13 Great Prison Songs You Must Hear

We don’t normally expect prisons to play a role in the history of music. But with the blues, it’s not just drinkers, ramblers and vagrants who take a starring role, but also convicts. The blues grew up not only in plantations but in prisons.

Songs from the 1920s onward complain about the privations of life in prison, loneliness, lost love and injustice. Because under Jim Crow, African Americans were abominably treated by a justice system that might better be called an injustice system. Consider, for example, the convict leasing which took hold in Mississippi towards the end of the nineteenth century and went on for decades. Black people convicted by the law were leased to farmers and businessmen and literally worked to death. They were savagely beaten, made to work seemingly endless workdays and treated with murderous neglect. “Convicts dropped from exhaustion, pneumonia, malaria, frostbite, consumption, sunstroke, dysentery, gunshot wounds and “shackle poisoning” says historian David Oshinsky – and in the process made fortunes for plantation owners. Many of the convicts had fallen foul of local ordinances for minor infractions, were simply not able to pay the hefty fines levied, and then fell foul of well-off whites who paid their fines and forced them into indentured slavery characterized by back-breaking and life-threatening labour. “The end result was a stream of back bodies to the county chain gangs and local plantations” (Oshinsky).

African Americans were also worked in unbearable conditions in Mississippi’s penitentiary, Parchman, which sprawled over 20,000 acres of rich Delta farmland. Prisoners were put to work as if they were slaves, with men working until they dropped dead or burnt out with sunstroke. They worked from dawn to dusk in the brutal heat, surviving on worm-infested food, kept at it by the brutal application of the “Black Annie,” a heavy leather strap. Bluesman Willie Dixon, who was born in 1915 was once sentenced to 30 days for vagrancy on the Harvey Allen County Farm. He recalls the use of the Black Annie:

“They’d haul us out there to work and put us on a great big ditch…We were on top cutting and all of a sudden I hear somebody screaming, “Oh Lawdy! Oh, Lawdy, captain please stop doing it…I run over there peepin’. Boy, they’ve got five guys on this one guy…and this guy – they called him Captain Crush – has got a strap about eight inches wide. It’s leather, about five or six inches long, a handle on it about two feet long and holes in the end of this strap about as big as a quarter. They called it the Black Annie…Every time he hits this guy, flesh and blood actually come off this cat…He was out and they were still beating him.”

Willie Dixon

Dixon goes on to relate how, for being caught watching this, he too was beaten with the strap round the head, resulting in deafness for the next four months. He was thirteen at the time.

But in these prison-farms, remarkably, music thrived – mostly as a survival mechanism. When father and son musicologist team, John and Alan Lomax embarked on their famous blues-collecting road trip in 1933, they discovered that their most productive visits were to penitentiaries. They described finding here a “black Homer”, an aging black prisoner called “Iron Head”, with a songbook that would fill 500 pages if written down. In Louisiana’s Angola, They also found Huddie Ledbetter, later to be known as Leadbelly.

Possibly Leadbelly’s most famous song is Midnight Special, covered by Creedance Clearwater Revival, Van Morrison and many others. The Midnight Special was a train whose headlights lit up Ledbetter’s cell. The song speaks of “Nothing in the pan,” in other words nothing to eat, and if you were to “say a thing about it, you’d have trouble with the man.” It highlights the minor infractions that could put you away in prison – “if you ever go the Houston, boy you’d better walk right… Benson Crocker will arrest you, Jimmy Boone will take you down.” Blacks often did not have to commit any crime, in order to be arrested and subsequently jailed. A white person was completely at liberty to stop and question a black stranger in the neighbourhood, and if they did not have a local white person to vouch for them, then the police could be called upon to make an arrest.

As you listen to blues songs the Lomaxes recorded at Parchman (check out “Negro Prison Blues and Songs, Recorded Live by Alan Lomax”) – prisoners recounting personal tragedies, injustices and the ever-present hope of pardon and freedom, you get an insight into the hardship and injustice that Parchman and other penitentiaries represented.

To be sure, many incarcerated in Parchman had committed very violent crimes. But factors of extreme poverty, lack of education and racist oppression need to be reckoned with. Not only did they contribute to a climate of violence, they increased the conviction rate, lengthened sentences and lessened chances for pardon or parole.

