labor it accompanied: (Jackson)

Many of the artists recorded on the Parchman record went by nicknames, which added to their anonymity. For instance, “Early in the Morning,” the tree-cutting song shown above, was recorded to have been sung by "Litte Red," "22," "Tangle Eye," and "Hard Hair," making it impossible to pinpoint their exact identities.

However, Huttie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter, who John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax recorded at Angola Prison in Louisiana in 1933, defied this pattern of obscurity. In 1925, Lead Belly--who had been charged with murder in 1918--was pardoned and released from Central Unit Prison in Texas by Governor Pat Neff, after singing Neff a song he had composed called "Sweet Mary" (Texas Jailhouse Music, Gnagy 48). Lead Belly's persuasive lyrics and musical ability granted him his freedom, giving him a power that few black men, incarcerated or otherwise, possessed at the time.

"If I had you Governor Neff like you got me / I'd wake up in the mornin', I would set you free" - Lead Belly, "Sweet Mary"

In 1930 Lead Belly was arrested again, and this time sent to prison in Louisiana. He was released in 1934 for good behavior--contrary to popular belief, the Lomaxes did not arrange for him to be pardoned (Texas Jailhouse Music, Gnagy 51). Upon his release, Lead Belly traveled with John Lomax, gaining recognition and ultimately establishing himself as a legendary folk musician, even as his relationship with Lomax crumbled--Lomax, among other slights, had reputedly insisted that Lead Belly perform in prison stripes (Fleming and Harold). In 1988, Lead Belly was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In March 1938, the broadcast "Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls" was introduced by the WBAP radio station in Fort Worth, Texas. Spearheaded by WBAP chief of staff Harold Hough, the program consisted of interviews with and musical performances by state prisoners, these performances taking on a broad range of genres, including patriotism, hymns, blues, swing, jazz, pop, Hawaiian, and instrumental (As if They Were Going Places, Gnagy 130). "Thirty Minutes" became extraordinarily popular; by 1940, anywhere from 5 to 7 million Americans tuned into the broadcast each week, and the execution of prisoner L.C. Newman was even delayed a day to prevent interfering with the broadcast (Blue 160). Eventually, the inmates put on a free live performance within the prison walls, which fans traveled hundreds of miles to attend.

Evidently, the public was eager to gain insight into the lives of the incarcerated, though the window they were offered was a narrow one: generally speaking, only white male prisoners were interviewed, with men of color and women of all races serving only to entertain. Indeed, the program's announcers would introduce black performers by stating that they came from “the cotton fields” or “darkyland" (Blue 147). The state also used "Thirty Minutes" to promote a false ideal of the prison, with interviewed inmates testifying upon the prison's benediction and their own subsequent reform.

"Here's another of our Negro entertainers--Ace Johnson, a strapping, six-foot Darky" - Radio Announcer

“They’ve made great improvements since I came here. . . It’s more comfortable on the inmates, and they can live a lot better now than they could then. . . Oh, it’s a whole lot better . . . in every respect” - James L. Warner, Huntsville inmate

While inmates served the prison's agenda, they could also use the show for their own benefit, with many performers displaying their talent in the hopes of getting pardoned. For example, Hattie Ellis--who, incidentally, the Lomaxes recorded in 1939 on a visit to the Goree State Farm--served only eight years out of thirty for her murder conviction. An immensely popular contributor to "Thirty Minutes," she sang each week with a voice that rivaled the "greats of the era" until she was pardoned in 1940 (Texas Jailhouse Music, Gnagy 64).

"Now I ain’t got nobody, and there’s nobody cares for me, /  ‘Cause I’m sad and lonely— /  Won’t somebody come on and take a chance with me" - Hattie Ellis, "I Ain't Got Nobody"

Tragically, all of the broadcast's recordings were destroyed by WBAP, so the voices of almost every contributor to the broadcast have been lost forever (Blue 150). Luckily, a few recordings of Ellis singing remain from the Lomax archive (Texas Jailhouse Music, Gnagy 65). Ellis disappeared from history after her pardon--nothing is known about her beyond her prison records and fleeting voice, which, according to one "Thirty Minutes" listener, made "the harsh nights softer” (Blue 161).

