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Notes From An Artist
Colin Asher:The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music
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Justice for All? Author Reveals Hidden Stories of Music and the Penal System. Hosts David C. Gross and Tomaso Semioli serve time with Colin Asher to discuss his new book, The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music
Colin Asher: The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music Playlist
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SPEAKER_03This radio show may be hazardous to the establishment media. You're about to embark on a cultural and intellectual journey steeped in itself. Basist, composers, and authors David Secrets and Tommaso's Toomio. Welcome you to Notes from an artist featuring interface, music, and auditory collections. Together, you will explore artistry that knows the no progress, challenges, status quo, and sparks your imagination. David and Tomazzo know the rules. And how to break them. Don't touch that dial. Buy the ticket. Take the ride. Get in on the conversation. Idea. Notes from an artist.
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SPEAKER_03What do you mean, very interesting? It was stupid. It was stupid.
SPEAKER_01But it was also very interesting. Hi there, nice to be with you. Happy you could stick around. Like to introduce Leg Larry Smith. Come. Sampoons rhythm pole. And Bernie Dudley Bohey No, bass guitar. And Neil Edwards, piano. Come in, Rodney Splater on the sacrifice. IV instant.
SPEAKER_02Let's see, my meditated thing.
SPEAKER_04Welcome to the show, Colin.
SPEAKER_07Really appreciate you having me on. Nice to see you, gentlemen.
SPEAKER_04All right, David, for the uh benefit of our audience member, let's introduce Colin. And all this information is from the internet, Colin, so it's got to be true. Colin is the author of the book The Midnight Special, The Secret Prison History of American Music on W. W. Norton. That's out now, yes?
SPEAKER_07It is, yeah, since June 30th.
SPEAKER_04Alright, it's out since June 30, David. So get yourself to a fine bookstore.
SPEAKER_05I have two copies. I've got a PDF, uh, and I have the book. So you have the book.
SPEAKER_04So Jeff Bezos will personally pack you a book if you order it on Amazon. Now let's talk about Colin's life. It's a fascinating life he's led. You're a freelance writer. Uh your work has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, the Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Correct?
SPEAKER_00Correct, yes.
SPEAKER_04All right. You teach reading and writing as an instructor at Kingsborough Community College. Now that has to be a challenging endeavor given Chat GPT and AI.
SPEAKER_07Uh yes, I've had that job before those uh before those things existed. It was always challenging, but yes, it is getting worse over time, no doubt. It's kind of difficult to hold a pen with your thumbs, I guess, for that age group. Yeah, I tell you, I mean, a lot of us are going going back to pen on paper, um, because there's no other way to know if people are actually doing the work. Um yeah, uh the my classroom feels a lot like the 1960s sometimes. Pen pen on paper, oral exams, you know.
SPEAKER_05That's yeah, I read something recently about some college where uh they are forcing the kids to do that and eliminating any AI from any of their uh favorites and such.
SPEAKER_07It's a good thing. Yeah, agreed. Agreed. I I don't understand the fascination. Um I don't understand why you would sign up for college and then you know have some robot do the work for you, but uh many people seem to think it's a solid choice.
SPEAKER_04Well, now these you you have college students, so they're between 18 and 21. How GPT savvy are they?
SPEAKER_07Good question. I mean, I I should note, you know, community college in my classroom any given semester, the age range is probably more like 18 to 50. Um and so, yeah, the savviness, there's a wide range of savviness. You know, coming straight out of high school, savvy. They know how to use it. You know, the problem is nobody's really called them on it, so they don't know how to hide it because you know their high school teachers are overworked, they get, you know, 200 papers in a day, and if it sounds semi-coherent, you give it a check and you keep it moving, and then you get to college where instructors have time to look more closely, and then it's very clear to us that you know the work was actually composed by AI. So they're they're not savvy in that sense. Um, they do know how to use the tools, um, they don't know how to like bridge the divide between what they actually understand and can speak about, and then what appears on the page, and they don't know how suspect that is.
SPEAKER_05Well, it's funny you say that because uh my daughter just graduated, crap. And uh there were a couple of assignments that she had to help her with. And I said the first thing you gotta do is if you're using AI, get rid of any of the hypens. Uh a weekly thing, and they have put it into place if your uh you know uh uh article is AI. Which I think is pretty cool in its own way.
SPEAKER_04Well, I I was a journalist for twenty some odd years before AI. I'm old enough to remember when you couldn't use a calculator on a math test, but much of what I read today is repurposed content that has it's not really a writer. They're taking material from 15, 20 years ago and they're just putting a fresh coat of paint on it. So, uh, you know, one of the reasons why I like reading hard copy books is because it's tangible. It's something I could relate to.
SPEAKER_05There's your book if I can No, you've got the background, so you can't really.
SPEAKER_04There's the background, you can't see it. But you're teaching at um you also are a fellow of the New York Foundation of Arts and Nonfiction Literature. Nice work if you can get it. Now, I see fascinating history. You were born in West Virginia, but you were raised in Brooklyn, New York, where I was born, and you left high school early and you spent a decade in California. You worked as a bike messenger, you stocked shelves and warehouses and driving, you drove a truck. Um, I lived in San Francisco while you were at the City College of San Francisco. Um, I would imagine in your line of work as a messenger and stocking shelves, you probably ran into some people that served prison time.
SPEAKER_07Oh, yeah, sure. Yes. I mean, I had a knockabout sort of a life. Yeah, I mean, amongst messengers, I find it's actually funny to talk about being a bike messenger now. People don't, it's it's like talking about buggy drivers or something, right? They just don't exist, and so I always have to explain. But yes, I was one of those guys. If you were um living in New York or San Francisco from the 80s to the I guess early 2000s, we'd be zipping around through traffic, carrying letters back and forth um and large documents before email could do that. Uh and yeah, it's um, you know, as a high school dropout, it was great work. I made decent money. I was outside all day, but it's also the sort of thing that you end up in, you know, if things don't go so well sometimes. I mean, there were messenger companies who specifically hired folks coming right out of county jail or coming out of the state prison system. Um, you know, it was it was a job you could get. Um, so yeah, sure, plenty of plenty of the folks who were on the road with me back then had done some kind of time.
SPEAKER_04And you also worked in homeless services, which was a big problem when I was in San Francisco.
SPEAKER_07And and still is, yeah. I mean, the trend, you know, the transition was essentially, you know, uh kid growing up on the poor into working class, and then eventually deciding I was gonna sort of try to help help with that same circumstance. I got into homeless services, and eventually threw my hands up and said, you know, this isn't doing enough, let me write about it. Uh and that's that was my transition into journalism, which then, you know, has transitioned into this this other career I have now, writing creative nonfiction and writing books.
SPEAKER_05Well what's interesting about this too is Tom and I, we have a um Flipboard magazine. And when I was reviewing it one day, there came your article uh on Elmo Hope. And uh about two or three years ago I started getting into Elmo Hope. I had really never heard of it. And so when I started reading this article, I was like, completely but it wasn't until the end of the word. I immediately emailed comments that we've got to get this guy on the show. Uh and I gotta tell you, and I've been telling Tom that every time we talk about it, the the book reads fantastically. It really, really does. It's a great story, uh I don't know if it's true. Uh which is really even more frightening. Folks, this is not cool hand loop. Uh this is actually a real live situation with prisons and musicians and other folks. So uh Tom, tell us about the book.
