Crime as a Theme in the Blues and Beyond
It's important to note that the relationship between penal institutions and popular music is not simply that prisoners have created popular music. Instead, prisons as institutions have helped shape music itself, and the criminal pasts of some musicians have influenced how they have been promoted and received.
It's important to note that the relationship between penal institutions and popular music is not simply that prisoners have created popular music. Instead, prisons as institutions have helped shape music itself, and the criminal pasts of some musicians have influenced how they have been promoted and received.
Perhaps the best-known musician with a prison past is Lead Belly. Another interesting example of the relationship between prisons and popular music is provided by the R & B harmony group The Prisonaires. The group was formed in the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville by Johnny Bragg, a talented street singer sentenced to ninety-nine years in 1943 for six counts of rape. The other members were Ed Thurman and William Stewart, both serving time for murder; John Drue, who was serving time for robbery; and Marcel Sanders, serving time for involuntary manslaughter. The Prisonaires had one hit with "Just Walkin' in the Rain" recorded by Sam Phillips for Sun Records in 1953 (Dougan 1999, 448-49). This song "played a small, yet significant role in the history of rock and roll as the song that put Sun Records on the map" (Dougan 1999, 449). Dougan argues that The Prisonaires' music, mediated through the prison institution, "is ultimately the music of unhappy people-men caught in a paradoxical search for personal freedom while fully cognizant of a future assigned to prison" (1999, 464).
During the 1940s, folklorist Alan Lomax took this photograph of Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter
Violent crime has also long formed a part of the subject matter for blues. Some of the best examples of this trend come from the Depression era, from the overcrowded, impoverished, and crime-ridden Black areas of northern and southern U.S. cities (Oliver 1990, 165). According to Oliver, the weapon of choice for poor urban Blacks was the knife, specifically a clasp knife, which was the choice of prostitutes (1990, 177-78). The clasp knife is the weapon used in the song "Two By Four Blues" , and was "the weapon that killed blues singer Charlie Jordan on 9th Street, St. Louis" (Oliver 1990, 178). The razor was also a weapon of choice, not for murder but because of its permanent scarring effects. In "Got Cut All To Pieces" (1928), Bessie Tucker sings of the razor's use:
Lyrics
I got cut all to pieces, aah-aaah ... about a man I love,
(twice)
I'm gonna get that a-woman, just as sho' as the sky's
above
Oliver 1990, 178
This era's urban blues songs also depict the brutal muggings that frequently occurred in poor Black areas (Oliver 1990, 179-91). Songs about violent assault include "Hijack Blues" and "Gutter Man Blues" (Oliver 1990, 181). The extremely high rate of violent crime in Depression-era Memphis, "the murder capital of America," is evident in songs such as Furry Lewis's "Furry's Blues" (1928) (Oliver 1990, 183-84). Oliver suggests that "[i]t is probably indicative of one of the functions of blues-to bolster confidence by emphasizing assertiveness and unwillingness to submit to repression-that while aggressive positions are taken by many singers, blues very seldom reflects a violent crime from the victim's point of view" (1990, 185).
The St. Louis Blues
I got them Saint Louis Blues
just as blue as I can be
He's got a heart like a rock cast in the sea
Or else he wouldn't have gone so far from me
Bo-Weavil Blues
Hey, bo-weavil, don't sing the blues no more
Hey, hey, bo-weavil, don't sing the blues no more
Bo-weavil's here, bo-weavil's everywhere you go