On July 10, 1940, the Goree All-Girl String Band made its first appearance on "Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls" (Hollandsworth). Soon, its members gained countrywide fame, despite the fact that they were serving time at Goree State Farm, Texas’ sole female prison, and had been convicted of crimes ranging from robbery to murder. Reable Childs, the star of the band, had been arrested for the murder of her husband (as carried out by her boyfriend), and Mozelle McDaniel, another member, had “walked inside the house, picked up a .22-caliber rifle, walked outside, and shot [her abusive stepfather] eleven times, pumping one shell after another into the chamber of the rifle.” Still, the women received thousands of letters of fan mail, including candy, money, flowers, and handwritten marriage proposals from their male admirers.

Only three months after their first broadcast performance, the Goree Girls were asked to be the featured act during intermission of the Texas Prison Rodeo, which was the largest sporting event in Texas at the time, boasting over 100,000 visitors over the course of 4 October Sundays (Hollandsworth). 

Like Hattie Ellis, each member of the band disappeared from the public eye after her release from prison, likely resulting from the desire to live untethered to a shameful past. Still, the temporary recognition that "Thirty Minutes" performers received imbued the entire prison with an atmosphere of hope. In the words of Reable Childs, the singing prisoners are "stars then, shining in our own little sky above our back yard, and we clasp hands on the back porch to dream little dreams that are made of stardust” (As if They Were Going Places, Gnagy 142).

In the 1930s and '40s, heroin was a huge part of the jazz world, its famous musician-addicts creating "a bohemian mystique around taking drugs” (Olsen and Walden). During this time, American attitudes towards drugs were harsh and unforgiving, so the establishment of the Kentucky Narcotic Farm, an experimental drug treatment facility focused on rehabilitation rather than punishment, was revolutionary. Two-thirds of the farm's 1500 patients were convicted felons; one-third was voluntary admits. Over the next two decades, many prominent jazz musicians would pass through the Narcotic Farm, among them Chet Baker, Sonny Rollins, and Elvin Jones (Aron). The jazz scene at the farm became so well-known, in fact, that musicians were rumored to check themselves in just to become a part of it. At the farm, they were given access to working instruments, practice rooms, and a recital hall that seated 1,000 people (Marshall).

As was the case for "Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls," no audio remains of any performances from the farm. In 1964, a band comprised entirely of patients at the Narcotic Farm performed on Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show, and that footage too has been lost (Olsen and Walden). Still, the very fact of their performance is fascinating considering the stigma surrounding drug addiction--by virtue of their talent, the musicians' perceived moral faults were tolerated.

The obscurity of prison music from the 1930s to 1960s does not undermine its relevancy. Time has not rendered the circumstances surrounding these songs obsolete: penal labor remains common practice, racism and disenfranchisement against black Americans endures, and the country is in the midst of another drug crisis. Music remains an integral--though now largely ignored--aspect of prison life, uplifting people in the same way it did decades ago.

Alan Lomax especially has been an integral force in immortalizing prisoners' voices; without him, their haunting crooning would have remained locked inside facility walls, existing as a source of comfort to themselves but not as a catalyst for empathy in others.

Blue, Ethan. “Thirty Minutes behind the Walls: Prison Radio and the Popular Culture of Punishment.” Doing Time in the Depression, NYU Press, 2012, Chapter 5.

Gnagy, Caroline. “As if They Were Going Places: Class and Gender Portrayals Through Country Music in the Texas State Prison, 1938-1944.” Country Boys and Redneck Women: New Essays in Gender and Country Music, edited by Kristine M. McCusker and Diane Pecknold. University Press of Mississippi, 2016, pp. 126–145.

Gnagy, Caroline. Texas Jailhouse Music: A Prison Band History. Arcadia Publishing Inc., 2016.