SPEAKER_04Well, the book, well, one of the things that struck me is just about, you know, you you're really describing the prison industrial complex. And and, you know, it's the prison industrial complex is the fastest growing business in the U.S. And I'm always fascinated. You know, I I started doing the research just on the prison industrial complex, and I learned we have the largest prison, the United States is the largest prison population in the world. 1.9 people incarcerated across federal, state, and local facilities. And we hold 25% of the world's prisoners, despite the fact that we're only 5% of the world's population. And we're much, much higher than Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kazakhstan. And it it the United States system is more punitive than most Western democracies because we rely on incarceration and fewer alternatives like probation and community service. Again, prison is a big business. And we also have the highest rates of recidivism and long-term disenfranchisement. And you see that in your book. And it's kind of interesting, Colin, because Hollywood sort of glamorizes violence, it glamorizes war, it glamorizes the individual over the correct uh the collective. We never see a superhero organizing a group of citizens to peacefully resolve a conflict, right? We got to blow stuff up and kill people. Uh and of course, through that and cigar with that, Tom? What's that? There's something wrong with that? Is there something wrong with that? Right. Um, obviously, it perpetuates racism, right? The Germans, the Russians, the Middle Eastern, they're all darks thin people, are always the bad guys or girls. And again, we see that in your book. So it's no surprise that criminals are glamorized in American films. Why not be glamorized in American music? And that's where your book comes in. Um just, you know, just moving around, you start off with uh Yudie Ledbetter. I didn't realize that was Leadbelly. And now, of course, I'd heard of Leadbelly, and of course, everybody cites him as an influence. But when you started getting into the songs, I was like, oh my god, this is the whole repertoire of 1960s and 70s blues. It's Hatuna, it's the Allman Brothers, it's Paul Butterfield, it's Michael Bloomfield, it's Taj Mahal. It's really remarkable the influence that this man had, and he he lived a pretty, pretty awful life, in and out of jail, beaten, shot.
SPEAKER_07Indeed, he did. Before I lose track of it, David, thank you so much for the kind words. Let me just say that, and also just always wonderful to hear anybody say they know who Elmo is. Um one of the great joys of writing the book was getting deep into Elmo's work. Uh he was he was a genius. Um more to your point, Tom, or to your question. Um Yeah, I mean, the book, just for your listeners, right, the book is trying to make this argument that policing and incarceration have always played a role in shaping a music American musical culture. And chronologically, I start, as you say, with Hughie Ledbetter, which you know most people know as Leadbelly, and mid-90s. There's an afterword that brings things slightly more up to date. And over the course of that time, I'm trying to track, you know, what specifically in this time period did the influence of policing incarceration have on the way we perceive criminality, on the way um people are able to pursue careers, or on the way um people sing about or talk about, you know, sort of the the outlaw lifestyle, right? This is something you touched on. Uh, you know, I started with Leadbelly for a few reasons. One, he, you know, as you say, he has this massive footprint in American music. So I, you know, once I can get people into that section, I think then I can convince them of how important the subject is, just because, you know, he recorded hundreds of songs that are still being re-recorded. Um, also, his story is sort of archetypal. Um, for your for your listeners, you know, I'll just give a little snapshot. You know, it's interesting. I've been doing a lot of events to promote the book. And I can never I I have yet to accurately guess which artist people will know the most about. Uh, I always assume everybody knows who Ledbelly is, but I think that that's probably uh a fault of mine. Um Ledbelly was born Hughie Ledbetter um in the 1880s. Um who's born on land that used to be a slave plantation, and he grows up in the Jim Crow South. Um to your point, fairly early in his life, he gets um gets in some trouble, and he's you know, he's dealt with by the Jim Crow justice system. He ends up on a chain gang that he escapes from, um, and he ends up later in some trouble. Um the the exact details of this conflict are still sort of contested, but it seems like he shot somebody in self-defense. Um after a one-day trial, he gets convicted of murder and ends up on uh Southern Prison Farm. After his release, um, he gets in trouble again as convicted of attempted murder. Um this becomes a big part of his mythology when he becomes a public figure, which I'll talk about in a second. Um, I I argue in the book that the record uh the record supports the idea that he was actually attacked by a group of white men in the South and then blamed for defending himself. Um, for that, he does get convicted of attempted murder and goes to Angola. Um, as you point out, in all of those circumstances, he's treated in ways that, you know, as brutal as American prisons are now, or are beyond the pale. He's whipped, um, he tries to escape, he's chased down by dogs, uh, he's miserable enough, he tries to kill himself at one point. All of these things, all of these experiences contribute to the body of the work that he later produces. Um, he learns a lot of songs in prison, he adapts a lot of songs in prison. It was a different era. He was in prison with his guitar. Um, he was granted permission to move about on these, you know, massive prison farms, some of which were, you know, five, six, seven thousand acres, lots of musicians there, trading licks, trading songs over the course of years that he's there. So it shapes his his music making. But more importantly, and this is something I end up talking a lot about, um, and which is incredibly important, I think, the overall history that I'm trying to chart, you know, those prison experiences uh end up defining him in the public mind. When he leaves the South, he goes to New York, he's uh brought north by John Nell Lomax, which are names that many people might know. And in the North, he's not originally actually known for his musicianship, right? I mean, man was a genius, he knew hundreds of songs by heart. Um but that's not really in Beautiful Voice, so it's not what he becomes known for. What becomes known for originally is just his prison experience, and and not even exploits him. I know Lomax still gets a lot of respect for reasons that befuddle me. Um I should say there's you know, there's a meaningful distinction. There's two Lomaxes, right? John and Alan. Um, John's the father, Alan's the son. Alan these days is much more famous, and I would say should be considered separately. Um he did some great work. Um, he was active for decades and decades, recording music, uh, and you know, elevating artists who deserved it. You know, that's Alan. John Lomax had a much briefer career. Um and, you know, as is evident in his writings and his public pronouncements, was to my gear an out-now bigot. Um he had these ideas about black music um that held that you know black music and black expression was most pure, his terms, um when it was performed by people who were as separated from white society as possible. And and you know, the best place really was prisons, because you know, this was you know, the place where blackness was as authentic as it could be. And this is what he ends up seeing in Leadbelly, um, you know, a pure black artist. And for him, that very much definitely means an artist who has been to prison, who has done something violent, um, and his expression should be filtered completely through that lens. So when they get to New York together, um, John Lomax ends up promoting Lead Belly not as a brilliant artist, but as you know, the virtuoso of the knife and guitar, um longtime convict of Southern prison farms. Um, you know, says things like he has no sense of morality or or ethics and no idea how to use money. Things like this. Um that ends up being what Leadbelly's known for. There are uh newspaper stories about him with national syndication. There's a newsreel that plays before films for months that promote uh sort of the the criminal mythology and not the realities of the Jim Crow justice system that Leadbelly experienced. They talk about him being a double murderer, even though he was not convicted of murder twice. Um, you know, they talk about him, you know, as a violent savage, almost, almost in exactly those terms. Um, and they promote the idea that that's what makes his expression, you know, interesting and relevant and worth listening to. Um during all this time, actually.