Other famous blues convicts include Son House and Bukka White, second cousin to B.B. King. In his Parchman Farm Blues, Bukka sings of the dawn to dusk work regime:

Go to work in the mornin’ just at the dawn of day
And at the settin’ of the sun that is when your work is done.

No wonder he also wrote Fixin’ to Die blues:

Now, I believe I’m fixin’ to die, yeah
I know I was born to die
But I hate to leave my children around cryin’

(Check out the Postscript after the songs)

Here’s our selection of prison blues songs.

Furry Lewis, Judge Harsh, 1928

It’s an appeal from an innocent man for a light sentence:

They ‘rest me for murder, I ain’t harmed a man
‘Rest me for murder, I ain’t harmed a man
Women hollerin’ murderer, Lord I ain’t raised my hand

I ain’t got nobody to get me out on bond
I ain’t got nobody to get me out on bond
I would not mind but I ain’t done nothing wrong

Blind Lemon Jefferson, Prison Cell Blues, 1928

The hopelessness of the convicted prisoner:

I asked the government to knock some days off my time
Well, the way I’m treated, I’m about to lose my mind
I wrote to the governor, please turn me a-loose
Since I don’t get no answer, I know it ain’t no use

Leroy Carr, Prison Bound Blues, 1929

Early one mornin’, the blues came falling down
Early one mornin’, the blues came falling down
All locked up in jail, and prison boun’.

Peg Leg Howell, Ball and Chain Blues, 1929

Howell served time in Georgia prison camps for bootlegging offenses. He knew
what it was like to endure physical labour for the state as a prisoner.

They arrested me, carried me ‘fore the judge
They arrested me, they carried me ‘fore the judge
Said, the judge wouldn’t allow me to say a mumbling word

I’ve always been a poor boy, never had no job…

And the next day, carried the poor boy away
The next day, they carried that poor boy away
Say, the next day, I laid in ball and chains

Take these stripes off my back, chains from ’round my leg
Stripes off my back, chains from ’round my leg
This ball and chain about to kill me dead.

The Memphis Sheiks, He’s In the Jailhouse Now, 1930.

Made famous recently by featuring in the movie, O Brother Where Art Thou by The Soggy Bottom Boys. This unusually cheerful jail song was originally found in vaudeville performances from the early 20th century, usually credited to Jimmie Rodgers. The final verse of the song is about the singer taking a girl named Susie out on the town and the two winding up in jail together.

I went out last Tuesday, Met a gal named Susie…
We started to spend my money, Then she started to call me honey
We took in every cabaret in town
We’re in the jailhouse now
We’re in the jailhouse now
I told the judge right to his face
We didn’t like to see this place
We’re in the jailhouse now.

Bukka White, Parchman Farm Blues, 1940

White was born in Mississippi, but moved to Memphis and Chicago to record. He ran into trouble when he and a friend were “ambushed” by a man along a highway, according to White. He shot the man in the thigh in self-defence. While awaiting trial, he skipped bail and went to Chicago, where he recorded two songs before being apprehended. He was sent back to Mississippi to do a three-year stretch at Parchman Farm. He recorded two numbers for the Lomaxes at Parchman Farm in 1939. His Parchman Farm Blues speaks of the long days of back-breaking labour:

We go to work in the mo’nin
Just a-dawn of day
We go to work in the mo’nin
Just a-dawn of day
Just at the settin’ of the sun
That’s when da work is done, yeah

Leadbelly, Midnight Special, 1934

Leadbelly recorded a version of the song at Angola Prison for the Lomaxes. They said that the Midnight Special was a train from Houston, shining its light into a cell in the Sugar Land Prison, where the light of the train is the light of salvation, which could take them out of prison. Author Carl Sandburg’s view, however, was that the singer would rather be run over by a train than spend more time in jail.

Well, you wake up in the mornin’, you hear the work bell ring,
And they march you to the table to see the same old thing.
Ain’t no food upon the table, and no pork up in the pan.
But you better not complain, boy, you get in trouble with the man.

