Alan Lomax - Negro Prison Songs

Alan Lomax and his father John Lomax are the forefather's of archiving some of the only known recordings of particular genres of American folk songs. They first began recording black black music in Southern prisons in 1933. African American prison songs were some of the first they recorded. They were under the theory that the Negro folk song probably survived in its most original form behind the walls of prisons across the south. They were wrong however, and found a hybrid of the "field work song," it had become songs of dispair, prison life, murder and the prayer of death.

"These songs belong to the musical tradition which Africans brought to the New World, but they are also as American as the Mississippi River. They were born out of the very rock and earth of this country, as black hands broke the soil, moved, reformed it, and rivers of stinging sweat poured the blazing heat of Southern skies, and are mounted upon the passion that this struggle with nature brought forth. They tell us the story of the slave gang, the sharecropper system, the lawless work camp, the chain gang, the pen." -Alan Lomax

This was recorded at Parcham Farm in in Mississippi between 1947-1948, which is described as one of the absolute worst work prisons around. Very much like the prison in the film "I'm A Fugitive On A Chain Gang" which is actually based on a true story of a Georgia chain gang prison. The recordings were released on an LP a decade after they were recorded and then reissued on CD, first in the early 90's then again in '97 as "Prison Songs Volume 1: Murderous Home" which is where this transfer comes from. Volume Two features unissued recordings from this same sessions, which I do not have... so if anyone does have Volume two, please send it my way.

Pick up dat hammer, boy!