SPEAKER_04You point out in the book from the change from the Civil War, pre-Civil War, where black people were seen as buffoonish and less intelligent than whites, and now all of a sudden, post-Civil War, now they're seen as a criminal element, which keeps them oppressed.
SPEAKER_07Absolutely, right? The myths shift as the utility shifts, right? During slavery, you need to have some sort of rational justification, and you know, then you get these ideas about you know black folks being less intelligent and childlike, and so they need you know the protection of slavery. And as obnoxious and odious as that myth is, you know, you can't really hang on to it after the end of the Civil War. So then you need to, well, what are you gonna do? Um, you're not actually gonna reshape the power structures of the South so that instead you have prisons expand to take the place of plantations, and if you're gonna put people in prison, you need a new myth, right? And that myth becomes the myth of the violent black man, right? We're so we're gonna stop pretending people are childlike, and now we're gonna pretend that they're violent, uncontrollable savages. And you know, Lomax very much plays into that with leadbelly.
SPEAKER_05What was so interesting is when I was reading that section, and mind you, I said to Tom earlier, I thought it was HUD. So that was an interesting thing after all these years. A lot of years. But here are the two things that I found interesting. One he was sort of like Almost like a rock promoter with a band like Kiss in its own way. Do you know what I mean? And the other thing was exploitating the musicians just as they always have done. Right.
SPEAKER_04He used them as a ballet, etc. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05$298 after a three-month tour.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I mean, there are a few things there. Yeah, absolutely. John saw himself as a promoter. I mean, interestingly, he also rationalized some of this because he saw himself as part of the talent. He would sometimes sing with Lad Belly. Um, I'll set aside whether whether or not there was merit to uh merit to his singing.
SPEAKER_05Um, but yes, yeah, when you were talking about you know the criminal element, uh it was interesting how when the Bureau of Narconics, I'm I'm jumping into the the film story for a second. Uh that basically um getting rid of was because it was primarily around the black musicians. So to me, it it was you know, well, okay, so the murderers and rapists and this and that and the other thing. So now the drug addicts. What's next?
SPEAKER_07Absolutely, yeah. If you want to jump ahead a little bit, um, yeah, the second section of the book focuses mostly on the development of modern jazz. Um the main character there, Elmo Hope, who David brought up earlier, uh, who's best friends with Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, really like at the heart of things in New York City when modern jazz is being developed. Um, just as a quick side note, originally this book was just supposed to be that section. That was my first vision. Um, and that sort of grew out of my own ignorance. You know, I've like I'm uh I was born in the 80s, you know, for my generation, jazz is like high-class music, you know. Interesting. You go and you sit at a little round table and you order drinks that I can't afford to order. And and I like, you know, I liked it, but it was a very intellectual endeavor. Um, and I, you know, I got past that in my 20s and 30s.
SPEAKER_04And and what uh what what jazz were you listening to? Because David and I are of the jazz fusion era. We're a couple of years older than you, and um a couple of decades, a couple of generations older than you. What what jazz music were you exposed to?
SPEAKER_07As a kid, I mean, very little. And and for the reasons that I said, you know, it was just this sort of distant thing out here, and it would sound you know virtuosic. Um, but then you know, when I was in my 20s or 30s, do you guys ever listen to um Guru's Jazz Mataz albums?
SPEAKER_04Oh, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, big fan. Acid Jazz was the rage in San Francisco when I was there.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, for a lot of kids who grew up listening to hip hop the way I did, Guru was the entryway, right? Those, I mean, those albums, amazing artists on there. Yeah, so then again, so then I start learning a bit more about jazz and eventually a little bit about the history. But I I do think, at least for folks around my age, there is this idea that you know jazz is sort of an upper class pursuit. And I was listening a lot to this album, Sounds from Rikers Island, that ends up anchoring this portion of the book. And I thought, you know, this is like a this is a great contradiction. This is worth mining, right? You've got this modern jazz album that's all about how most most jazz musicians playing in New York City have been through Rikers Island because they're facing constant harassment, and then you've got this perception of jazz as you know, modernism and genius and art. And, you know, let's bring those histories together. That was actually the first version of the book that I pitched. And um, my editor said, that's great, it's brilliant, I love it, but nobody buys jazz books, so you gotta do something bigger. He said, you know, just do the same thing in different time periods. Um, and that's how we got to where we are. Anyway, David, finally, to come back to the question. Um, yeah, I mean, modern jazz musicians were very much reacting, either implicitly or explicitly, to um to the image that had been attached to Hughie Ledbetter and musicians of his era, where you know, if you had trouble with the law, the problem was never the law or the systems that were imprisoning you. The problem was always you, right? And then the issue always defined you in the public's mind. You know, modern jazz musicians, they didn't want that at all, right? Uh, they wanted to be, they wanted their art to be considered on the level of their art. And biography was taken out of it. Jazz critics early on, modern jazz critics wouldn't really talk much about the biographies of musicians. And if you got in trouble, you hit it because you didn't want to be, you know, a virtuoso of knife and guitar, like Hughie Ledbenner was. You wanted to be considered an intellectual. Um, so right, there's this sort of politics of respectability happening, but then at the same time, like you're saying, David, um, the police are actually quite focused on jazz and on modern jazz, right? It's sort of a cultural threat. Um, it's acknowledged as as being art. It's not just party music anymore by the time we get into like the 50s, and the federal government takes an interest in tamping that down. Um, they specifically go after jazz artists first for possession of marijuana. Um and then, you know, when heroin becomes more of a problem nationwide, they start going after jazz musicians um for heroin possession. And that looked different ways in different cities. But you know, the feds had task forces um that would spy on jazz clubs, local police would spy on jazz clubs. There are tons of stories about how you know you couldn't be on the street, which is what they called the strip of um Manhattan where all the jazz clubs were without the police coming by and harassing people. Same thing in LA. Um there were some pretty normal raids in Philly. Um, so yeah, there was this constant scrutiny and this perception perpetuated through the media also that jazz musicians were were all drug addicts. Um, you know, there were stories where they would say explicitly, you know, that the the biggest problem in modern narcotics is jazz musicians, which I mean, if you spent a moment thinking about it, at the time we've got a country of what, 150, 200 million people. How many jazz musicians are there in America?
SPEAKER_04Well, it's interesting to read about that because that was the era that my parents grew up in. And then when I started showing desire to be a musician, right away all my parents, my parents and their friends all equated musicians with drug addicts. And when I studied at the University of Miami, which had its fair share of drugs there, most of the musicians, we were serious people. You can't study jazz. I I minored in jazz. You can't study that music when you're stone. You can't. And most of the musicians, right?
SPEAKER_07Yes, you think you can.