Big Maceo, County Jail Blues, 1941

Written by Alfred Fields, the song was also recorded by Eric Clapton in 1975.

So take these stripes from around me, chains from around my neck
These stripes from around me, and these chains from around my neck
Well, these stripes don’t hurt me, but these chains oughta give me death

Walter “Tangle Eye” Jackson, Tangle Eye Blues, 1947

One of many recordings made in late 1947 at Parchman by Alan Lomax, the song speaks of the regret of the incarcerated prisoner.

Oh Lord
Well I wonder will I ever get back home?
Oh Lord
Well it must have been the devil that pulled me here
more down and out
Oh Lord… if I ever get back home, I’ll never do wrong
If I can just make it home I won’t do wrong no more

Lighnin’ Hopkins, Jail House Blues, 1961

Originally written by Clarence Williams and Bessie Smith in 1923, and recorded also by Ella Fitzgerald in 1963, Hopkins’s version is telling, in that he had been sent to Houston County Prison Farm in the mid-1930s – for which offense we don’t know.

Hey mister jailer, will you please sir bring me the key
I just want you to open the door, cause this ain’t no place for me

Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison, 1955

Recorded first on his debut album, Cash performed the song at Folsom Prison itself on January 13, 1968. It contains the classic lines, which were roundly cheered by the inmates:

But I shot a man in Reno
Just to watch him die…

Far from Folsom Prison
That’s where I want to stay
And I’d let that lonesome whistle
Blow my blues away

Bob Dylan, Hurricane, 1976

Co-written with Jacques Levy, the song concerns the imprisonment of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who, it alleged, was falsely tried and convicted, a victim of racism. In 1985 Federal Judge H. Lee Sarokin, ruled that Carter had not received a fair trial and overturned the conviction, resulting in Carter’s release and the granting of a writ of habeas corpus to Carter, commenting that the prosecution had been “based on racism rather than reason and concealment rather than disclosure.”

Sam Cooke, Chain Gang, 1960

Cooke’s incongruously upbeat 1960 hit “Chain Gang” was inspired by his encounter with a prison chain gang while out on tour. These prisoners had been out build a highway, and the only thing keeping them in good spirits was the hope that one day they’d be free from their shackles.

All day long they work so hard
Till the sun is goin’ down
Working on the highways and byways
And wearing, wearing a frown
You hear them moanin’ their lives away
Then you hear somebody sa-ay

That’s the sound of the men working on the chain ga-a-ang
That’s the sound of the men working on the chain gang

Postscript

The inequity of the justice system in the United States continues to this day, with one in every three black male babies born in this century expected to be incarcerated. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with a prison population that has grown from 300,000 to over 2 million today, and one in every 15 people in the country expected to go to jail or prison. Its rate of incarceration is four to eight times higher than those in other liberal democracies, including Canada, England, and Germany.

Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow says that “more African American adults are under correctional control today…than were enslaved in 1850.” The United States now imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. Alexander goes on to note, shockingly, that “young black men today may be just as likely to suffer discrimination in employment, housing, public benefits and jury service as a black man in the Jim Crow era.”

Black rapper Meek Mills tells of his experience as a black man caught in a justice system in need of reform: “Like many who are currently incarcerated, I was the victim of a miscarriage of justice — carried out by an untruthful officer, as determined by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, and an unfair judge.” You can read details of his case here.

Mills speaks of the disproportionate number of men and women of colour in prison and contends that “the system causes a vicious cycle, feeding upon itself — sons and daughters grow up with their parents in and out of prison, and then become far more likely to become tied up in the arrest-jail-probation cycle. This is bad for families and our society as a whole.”

John Pfaff, in his recent Locked In, observes that “blacks are systematically denied access to the more successful paths to economic stability,” and therefore “face systematically greater pressure to turn to other alternatives.” He goes on to note that young men without a way out of poverty turn to gangs, and gangs always turn to violence. The way out of the cycle of violence and incarceration that America has got itself into in not straightforward, but surely has a lot to do with the need to tackle poverty, with the fact that prosecutors are elected and need to be market themselves as “tough on crime,” with the lack of any sensible gun control policy, and with the need to examine drug policy.