Harold, Ellen, and Don Fleming. “Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly).” The Association for Cultural Equity, www.culturalequity.org/alan-lomax/friends/ledbetter.

Hollandsworth, Skip. “O Sister, Where Art Thou?” Texas Monthly, May 2003. 

Larrabee, Eric. "Jazz Notes" Harper's Magazine, vol. 217, no. 1302, Nov 01, 1958, pp. 129.

Lomax, A., & Mississippi State Penitentiary. “Negro Prison Songs from the Mississippi State Penitentiary.” Tradition Records, 1950. 

Mullen, Patrick B. “The Dilemma of Representation in Folklore Studies: The Case of Henry Truvillion and John Lomax.” Journal of Folklore Research, 2000, p. 155.

Olsen, J.P. and Luke Walden, directors. The Narcotic Farm. Vimeo, 2008, 

Scarborough, Dorothy. “Work-Songs.” On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs, Harvard University Press, 1925, pp. 206–237.

Shelton, Robert. “Southern Folk Songs from Prison,” p. X11. The New York Times, 13 April 1958. 

Hulton Archive. "American blues musician Huddie 'Lead Belly' Ledbetter (1889 - 1949) playing a guitar and singing, circa 1935." Philip Larkin gets the blues, The Guardian, 2013.

Jackson, Bruce. "A field lieutenant with prisoners picking cotton at Cummins Prison Farm." Prison Plantations, The Marshall Project, 2015.

Jackson, Bruce. “A ‘Hoe Squad’ at the Ellis Prison Farm in Huntsville, Texas in 1966.” Prison Plantations, The Marshall Project, 2015.

Jackson, Bruce. "Ramsey Prison Farm in Texas, 1964." Prison Plantations, The Marshall Project, 2015.

Jackson, Bruce. "A tree-cutting group at the Ellis Unit, 1966." Prison Plantations, The Marshall Project, 2015.

Kentucky Historical Society. "Patients of the Narcotic Farm at a Jam Session." The darkly glamorous and important story of America’s first rehab, Timeline, 2016.

Kentucky Historical Society. "A Patients of the Narcotic Farm Plays the Trumpet." The darkly glamorous and important story of America’s first rehab, Timeline, 2016.

Marchand, Antoinette. "Alan Lomax and Raphael Hurtault listening to playback, June 25, 1962." Alan Lomax Collection, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice. "A wagon is prepped for a Texas Prison Rodeo parade." A Peek at the Golden Age of Prison Radio, The Marshall Project, 2016.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice. "Members of an African American musical group from Goree strike poses in their full Western dress." A Peek at the Golden Age of Prison Radio, The Marshall Project, 2016.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice. “The Cotton Picker's Glee Club Poses with Warden W.W. Waid (on Horse) at an Early Prison Rodeo.” A Peek at the Golden Age of Prison Radio, The Marshall Project, 2016.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice. "The Goree Girls perform at the prison rodeo." A Peek at the Golden Age of Prison Radio, The Marshall Project, 2016.

Texas Prison Museum. "Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls' cast member A.B. Johnson plays the harmonica." A Peek at the Golden Age of Prison Radio, The Marshall Project, 2016.

22, et al. “Early in the Mornin'.” Negro Prison Songs from the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Alan Lomax, Legacy International, 1947.

22 with Group. "Prettiest Train." Negro Prison Songs from the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Alan Lomax, Legacy International, 1947.

Ellis, Hattie. "I Ain't Got Nobody." Alan Lomax, 1939.

Jimpson and Men with Axes. “Murder's Home.” Negro Prison Songs and Blues, Alan Lomax, Legacy International, 1947.

Jimpson and Men with Axes. "No More, My Lawd." Negro Prison Songs from the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Alan Lomax, Legacy International, 1947.

Lead Belly. "Governor Pat Neff." Lead Belly: the Smithsonian Folkways Collection, Smithsonian Folkways. 1925. (Record produced 2015.)

Tangle Eye. "Tangle Eye's Blues." Negro Prison Songs from the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Alan Lomax, Legacy International, 1947.