SPEAKER_04But most of the musicians I know that David knows that worked in the New York studio system, which there are no studio musicians anymore, they were pretty responsible people. They were not, you know, you know, these, these, these guys that were strung out and things. You couldn't, you can't play at that level and be strung out. I mean, some people can. I mean, there are exceptions. But for the most part, I found that guy people professional musicians were probably the most dedicated people, you know what I'm saying, the straightest people you'd want to meet. There's a lot more cocaine on Wall Street than there was in the recording studio.
SPEAKER_05Well, Tom, I don't think you ever knew this, but uh, and Colin, you've never known it either. My uncle was Lionel Hampton's bass player. And when my focus found out I was going to be a bass player, they were because my uncle actually was a junkie. He ended up managing Lionel Hampton after a while. But truth be told, they had actual physical proof that obviously that was going to happen to me. Um, that stigma was already around. What I found fascinating is when you talk about that uh the thing about marijuana, I wasn't 1926 you cited was the year that uh they uh made that intense legislation. And I think was it for your rebellious the mayor of New York at that time?
SPEAKER_07Just for context for your listeners, um, what you're talking about is the cabaret card law in New York City. Um so this ends up being a problem for New York musicians, but uh you know, I would say also just for the development of jazz in general, because you know, modern jazz comes out of New York City. So 1926, um, there's a law passed through the city council. Um that's a good question about LaGuardia. I think you're correct, but I would want to double check before I one of the colours.
SPEAKER_05Well, you guys can see you want me to Google it.
SPEAKER_07Oh, there you go. Yeah, Google it for us. So 1926, there's a law passed saying that that um any club that wants to sell liquor and have live music has to have a cabaret license. Um, and that license is given out by the police department. Um for a while. Yes. Yes, yes. Well, for a good stretch of years, it only applies to the clubs themselves. And it was a problem, but not a massive problem. And then later on, like by 1942, it sort of expanded and expanded again. And by 1942, any musician who wanted to perform in a cabaret in New York, and which is a small club that sells liquor and has music, had to receive a license from the New York City Police Department. And there was no legislation saying uh on what basis the police department would approve or deny. So they had carte blanche. So what ends up happening is you know, you have largely black musicians, although not entirely. The jazz scene was for the time quite integrated. Um, but often you have black musicians living in heavily policed black neighborhoods, working in jazz clubs that are themselves being observed by the police, and they get picked up. And, you know, maybe it's something real, maybe it's total nonsense, maybe it's possession, maybe it's jaywalking, right? Maybe you and your buddy raise your voices at each other and they decide to ticket you for um, you know, disturbing the peace or something. But if you've had anything on your record, even if it's just, you know, an arrest that never leads to any sort of conviction, or the DA even drops charges, when you go to renew your cabaret card, they will know about the arrest. And then it was just standard procedure to deny you. So it would be. Yeah, so yes, there was an appeals process. You know, if you had some money, you could get a lawyer, um, or you could there were always rumors that there were bribes being accepted. And I'm that does not I didn't I don't have any direct proof of it, but I'd be very surprised if that wasn't the case.
SPEAKER_04That's exactly yeah, but that was the whole point of the cabaret court, pretty much.
SPEAKER_07Yes, and it would, you know, it would trap people. I mean, Elmo's a good example. Um Elmo unfortunately did have a drug problem. Um, he sought treatment for it repeatedly, um, really didn't want to, but he was highly functional for years. As far as I can tell, you know, he once said on the record that he started using when he was drafted into the army in 43. Um and he worked regularly. He was worked with a touring RB band and he worked around the city a bit. Um, he worked regularly until 1950, until he gets picked up. And then things just, you know, they just start going down the drain because it cascades. Once you get picked up for something, then you can't work. And if you can't work and you have a habit, how are you gonna feed it? Right. And the answer for a lot of people was petty crime, you know. I mean, not stuff that I actually feel all that morally judgmental of, but you know, there was theft. And, you know, Elmo a couple times went into the backseat of somebody's car and snatched a suitcase, right? Not great behavior, but not like wildly antisocial behavior either. Um, and there's no question that if he could have continued working in clubs and recording, and that's absolutely what if he what he would have preferred to do. But the Cambo A card system would trap people like that, and you get cut off from your performance income, then you're not gonna get any recording jobs either, right? And if you're not playing regularly, nobody's gonna pick you up for a tour. Um, so really had the ability to end careers, you know, unless you were lucky enough that you already had a big name by the time.
SPEAKER_04Well, it's interesting that he never went to Europe like Bud Powell, right? I mean, he could, I mean, I'll bet you Elmo would have thrived in Europe.
SPEAKER_07He probably would have, yeah. You know, I don't know. Elmo, I I learned a lot about Elmo. There are ways in which he's sort of a black box. Um, you know, Powell had um, I'm struggling for the word here, uh, somebody looking out for him, um, like a benefactor essentially, who helped him get to Europe and took care of him. Elmo never really had that.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_07Um, Powell also repeatedly lost his cabaret card in New York and struggled in the same ways. And yeah, you're absolutely correct. A lot of jazz musicians, it just made rational sense to go to Europe. Yeah, you had greater liberty to move about and the work was more respected. You know, the thing Elmo does do is he goes to California and he does quite well out in California for several years. Um, records quite a bit, tours, um, you know, is on a professional level more successful than he was in New York. You know, fortunately slash unfortunately, he was homesick, man. I mean, he really wanted he wanted to come back. He, you know, I feel bad saying this, but he didn't really think much of the West Coast jazz scene. There's some good people out there. Oh my god, yeah, he's savage, right? You know, talking about how there are 14-year-olds in New York who could not play anybody on the West. And you know, so he just he wants to go home.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_07And he, you know, at that point, he thought he was gonna be able to get a cabaret card when he came back. There had been some scandal around cabaret cards, there was talk of reform. It just never worked out for him. He reapplied, didn't get it. Um, and that's you know, that's why everybody knows Bud Powell's name and Phonious Monk's name, and they don't know Elmo's name. You know, Elmo was very much.
SPEAKER_04Elmo could be the first jazz police before Winton came and trashed everybody.
SPEAKER_05No way, except uh he still was a great artist where Winton and I, you know, I always had my suspicions. But and what's interesting too is you bring up benefactor and it's Monk and Panamica.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_05You get the feeling, particularly the way you wrote the story, is that he was really tied to whichever woman he was with at the time. So it was a little different for him. I think his his needs may have been different. It could have been because he was not very young. Uh unfortunately we don't know. But when when you think about it, it it it it's it's very possible you he needed to be in a familial quote unquote situation where the other two did not. And if you think about it, as famous as much was he had a hell of a lot of problems with the uh with the cabaret card. Um really it was it was a terrible, terrible thing that cabaret card. And everyone had to have it. You know, the the waiters had to have it, the dishwashers had to have it.
SPEAKER_04It was extortion. Well, you mentioned in the book, what was it, Sinatra in 67? Was that when the cabaret card?
SPEAKER_07I think he meant yeah, yeah. The the law is finally undone in 67, just months after Elmo dies, sadly. Um, but yeah, eventually there was a big campaign to get rid of it, and Sinatra, to his credit, um, came out on the side of the musicians. Um yeah, it was you know, it's one of these things that you know.