Michelle Alexander concludes her book by reminding her readers of Rev. Dr Martin Luther King’s appeal for a “radical restructuring of our society,” and urges a radical restructuring of America’s approach to racial justice advocacy as well.

James Baldwin, in a letter written in 1962 to his nephew, tells him that, “you were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity…that you were a worthless human being.” The sad history of incarceration in the United States is achingly reflected in the prison blues songs.

The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin, 1962
Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice, David M. Oshinksy, 1996
The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander, 2010
Race, Crime and Punishment, The Aspen Institute, 2011
Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, 2015
Locked In, The True Causes of Mass Incarceration, John F Pfaff, 2017

It’s so hard to find one rich man in ten with a satisfied mind.

A Satisfied Mind was written by Joe “Red” Hayes and Jack Rhodes and first recorded by Porter Wagoner in 1955, scoring him a #1 Country hit. Hayes explained the origin of the song in an interview: “The song came from my mother. Everything in the song are things I heard her say over the years. I put a lot of thought into the song before I came up with the title. One day my father-in-law asked me who I thought the richest man in the world was, and I mentioned some names. He said, ‘You’re wrong; it is the man with a satisfied mind.’”

The song has been recorded by a great many artists over the years, notable by Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. Cash’s first version was released in 2004 on the Kill Bill: Volume 2 soundtrack, but it later appeared on his posthumous 2010 album American VI: Ain’t No Grave. It was a song Cash had been singing since the 1950s from the time when he didn’t have enough of his own songs and needed covers, but he liked it very much. Like the rest of the songs on American VI, the song is poignant, and sounds like the wisdom of a man who is near to the end and has an urgent message to convey.

Money can’t buy back
Your youth when you’re old
Or a friend when you’re lonely
Or a love that’s grown cold

The wealthiest person
Is a pauper at times
Compared to the man
With a satisfied mind.

Cash doubtless knew his time had “run out,” but the song lyrics seem to very aptly fit the faith that sustained him:

But one thing’s for certain
When it comes my time
I’ll leave this old world
With a satisfied mind.

Bob Dylan recorded A Satisfied Mind twice, first in 1967 on a version that wasn’t released until 2014 on The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete, and again for his 1980 Saved. Dylan’s version on this much pilloried album is masterful, all bluesy and gospel at the same time. He begins virtually unaccompanied, with his wonderful gospel singers harmonizing and some sparse piano. The stripped back, emotion-laden approach highlights beautifully the potency of the song’s message in a way that most other versions I’ve heard fail to do. Throughout the song Dylan moans in the manner of an old gospel blues artist, giving us ample time to ponder the question of what really satisfies in life.

On Saved, A Satisfied Mind bleeds into the excitement of the title track, a rocker which provides Dylan’s answer to the opening song’s question. “I was blinded by the devil, born already ruined,” Dylan sings, urgently pointing to his discovery of the reality of a mind unsatisfied by fortune or fame. But now, “by his grace I have been touched, by his word I’ve been healed,” that unsatisfied life saved by his new-found faith.

I got to thinking about this song after reading Charles Duhigg’s article in the New York Times Magazine, Wealthy, Successful and Miserable. Duhigg says that “The upper echelon is hoarding money and privilege to a degree not seen in decades. But that doesn’t make them happy at work.” He recounts attending his 15^th anniversary reunion with his Harvard MBA class and being shocked at how many were just plain miserable. These were people all earning huge salaries and working in prestigious companies, and yet who felt like they were wasting their lives. One person was earning $1.2m a year, hated his work, and yet felt he could not afford to take a pay cut to a mere $600,000 in order to take up an opportunity he really fancied.

As Hayes and Rhodes’s song says,

But little they know
That it’s so hard to find
One rich man in ten
With a satisfied mind.

Upon further research, Duhigg discovered that around 50% of American workers are professionally miserable – and this in a boom economy. There is an underlying sense that what they are doing day by day just isn’t worth the huge effort many of them have to put into it.

Our economics-driven market drives ever greater production and consumption. It’s hard not to buy into it, so pervasive is the advertising industry assailing us at every turn, online or off. You need this, you have to have it, you’re not complete without this. So it goes, relentlessly, every day. We work ceaselessly, we consume, we sleep, we get up and do it again. But, as the old saying goes, who says on their death bed – “I wish I’d spent more time in the office.”

