With help from Discogs, I finally cataloged the records I own that were recorded inside prisons (concerts by performers from the outside as well as prisoner band concerts), spoken word albums by prisoners, albums that include incarcerated musicians collaborating with artists that are not locked up, prison field recordings, and collaborations where prisoners got the leave the prison to go to a recording studio and then were returned to the prison after. The collection focuses entirely on LPs. I have about 7 more that aren't on Discogs. One of these days I'll have to take photos and upload them. And I’m still on the hunt for more of these records. Some are simply out of my price range; others are hopelessly hard to find. From a listening perspective, I recommend the J.B. Smith album most highly. It was recently re-released, with additional material, on CD. Smith’s voice is just devastating, as you can hear here.
#14 IMDb 1903: Skyscrapers of New York City, from the North River
An Edison phantom ride actuality by J.B. Smith of a panoramic view of Manhattan from the North River (Hudson). After a slew of narrative films, it’s a nice change of pace to see an old-fashioned phantom ride actuality. Interesting from a historical perspective but not as fascinating as the Mitchell & Kenyon films of the period.
J.B. Smith – No More Good Time in the World for Me (Dust to Digital)
Bluesman Bukka White called them sky songs, snatched from the mind’s firmament in raw form, spun on the fly, and stretched to whatever verse-sum desired. Their creation ran directly at odds with the recording medium of the day. Seventy-eight rpm technology mandated modes of expression that would fit within the strictures of scarcely more than three minutes. J.B. Smith’s music fortunately arrived later when long-playing tape could properly accommodate his lyrical flights of fancy. That Smith’s vibrant repertoire was preserved at all, even partially, is a minor miracle of kismet and scholarship.
Designated Prisoner No. 130196 upon internment at a Texas work farm to serve out a life’s sentence, Smith was far from an enviable position when the material on No More Good Time in the World for Me was captured for posterity. As with his contemporary Robert Pete Williams and a host of others, Smith’s music was indelibly impacted by his incarceration. Like Williams, Smith found a benefactor in the form of a white folklorist. Bruce Jackson began interviewing him in the summer of 1964, recording him in the ensuing several years and eventually even writing a letter of support on Smith’s behalf when he became eligible for parole.
Smith’s earlier crimes where reportedly of lesser consequence, but the one that landed him at Ramsey State Farm with a 45-year sentence (nearly equal to his age at the time of the recordings) was uxorcide and the result of an unchecked jealousy by his own admission although he opens the equity of his state-assigned penance to debate (“I Got Too Much Time for the Crime I Done” and “Woman Trouble”). The finality of his fate and the inexorable absence of freedom underscore his vocal delivery with sobering regularity. Ambient environmental sounds are audible around the edges, but the clarity of Smith’s voice is sometimes startling.
The work song traditions from which Smith’s songs sprang had very practical purposes. Rhythms inherent to the verses served as a means of synching men on a crew line so that they functioned as a single unit, increasing efficiency and creating an aural crutch for those who might otherwise fall behind the collective pace. Smith’s purposes with the structures are more varied in the service of making sense of things, but survival is still central. When sung they sometimes take the form of sorrow-laden laments, but “They Can’t Do That” signified as a toast and spoken in rhyme takes a more cynical and darkly humorous cast with Smith intoning “So, boys, you know it’s a damn shame, when you have been fucked and also framed. Now here you is with fifteen years or more, for some deeds that’s done by some other son of a gun and you weren’t even in on the dough.”
Smith’s songs occupy wildly varying lengths, but each builds off the same core rhyme structure with tempo and inflection accounting for musical variation. The often observational lyrics form an informal and expansive ethnography of prison life. An accompanying booklet gathers transcriptions of all the songs alongside of vernacular glossary. The tribulations of the skinner (a man who handles mule teams) are a recurring theme alongside vivid and harrowing descriptions of the captains and riders (guards) tasked with keeping work crew docile and productive. God favors heavily as well with repeated entreaties to “The Lord” punctuating Smith’s ruminations. The songs are stark, but reliably immersive and often beautiful whether barely scratching a minute-and-a-half on “Watching My Timber” or expanding to the better part of a half-hour as with the epic “Ever Since I Been a Man Full Grown”.
Jackson’s efforts helping to emancipate Smith eventually paid off with the latter’s release in 1967. He helped hook Smith up with the Newport Folk Festival circuit partially on the merits of an LP released on the Takoma label and comprising three of the eighteen tracks contained here. Several years later Smith returned to prison on a parole violation and slipped back into obscurity. These recordings remain a representative testament of his life and a far better and lasting marker of his singular artistry than the probability of some forgotten tombstone in a Texas cemetery.