SPEAKER_04Frank had a lot of influence too, because a lot of his comrades owned clubs, David. These uh Italian American men who were in business for themselves.
SPEAKER_05Well, yeah, but he was also very much into uh all kinds of social rights. Yes, he was, yeah, Frank certainly. And and and such. He was really a uh he was a mensch in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_07He was really and not to yeah, not to undercut him, but it was also just indefensible by that point. I mean, there had been so much scandal around him for so long. But he, you know, he was somebody who absolutely stepped forward, and at a certain point, you know, nobody could rationalize it anymore. It's one of these things that, you know, been on the books for so long, everybody pretended it was necessary, but there was no other city in the country that had a similar ordinance. So so then how could it possibly be necessary, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Interesting, Colin. Colin, when you get into the um the 60s and the 70s now, I'm starting to remember these. Uh Ike White is an absolutely fascinating story. As a matter of fact, you see his record at Record Store Day Changing Times, which is a fabulous, fabulous record. And then, of course, uh I'm young, old, ancient enough to remember Johnny Cash doing those those prison songs. And again, interesting how you know Ike Ike was the real deal, and it's really another tragic story where he should not have been imprisoned the way he was. And then you had Johnny Cash sort of masquerading as an outlaw when he was far from it.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, well, no, chronologically chronologically, why don't we take those in order and talk about Johnny? Um yeah, I mean, I always I always like to lead anytime I'm talking about Johnny saying I'm I'm a fan. Uh he is not too. Yeah, yeah, no, he's not the devil in my book at all. Um, and I had the wonderful experience of actually coming to like him more and more as I was writing about him, which if there are any writers listening, or you're a writer, um, you know, that does not usually happen when you're really focusing on the show. I haven't, no.
SPEAKER_04You would that's a trip you have to put on your buck.
SPEAKER_07Oh go. Yeah, no, I'm headed to Nashville later this year, so I'll uh you got yes, yeah. Um, but yeah, Johnny, Johnny, um, like you say, uh Johnny was able to benefit from like the iconography of prison and the sort of uh the romantic idea of the outlaw in a way that a lot of black musicians were not able to. Um, you know, he he he engaged in plenty of the behavior engaged in by the other people in this book, um, but never paid any sort of price for it. You know, he also struggled with drug use issues, he import, you know, he smuggled drugs into the country, he was repeatedly um caught driving under the influence, wrecked cars, etc., etc. And he never did it.
SPEAKER_04It was also big business, Johnny. He was a celebrity, he was a recording artist, and you can't put your recording artist behind bars, he won't be able to sell records. That's why the Rolling Stones got never got never served anybody. And the Beatles. The same with the Beatles, because they they were the golden goose. And okay, they got slapped on the hand and they made some excuse that some editorial in the London Evening Times got the Rolling Stones free. No, it wasn't. It was the the British music moguls and who kept the Beatles and the Rolling Stones out of jail. And I would imagine it's the same thing for Johnny. Somebody came and you know, ironically. Can you say Columbia Records? Yeah, sure, Columbia Records, yeah.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, well, he built that house, right? Yeah, more or less. Um, yeah, right. There's some of that going on. I mean, there's also um against the way the laws are written, too. You know, uh a lot of white musicians, I mean, then as now, um, use speed, right? And he was using, he was abusing prescription drugs, and the penalty for that at the time was essentially nil. Um, prescription drug abuse hadn't been criminalized yet. So even when he was caught, a lot of the time there was not even really any need for somebody to to intervene. You know, you could be sentenced to one year to life in a lot of southern states for possession of marijuana, but if you were Johnny, you could have, you know, 300 amphetamine pills, and that was not actually.
SPEAKER_04Right, you got a few free records, a few free concert tickets, and nothing happened.
SPEAKER_07Um, so he, you know, he's able, Johnny is able to sing about prisons and incarceration, to sing about crime, um, to, as you say, sort of toy with the idea that he himself was a criminal. You know, it's these lines, I've been on both sides of the bars, etc. Um, but he never spent more than a single night in jail. Um, arrested six times that have been documented, and each time just a single night.
SPEAKER_04Petty stuff, yeah.
SPEAKER_07Petty stuff, fairly petty stuff, you know, petty stuff that, you know, other other musicians may have done quite a bit more time for. You know, the big one obviously is smuggling drugs into the country.
SPEAKER_06Right.
SPEAKER_07Um, he was actually potentially looking at quite a bit of time for that. Um and and got off with a single night. You know, and in the book, he's the counterpoint, right? He's he's my way of saying, look, if you treat people with some humanity and some grace when they're struggling, look what they can do, you know. Um, and if you don't, right, uh as with Hughie Ledbetter or or Elmo, then you know, you have the ability to really limit and prescribe what people are able to do with their careers, what they're able to say, whether or not people take them seriously as artists. Um, you know, again, just to just to make a point of it, Johnny was to use your term earlier, David, he was a mensch. You know, he started off he started off just using you know violence and incarceration as rhetorical themes. And in the beginning, I don't think he thought much about it at all. They're you know, the venerable country themes, you know, goes back to um you know English traditionals. Um and then, you know, he takes this turn. At some point, he starts getting a legitimate interest in the country's history and the history of incarceration. Um, he gets this album called Blues in the Mississippi Night, which a bunch of musicians trading songs and trading stories about the Jim Crow South. And he starts thinking quite deeply about what prison means, what imprisonment means, what it does to people, its role in the country's history. And he starts writing some songs later that never made a fraction of what you know Folsom Prison Blues made. But he starts writing some songs later on that are like quite profound and actually reflective of the country's history, you know, talking about how the Mississippi levees were built by just grabbing people out of bars and charging them with nonsense and putting them on the chain gangs. So he really evolved quite a bit. And then later on, you know, he campaigned for politicians. Who ran on prison reform? He raised money for prison programming, raised money for chapel, if memory serves, and the Cummins Prison Farm. I mean, he really made it like a central part of who he was, and he got a couple of musicians out of prison and helped them start their careers.
SPEAKER_04Right, exactly. That that was fascinating. Learn, I guess again, prison was big business back then, too. So Johnny's prison reforms, although his his heart was in the right place, that's just not how the country runs. And we can look at the statistics now. Prison system gets bigger and bigger every generation. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Yep. Yeah, there, you know, there was this moment, and actually, this is a nice segue to talking about Ike White. Um, you know, there was this moment where it wasn't quite bipartisan, but it was as close as you get in America. You know, the idea that prisons, if you're gonna lock people up, prison should do something positive for them. That idea actually had some valence in the 60s and the 70s, and you did see a lot of experimentation, right? You saw um more programming come in, you saw, you know, restrictions easing, you saw people experimenting with things like you know, people would be able to work during the week and then check into prison on the weekends, etc., etc. Um, and this is sort of where Ike's story comes in, and it's the one of the reasons that I chose to include him in the book. You know, Ike White was convicted of a single crime. Um, he shot somebody and killed somebody. Um, it was important for me to have somebody in the book. You know, I didn't want this to be a hagiography. I wanted to make clear, you know, just because you're a you've got great musical talent doesn't mean you've never done anything bad. Um what's that? Oh, he was making fun of me. I'm making fun of Dave. Um yeah, I mean, Ike Ike did kill somebody. He ends up in prison when he's 19. And he has essentially an entire career in there. And you know, when I talk to folks who work on prison reform now, and my my wife's a public defender, most of my friends are criminal defense attorneys. Uh, you know, talking to them about what was possible in prison in the late 60s and into the mid-70s, it's night and day. You know, everything nowadays is incredibly locked down and prescribed. But, you know, Ike was able to take music theory classes, he was able to take a look at the city.