Money can’t buy back
Your youth when you’re old
Or a friend when you’re lonely
Or a love that’s grown cold.

Or as the ancient Psalmist of Israel said, “Do not be overawed when someone gets rich, and lives in ever greater splendour; for they will take nothing with them when they die, their splendour will not descend with them. (Psalm 49:16-17)

Joe Hayes said of his song, “It has been done a lot in churches. I came out of the Opry one night and a church service was going on nearby. The first thing I hear was the congregation singing ‘Satisfied Mind.’ I got down on my knees.”

Good place to start, maybe, to get some perspective and maybe, a satisfied mind.

 

[Some other fine versions of the song include:

Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama on There Will Be A Light

Jeff Buckley on Sketches

Eric Bibb on Spirit & the Blues

Lucinda Williams on Ramblin’

Dana Fuchs in conversation: songs of hope and perserverance

Dana Fuchs’ 4^th album, Love Lives On, drips with emotion, honesty and passion. Recorded in Memphis, the songs are soaked in traditional American soul, along with a huge dollop of blues, and yet sound bang up to date. Born out of the pain of family loss and also the birth of her baby, Dana Fuchs sees the album as something of a new beginning for her. It is, she says, “all about hope and perseverance.”

Photo by: Franco Francesconi

Down at the Crossroads talked to Dana about making the album and the background to some of the songs.

DATC: Congratulations on the new album, Love Lives On. It’s got a great classic feel to it, great arrangements, great vocal performance – we love it! Tell us about the background of making the album and what you were trying to do with it.

DF: Thank you!  I decided to get out of New York City and go to the root of the music that inspired me to follow my passion.  The southern soul of Stax/Volt, Hi Records and Sun Studios. From Otis Redding to Al Green to Johnny Cash.  All huge musical influences.

It’s a way of paying homage to these great artists who inspired countless others.  All roads pointed to Memphis.  I wanted less heavy guitar and more space for the vocal. So, in

February and March 2017 we wrote songs with that direction which was so much fun because we only wrote with acoustic guitars and we would sing the horn lines we imagined creating with Memphis horns. Then I took a European tour that April trying them out live and then I went to Memphis to record my faves in May 2017.

DATC: Musically, it’s very rich – you’ve really got a great Memphis soul sound going, Tell us a bit about the musicians you worked with and the process of making this album.  

DF: The core band was:

• Charles Hodges – Charles created the soul rock organ!  At one point I had a steady diet of those Hi Record recordings of the Reverend Al Green.  I never really knew much about the Hammond organ until I discovered these records as a young girl.  That warm enveloping syrupy church sound that just makes you swoon.  Charles Hodges created that as far as I’m concerned.
• Steve Potts is the drummer – I wanted a seriously rooted drummer.  A guy who had as much power as he does soul.  A guy that defies all genre.  That is Steve Potts.  Almost 70 years old and plays with the strength of a 20 year old but with the wisdom and finesse that comes from his years of experience playing with so many legends of these genres.

 

• Then there is Glenn Patscha – Glenn has played on every album I’ve made except my very first.  He’s truly a musical genius.  He brings a flare and style to the piano, Wurlitzer and organ that is so unique.  It’s incredibly unpredictable.  He plays as if he’s a string or horn section and literally sings the parts for both before they even exist.  He can make keyboards sound like guitars, strings, horns, bells and go from dark and moody to happy and hopeful in one measure. It’s other worldly.
• Jack Daley is the powerhouse bass player.  He’s got such a feel and focus that just glues together every song.  He’s also been on most all of my albums.  Not to mention he’s just a Prince of a human being.  Jack is such a strong presence on bass yet at the same time can totally adapt and go with any flow.  He’s like that personally, as well.
• And then, Jon Diamond – Jon is the person I began my real musical pursuit with.  He is the one who turned me on to Otis and Al Green.  He puts the music under my words and knows where I’m going with something, sometimes almost before I do.  It’s a real songwriting partnership.  He’s been in the trenches with me since day one.  For better or for worse…hahahaha!