SPEAKER_04He's more than an album in prison, yeah.
SPEAKER_07Yes, right. Eventually he's able to he forms a bunch of bands, he plays with touring bands, or I mean, he ends up sharing a stage with Curtis Mayfield and Eric Burden and Jimmy Witherspoon, right? Muhammad Ali is the MC for a show he plays in San Quentin. I mean, you can't these things don't really happen anymore. And so he gets to be.
SPEAKER_04Well, I think the reason those things don't happen anymore is the the people who own who profit from the prison industrial complex saw their business slipping away.
SPEAKER_07Well, sure. I mean, this is right, this is the brutal logic of mass incarceration, right? If you want to lock up more and more people, um ultimately they have to do fewer and fewer things, right? Because you know, there's a let there's less and less space. Um, all of you know, all the programming that I'm talking about, and you know, running concerts in prison and running classes, all of that takes staffing, which all all of that costs money. Um, but yeah, I mean, Ike he had a he had a full career. He I don't even know how many bands he formed in prison. Anyway, anytime he was moved to a new facility, he'd have at least one band. And sometimes he would be playing in a jazz band in San Quentin and also a rock band and also a funk band.
SPEAKER_04Right, multi- multi-instrumentalist, yeah.
SPEAKER_07Yes, yep, yep. He was that prolific.
SPEAKER_04And he had a great band on uh changing times. That's the guys from Santana, that's Doug Rausch and I think Michael Shreve, David.
SPEAKER_07Oh, okay. Yep, they played on and Gregorico on the drums. And Gregorico, there you go. Yeah. Um, so yeah, eventually, you know, he's discovered while he's in prison and a label, um, actually a production company that formed a label just to get his album out.
SPEAKER_06Right.
SPEAKER_07Um, builds an entire recording studio in a prison, you know, um, gets a big truck, fills it with equipment, converts an old unused storage room in this prison into a recording studio, and and he makes this album, which, as you know, was just re-released for the first time in the States. Yeah. And it's it's it's a pretty remarkable thing. You know, the thing with Ike is, you know, he is also, again, I didn't want the book to be a hagiography. I want it to be true to life. You know, he's also a guy who, after doing about 14 years in prison, never really got it together once he got out. He gets released.
SPEAKER_04It's sad to see how his life just fell apart. You would think, well, you mentioned in the book um that, you know, it you know, he was a rock star in prison, but when he got out into the real world, he wasn't a rock star anymore. He was an ex-con.
SPEAKER_07An ex-con and an ex-con with without a great number of connections and no resources to fall back on.
SPEAKER_05Right. You also have to realize they're uh he has grown up really with four walls around him with these certain disciplines, and then you know think about take a puppy who's in a crate. Uh uh take a puppy, put it in a crate. Alright, and then one day you let it out of your porch, you open the door, that dog's gonna go wild. There's just certain things you can't do to a man. Uh and and expect uh you know, them to be reading uh proof and uh you know going that direction.
SPEAKER_04Well, you you have an interview with uh Ike What, you have some of his quotes, and you see he wanted steaks and he wanted to go out and have wine. Sure. I mean, this is what they dreamt about in prison, and finally, you know, the accolades and all the critical acclaim he got. And then sadly they couldn't sell his record. It comes out too late, tastes change in music, and he's still an ex-con. Record companies don't want an ex-con. How do you how do you market an ex-con?
SPEAKER_05Well, I disagree with you on that, Tom. I think, oh yeah, they want to make money, they could care less. Truly. I mean, think about all the companies that try to bootleg the Manson tapes. I mean, that's sick.
SPEAKER_04But Ike, yeah, Ike White was a f absolutely fascinating story, and yes, we see sadly he commits suicide uh because he just can never get his life together.
SPEAKER_07Um, I mean, uh, yeah, David, to your point, you know, functionally his entire life, when he's released, functionally his entire life had been in prison, right? He he gets uh commits this murder, gets locked up when he's 19, um, and then 14 years in prison. So all of his adult experiences essentially come while he's in prison. And you know, one thing that was striking to me, I I do research old school, everything's paper, and I'll sort of line it up on my desk.
SPEAKER_04Have you ever been to a library? Do you find anything there?
SPEAKER_07Oh, I do, yes, lots of books. I mean, I like I've got a little cave here. I like to work in in my own space. I don't like to do it in public because people think I'm crazy. Um anyway, but one thing I I noted actually when I was trying to finish up that section of the book is the extent to which Ike. Well, to say Ike could definitely be a scammer, but there was also a way in which he was just beguilingly earnest. And even when he was trying to get out of prison, he would do these interviews. He's like, you know, I have all this talent, I can't wait to make it. Like, you know, I'm gonna be a good one.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, reinvent his past, yeah. Like Bob do it in a sense. Yeah, sure. You could do it in those days. There was no Wikipedia. Absolutely, absolutely.
SPEAKER_07But in the same interview, he would say things like, I've been twisted by prison, and like prison takes the worst part of you and amplifies it. And you know, I've been taught, I've been trained, I've been raised by the crit the California prison system to to like work any angle to get ahead. And I mean that is remarkably honest and insightful stuff. And unfortunately, he ended up being right about himself. He got out, and I mean, well, you guys know this better than me, but you know, the you need talent in the music industry, but you need money too, right? And by the time he got out, uh the label had spent a bunch of money on him, he wasn't getting along with the promotions company anymore, and they were just like, we've invested enough, we're not gonna put anything behind this album. And so then that was it for him.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, interesting, fascinating. Um, now I just want to get to Tupac Shakur. Um hear me out on my hip-hop theory. Um, I had the experience, I was in the 1980s when you were a little boy, 1989, I was in a recording studio in Long Island with a band called Public Enemy. And my friend was an engineer on an album called Fear of a Black Planet. And he says, Hey, why don't you come over and hear these guys? You gotta check this stuff out. Now, rock and roll still rule the airwaves. David was in a you had David, I believe you had long blonde hair and live and spandex in California somewhere.
SPEAKER_05That's right. Spandex the most forgiving of fabric.
SPEAKER_04Yes, it is. And still is, by the way. But uh David, don't stand up. But anyway.