These guys were the live tracking band and made the songs come to life.  We’d listen down to the acoustic demo of each song once or twice and Steve the drummer would say, “Let’s cut it!” And we’d go in and usually they’d nail it in the first or second take.

It was seamless.  After that we brought in the horns.  Marc Franklin and Kirk Smothers.

They are the main studio guys down there and I see why!  They were lightning fast.

I’ve never worked with a horn section before, but it was amazing to be able to say, “Hey guys, can you make that part a little more…sad?”  Sometimes I’d say “lonely” or “desperate” or “hopeful’ and they’d just nail it in one take.  The singers were also just unbelievable.  Reba Russell and Susan Marshall.  Again, lightning fast and this style just pours from their bodies and throats!   Felix Hernandez was another gem we discovered down there.  We kept hearing congas on a few of the tracks and I finally asked the producer Kevin Houston if he could find someone.  We were almost out of time, but he delivered Felix and Felix more than delivered!

All of the musicians were chosen by Kevin Houston our producer except my NYC guys who’ve played on most of my albums:  Jon Diamond, Jack Daley and Glenn Patscha.

DATC: The album has a very positive, uplifting vibe. How much does that reflect your approach to life? Because as I understand it, life was pretty difficult for you at one stage.

DF: Yes, life definitely threw some tough punches my way and knowing that this is what life tends to do and many others have had it far worse, I was able to make the choice to use it as a way to grow and maybe even benefit others by sharing through music, or to just shut down.  There were times when I wondered if I’d ever be able to find joy on stage or in music again, but music never let me down.  (The business might – but the music doesn’t!).  As a Dutch friend of mine who works with refugees, addicts, orphans and autistic kids likes to say “we can go bitter or go better”.  I love that.  So, the album became about hope and perseverance.  Hopefully for anyone struggling who listens to it they’ll know they’re not alone.

DATC: Tell us about Callin’ Angels. It sounds like a call to be defiant in the face of difficulties.

DF: This is a song that has a verse for each family member who I lost.  The idea came about when I arrived at our Harlem studio at Jon Diamond’s place to write and he was playing the chords and saying “Come on all you angels.” Which struck me as odd because he’s an atheist and Jewish! He had no intention behind the words and was just thinking “gospel” style.  I immediately recalled a message someone sent me after my mother passed saying that with all the family loss I now had a lot of angels watching over me.  I was struck by the sweet sentiment and then reflected on how many of us have gone through loss already, so it has become a song of conjuring our lost loved ones in our hearts at every show.  But, I love that you see the defiance because it’s definitely there. There are times when I just speak to my brothers, sister or parents and say: “where the hell are you and why did you have to leave too soon?”  Sort of telling them “ok, if you’re angels watching over me, give some clue as to what the heck I’m supposed to be doing!”

DATC: And then there’s the gospel feel of Faithful Sinner, with the invitational church organ at the outset. What’s the background to that song?

DF: This song is about my father who went into the hospital with pneumonia and then was sent to a rehabilitation center to get his strength back.  He never did and died there hours after the family left him for the night.  I know that he knew he was going and I could see how scared he was.  He was a very tortured soul who had one of the most brutal lives of anyone I’ve ever known.  Severely abused by his own father & mother.  His father’s beatings only stopped because his father took his own life.  My father found him.  With all that pain he was most certainly a flawed parent.  Yet he tried so hard to do what was right.  A young man with 6 kids of his own struggling to keep his family running, he still always made sure we had a Christmas tree with toys, Easter baskets, bicycles he taught us to ride and he even made Halloween costumes every year for us with scraps of things around the house.   He could also be very angry and scary – especially when he drank.  That’s when the pain would overcome him, I think.  Still we knew he loved us.  He’d go to schools battling for us if we were wronged.  In the end, I know he felt so much guilt for where he failed as a parent.  He was raised Catholic and convinced God would never forgive him.  After he died my brother had a dream where my father told him that he thought “God set him up to fail.” This floored me, and I thought about my dad being once a beautiful little baby with so much hope and promise only to be neglected, abused and then try still to be a good person and father.  Which in many respects he most certainly was.  Hence, Faithful Sinner.  Ultimately, aren’t we all just flawed beings who are trying (I hope) to do the right thing?

DATC: Have you a particular favorite song on the album, one that’s particularly meaningful for you?

DF: It changes around.  First it was, Love Lives On, because that song was written for my mother while she was passing away next to me and I had just found out I was having a child.  Then it was Faithful Sinner and lately Sedative because it’s such a fun one to do live.  Plus, everyone initially thought it was about sex and a relationship gone wrong but it’s about panic attacks in the middle of the night from a mind that’s gone wrong!

DATC: You’ve included a cover of Ring of Fire. Johnny Cash’s original with the mariachi horns and so on is so distinctive, I wondered how you could do it differently. But it’s great. Why did you decide to include this?

DF: After my father passed away, I began covering this song live in this gospel way dedicating it to him each night.  He was a huge Johnny Cash fan as was I, thanks to him playing it for us as kids.  It was always so well received by audiences and once I knew I was recording in Memphis it made so much sense to add it.   It’s become a tribute to two great and tortured souls with bellowing voices.

DATC: You’re an ambassador for the JED Foundation. Tell us about that.

DF: The JED foundation is an organization whose mission is to protect the emotional well-being and prevent suicide for our nation’s teens and young adults.  Statistically, teens and young adults are suffering at alarming rates from a range of mental health issues including suicidal ideation and attempts. This level of emotional distress can be brought on by being overwhelmed with the transition into adulthood, especially if they’re battling depression, anxiety, bullying, discrimination, or any number of hidden triggers in their lives. I was approached by the CEO, John MacPhee, a few years ago, who is a fan and had been to several of my shows and heard me talk about my sister’s suicide around a song I’d written for her called, Songbird Fly Me To Sleep.  Since then, I have trained with JED and The Moth to become a JED Storyteller and I always attend their storyteller events and fundraisers, where young people get up and share their lived experiences. It’s really a smart approach, because hearing another person sharing what happened to them and how they got, or fought through it, is an incredible way to reduce stigma and create empathy and understanding. The song, Fight My Way is another one of my faves on the album, which I wrote just 2 days before going to Memphis to record, about the stories I’d just heard the night before from several young people who, if not for the right support, wouldn’t likely be here today.  I was so moved and shaken by it that I had to write a song about it.  Being a JED Ambassador simply means I spread the word through sharing my story and lived experience and I always point to JED’s amazing resources online any time I’m given a platform.  So, for me that’s always connected to music. On stage, in the studio – wherever.  It’s the only megaphone I have so it’s the best way I can hopefully serve the cause.

DATC: Dana, thank you!

Johnny Cash and Luther Dickinson: Ain’t no Grave

Rev Gary Davis

Songs about death and dying are common in the blues. Not surprising, given the toughness of life for African Americans in the southern states under Jim Crow during the early decades of the twentieth century when the blues grew up. Infant mortality was high, life expectancy low, disease common and healthcare practically non-existent for many. So death was an ever-present reality – families losing children, children losing a mother or father, neighbors aware of the pain of bereavement suffered by their friends. Today we expect our full three-score years and ten and then some, and until we start heading towards that point, most of us don’t have to attend too many funerals. But, sooner or later, we all have to face it – “I gotta walk that lonesome valley, I gotta walk there by myself, Ain’t no one can walk there for me, I gotta walk there for myself.”

The reality of death in the early days of the blues is highlighted by the traditional song, sung by Rev Gary Davis and many others since, Death Don’t Have No Mercy. It’s a particularly mournful blues, as befits its subject matter:

Death don’t have no mercy in this land,
He’ll come to your house, he won’t stay long
Look in the bed and find your mother is gone – Death don’t have no mercy in this land.

The song covers all the family members – mother, father, sister and brother and says starkly: “Death will leave you standin’ and cryin’ in this land.” Those of us who have lost those near and dear to us know the numbness that comes when we’re left “standin’ and cryin.”