SPEAKER_05I'm not wearing bands today.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So I'm in the recordings, I'm in, I'm in uh Hempstead, New York, and I'm I'm listening to Fear of a Black Planet, and I said to my friends, I said, that's it, rock and roll's done. I go, it was a great run. It was the voice of a young generation, it was the voice of culture, but this Fear of a Black Planet is it. It's gonna change the whole world. And it did. Okay. And what I think what was happening when you listen to a lot of the rap groups at that time, it was more about them speaking truth to power, and you know, which goes back to Gil Scott Heron, which goes back to the Lost Poets and and such, and and they were setting it to music. And I think what happened is the establishment saw that these people were getting through to young adults, they were getting through to teenagers. So, what do we do with hip-hop? Let's flood the market with misogyny and pornographic um, you know, rap stars, the Snoop Dogs, and you know, Babies Got Back and all that stuff, and and dilute the genre because hip-hop started off as a political statement. Of course, yeah, you had, you know, what was it, Rapper's Delight, things like that. Right, Grandmaster Flash. Right, Grandmaster Flash, but most of the rappers were political, and that got destroyed, I would say, by the time the 1990s came around, and you had UM TV, they tossed off all the uh hairband guys. And fortunately I didn't have hair, David, so I didn't have to worry about it. Right.
SPEAKER_05Well, um my wife has a bunch of my hair in a few.
SPEAKER_04She still has David's hair. But I think that was done on purpose with the establishment is they took the hip-hop, they took hip-hop and made it purposely oversexed, and like I said, misogynist, and and to a degree pornographic. I mean, it was pretty upsetting for me to see Snoop Dogg as my representative at the Olympics. And I'm like, look, if the guy wants to make pornography, power to him. But I don't think that should represent the United States. But what are your thoughts? Does my theory have any water?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna come back around to it because I do want to talk about Tupac. And the reason I chose him, you know, I could have chosen any number of artists who sort of came of age in that era.
SPEAKER_06Right.
SPEAKER_07Um, that last section of the book is really about it's you know, it's chronologically the end point of the book, and it's one thing it's trying to do is talk about the like incredible cultural impact of mass incarceration by the time we get into the 90s. Right. Um, to your point, um, one of the reasons I chose Tupac is his own family's political legacy. You know, his mother, Afini Shakur, was one of the Panther 21.
SPEAKER_04Fascinating, absolutely fascinating.
SPEAKER_07Her whole childhood was about fighting police abuses. And she eventually, you know, she gets arrested as part of the Panther 21, has this massively long trial during which he's conceived, and then she's exonerated. You know, that whole experience defines his young life and defines his worldview. And I definitely make a case that for him at least, and I think you're right, for a lot of young artists, um, there is, at least rhetorically, a baton pass from the Black Power movement to early hip-hop. And, you know, it's at a point when the Black Power Movement to a great extent has been crushed by the police, has been crushed by the state, has been, you know, observed and surveilled and shot and arrested. And, you know, for Tupac's generation, you know, the the appeal of picking up a gun and fighting is isn't there anymore because that way didn't work, right? So what can we do? Well, you know, we can we can do the same thing as artists. And that, you know, that is what Tupac is really trying to do early in his career. And he talks about it openly. He says, you know, I'm I'm not a revolutionary. My mother gave her movement her life to the movement. I'm not trying to do that. I want to be a poet. You know, he had more friendship bracelets and he had a pierced ear, and his great aspiration was to be a Shakespearean actor, and you know, the music thing just happened to work out first. Um this is how he sees himself, this is how he defines himself, right? His mother's politics with his own means, his own artistic means. And, you know, what happens for him is essentially the same thing that happens for Hughie Ledbetter and for plenty of other artists who I talk about in the book. Before his career even gets going, um, he, after his first single comes out, but before his first album is released, he's assaulted by the police for nothing. He stopped, you know, he's jaywalking, supposedly, and they beat the ever-loving shit out of him. Well, the the result of that is not, you know, let's let's pity this young man. The result of that is rapper gets arrested. Right. So this is sort of his public entree. And then soon after that, um, a young man named Ronald Ray Howard, just after Tupac's first album comes out, um is driving through Texas. He may or may not have been listening to Tupac's music, still sort of unclear. And he gets into a conflict with a state trooper and he kills a state trooper, which is an awful thing. But the result of that is not, however, just that, you know, he faces some penalty for shooting a state trooper. The result of that is that Tupac is then slurred for the crime of this man who he never met and would never meet. And it's uh, you know, a year plus of headlines talking about the rap murder trial and you know, this gangster put out a song that caused a cop to get shot, etc. Um, I swear I'm finally coming back around to your question. The you know, Tupac's response to this is you know, look, I was just trying to tell the truth about the world, right? You know, he said, you know, my first album, it's my report, it is what I've seen. And he is just simply not allowed to do that. Right. And this isn't even record labels at this point. This is the media. The media says, Well, you know, this is a young black man, and he is in the most vague ways possible associated with violence. One, he's the victim of it. Two, somebody he doesn't know commits it, but they were listening to his music. So we're we're gonna start calling him a gangster. And that's what happens, and this becomes his public image. Um and he like violently reacts to that and rejects it. Um and then eventually decides fine, if I can't run from it, I'm gonna own it, right? And this is sort of the Tupac that most people remember, right? Uh he starts lifting weights, he gets all the tattoos, right? That wasn't who he was for the first album. Fascinating. But once he decides he can't run from this public bias, right? These stereotypes, he's just gonna own them. And to your point about what ends up happening with hip-hop, I think, yes, some of it probably is is labels telling people this is what's popular. I think it's also, you know, the media persistently, at least in that time period, persistently saying this is what we expect of you.
SPEAKER_04Well, the media, I as someone who worked in television, I can tell you that the media is the voice of the establishment. They are the voice of the power structure. Of course, yeah. And people were starting to listen to these young hip-hop artists, and they wanted them, they they wanted to shut them up. And of course, yes, some some they can imprison like a Tupac, but if they flood the market MTV, which is owned by CBS, Biviacom, right? They're in bed with the government. All right, so let's flood the market with the pornographic, misogynist rap, and and that's what people's white America's imagery of rap is. It's babies got back, it's TLC running around in their bikinis. It's not the you know, it's not the Erica Badou's and the comments.
SPEAKER_05You know, it actually is the premonition fear of a black planet.
SPEAKER_04I mean, yeah, it's exactly what it exactly.
SPEAKER_07Yes, one of the great albums.
SPEAKER_04And even D and even public image is marginalized eventually. Because that was it for them after that record. I don't think um, you know, flavor flav got exploited. I mean, he didn't he, you know, didn't he he got the rock star bug, but the other guys, I can't think of his name, Chuck D, I guess it's Chuck D. Chuck D stayed close to his principles. But by then, you know, uh Lie goes halfway around the world before Truth gets his boots on. You know, that was that was their imagery, you know.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I didn't I don't go too much into public enemy in the book, although they get some some mentions, but definitely a fan. And um trying to remember they put out a song that really got a ton of blowback. I think uh by the time I get to Arizona, and Arizona had gotten rid of the MLK holiday or refused to pass it or something. That's right, exactly. And they yes, and they they made a song protesting that, and um that that was the moment at which, to use your term, right, the mainstream or the establishment had really had enough of public enemy.
SPEAKER_04Well, Chuck Chuck D responds by saying that um rap music is CNN for black people. That was his quote. So that shook up the establishment. So they take MTV, they throw all the hairbands off, and everything is you know misogynist rap music, and then that morphs into Jersey Shore, and so goes the network.