Here’s a version of the song done by Jorma Kaukonen and Hot Tuna:

The Roman Empire of first couple of centuries in which Christianity grew up was one where the great mass of people in the urban centers lived generally impoverished, uncertain lives, where disease claimed the lives of many, and where, again, infant mortality was high and life expectancy low. In a situation where the old pagan gods offered no comfort beyond this life, Christianity emerged with news of a God who had become human and had risen from the dead, and who now offered the same prospect of resurrection to believers. Not only that, but that this resurrection-life-to-come could begin to be experienced in the here and now. This is part of the explanation of the growth of the Christian church over these early centuries. Christianity offered hope – in the midst of harsh, difficult lives, there was hope – hope that things could be better within the new community of faith, sharing and love, hope for beyond the grave and hope for the world to be transformed.

One of the songs that gives expression to this hope is Ain’t No Grave Can Hold My Body Down, originally written and recorded by “Brother” Claude Ely, who was a singer-songwriter and Pentecostal holiness preacher, born in 1922. The song, strictly speaking, isn’t a blues song, but to my mind, it fits right in with the gospel blues we see from Blind Willie Johnson right up until the present.

Ain’t No Grave has been recorded by Odetta, recently by Charlie Parr and Crooked Still (featuring in the vampire TV series True Blood) and, of course, famously by Johnny Cash on his American VI album, released not long after he died. The album is a record of Cash’s faith during the last months of his life.

Claude Ely’s original version of the song is bright and jaunty, whereas Cash’s is sombre, sung by a man who knows he’s approaching the moment of truth – and yet it still manages to capture the essence of defiant hope that infuses the song.

Rick Rubin, who produced the album recollects a conversation in May 2003 with Johnny Cash soon after his wife June had died:

I’d never heard him so distraught. And he said, ‘You know, I’ve been through tremendous pain in my life, and I’ve never felt anything like this.’…

…He sounded so weak, so beaten, and I’d never really heard him like that before. I’m not sure where the question came from, but I said, ‘Do you feel like somewhere you can find faith?’ And when he heard that word, a switch went off in his head, and he answered in a strong voice, ‘My faith is UNSHAKABLE.’ And the conversation changed after that. So he had tremendous faith, he didn’t really have fear and he already was dealing with pain; I think he had acceptance. When he knew he was going to die, he was calm and matter of fact about it, and…that was it.”

Johnny Cash died in September of that year, sustained by the faith expressed in Ely’s song:

There ain’t no grave can hold my body down.
There ain’t no grave can hold my body down.

When I hear that trumpet sound
I’m gonna rise right outta the ground
Ain’t no grave that can hold my body down.

Well look way down the river and what do you think I see?
I see a band of angels and they’re coming after me.

There ain’t no grave that can hold my body down.
There ain’t no grave can hold my body down.

Cash’s voice is that of an old man, and yet is clear and convincing over the sparse instrumentation. The recording is both sobering and powerful.

The CD was released in May 2004, three days before what would have been Cash’s 78th birthday. A video to accompany the song was created with the help of professional and amateur artists, and fans of Johnny Cash. Within four months a quarter of a million people had contributed illustrations:

In some ways, the video attests to the enduring power of art and the fact that Johnny Cash lives on through the legacy of music he has left. That wasn’t what the song meant to Cash, however. An integral part of Cash’s Christian faith was the hope of resurrection. This has been the case since the very earliest days of Christianity. Within twenty years or so of the first Easter, Paul the apostle told the Jesus-followers in Corinth – “if the Messiah has not been resurrected, then your faith is useless.” Paul didn’t think there was much point in following someone who had simply brought a new philosophy to the world – such people were ten a penny in Paul’s day – one more dead philosopher or would-be Messiah was neither here nor there. The point was, though, Paul, along with a load of people he actually knew, had seen the risen Jesus – and he goes on to explain that the Messiah’s resurrection was the “firstfruits” – the first and the guarantee – for believers who “fall asleep,” in other words who die. The Messiah’s death and resurrection brought a “new creation” which Christians could share in – the new life of the Messiah infusing Jesus followers right now and then raising them to life at the last. This is the Christian hope, this was the essence of Cash’s faith, this is what Ely’s song expresses.

Finally, here’s a terrific updated version of Ely’s song, written by Luther Dickinson after the death of his father – Ain’t No Grave.

When that day comes, when death comes my way
I would hope to be as brave
As he was on judgement day.