SPEAKER_07Well, I mean, I wouldn't I wouldn't give rock a total pass. There's plenty of misogyny in rock as well. Well, of course.
SPEAKER_05And there was nothing wrong with that. The difference with that as as the the only difference with that is that was P.T. Barnum. It wasn't a political thing.
SPEAKER_04I think it was. I think it was. I mean, there was P. Barnum elements to it. Sure, sex always sells. In the not in the gross household, but everywhere else.
SPEAKER_05Uh what was it? Uh uh Randy Dangerville on uh the tonight show. What he goes, I my wife and I had an anniversary. And we said to her, why don't we take it back to the beginning? And she said to him, like, give me 20 bucks.
SPEAKER_04But uh yes, obviously, uh, but I think I think that was more of a political statement. And then you I don't think, you know, MTV was also, you know, obviously it was the grunge era and things, but that I think a lot of the grunge and the pain, the Kurt Copain was more introspective. It wasn't outward looking. A lot of the grunge artists, they didn't really address political topics pretty much, and uh and things like that. But CNN, uh rather CNN. Public Enemy, same thing, uh, was speaking truth to power, and that that had to stop. And then, of course, you see now, gosh, after 9-11, Imagine was banned from iHeartRadio because we got to support the truth. So fascinating book. I wanted to ask you how difficult was this to research because a lot of this stuff could not have been accurately documented. I mean, when you talk about Lead Belly and and Ike White and things, I mean the the accurate records weren't kept like they are now. They didn't have the digital leash that we have now, where every time you do something, you have to download an app and get a pass key. Um, was this a difficult book to research?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I good. Thank you for the question. Um, my first book was a literary biography that was a beast. It took me six and a half years, um tons of archival research, tons of interviews. You know, this one was a little bit different and interesting for me as a writer. You know, three of the characters are fairly well known, right? I mean, Leadbelly, Johnny, and Tupac. And they all had existing biographies that were well researched and reliable. So in those sections, a lot of it I'm I'm relying on the established record. I I was doing some archival research in there, um, but in those sections, I allowed myself to be like quite a bit more essayistic, right? Um you know, the leadbelly section ends up being a lot about what Southern justice looked like at the time, which is also something that's been pretty well academically recorded. Um, or you know, it's about the development of um lyrics and rhetorical style and talking about prisons. Um, you know, leadbelly disappears from that section sometimes for you know pages at a time when I'm allowing myself to riff. You know, and the the way I ended up thinking about it is that I have that leeway, right? People, if you know the name, you already have an image of him. So there are things I definitely want to set the record straight on, you know, the details of his arrest as well as they could be established. But beyond that, you know, I'm not going to tell you what he preferred to eat for breakfast, right? I'm talking about what what his place in the history is. So sort of the same thing for Johnny and for Tupac, right? Most people have an image of them. They probably see the photo on the cover and they've already got an idea of what they think about them. Um, but then for the other two, um, for Elmo Hope and for Ike White, the research was a bit more challenging. Um, and Elmo, um, I did have some benefits. His wife is still alive, Bertha Hope is a genius in her own right. She's almost 90. Um, when I was fact-checking the book, I called her up, and at the end she's like, Just by the way, I'm I'm looking for a new booking agent if you know anybody.
SPEAKER_05She's a Greek player.
SPEAKER_07She's still play, yeah, she still gigs. I saw her live twice a couple years ago. Um, so you know, she Didn't know Elmo when he was young, but for for the later stuff, she was a real resource. Um, I got to interview Lou Donaldson before he passed, who played with Elmo in the 50s. Um and then the real boon with him. I mean, this is the sort of thing biographers dream about. You know, Elmo only gave one substantial interview on the record ever. And that's what I lead the chapter with, in part just because it's like the only time you really hear his voice ever. I was like, you know, this needs to be first. Um and so, you know, I was working with what had already been published about him, I was working with interviews, and then I was at the Municipal Archives in New York, and I'll spare you all the gory details, but it took several visits, but eventually uh the New York City Municipal Archives turned up just this huge tranche of information about him, which uh as far as I know, nobody had ever looked at before. Um, I didn't even know it existed until the archivist found it for me, and it was his probation records.
SPEAKER_06Wow.
SPEAKER_07Um, if you talk to somebody who works in the criminal justice system in New York today, they'll tell you, you know, probation interview is a very perfunctory thing. They don't spend any time on it. But what I discovered is in the 50s, 60s, it was extensive. So there's all these interviews with Elmo and people from probation and social workers. Um, they're recounting his whole employment history because they're trying to verify when he was working. So I've got lists of who he was playing with and gigging with, um, interviewed him about his childhood, interviewed his mother about his childhood, um, reached out to people in his life to see if they would, you know, send him letters of support. So that was just incredibly valuable in terms of putting together the timeline. Um, and it also contained tons of court records. So then a lot of, you know, where you do see these intimate scenes in the book, it's it's court records. He's in court and the judge is talking and the district attorney is talking, and Elmo, unfortunately, is mostly there silent. Um so yeah, and that that was, like I said, just luck. You know, I thought honestly that if I was gonna write that section, it was gonna be, it was also gonna be more SES mess essayistic, and it would be about the development of modern jazz and like where his music fits into that. And uh it was just great luck to find all that stuff. Um Ike Ike was sort of a mixed bag. You know, there are a decent number of people around who interacted with Ike near the end of his life, so I was able to interview folks. Um, you know, there's a journalist who really campaigned to get him out. I was able to interview her. Oh, yeah. Um she did uh I think a two-hour long or maybe hour and a half long radio special where she interviewed him and just kind of lets him talk. That was incredibly valuable. Um, I talked to some folks who helped campaign to get him out and then saw him on the outside. Um so there's all that stuff. He also sh he pops up in the prison newspapers quite a bit. And a lot of that section, at least in terms of volume and word count, um circles around his what you call his incident offense, the crime that he committed was convicted for, which was extensively covered in the newspapers. Right. So for him it was a mixed bag too. You know, there's also a reason it's the shortest section of the book because there just wasn't as much information as as I would have liked. Um so it jumps around a bit and it ends up being also um it's the only section that takes place largely in a prison that was intentional. I wanted something about you know prison culture, especially during that reform period. So a lot of it is just about what's happening at San Quentin while he's in there. So Ike also, I think there's a five-page section where he's just not there. It's the history of San Quentin, and it's talking about all the stuff that's happening in the prison while he's there, which you know would have been affecting him and influencing him and trying to make the case, you know, make this point that he's he's working on his musical talent, but all around him, people are fighting, people are rioting, the guards are locking people up, um, people are dying in in yard fights. Um, and you know, I I can't say definitively that's how you know these things influence his music in this way. But for the reader, I want to make it clear, right? This is not a guy who just gets sit to sit in a quiet room and run chords all day either. Yes.
SPEAKER_04Well, you just talked about just how messed up his instrument was. You know, right, but but the interesting that musicians had special privileges. One more thing I've got to ask you. I think this is on the website. It says, despite the fact that he writes books about musicians, Colin has no musical talent. But David, that did not stop him from spending what didn't stop you either. Didn't stop me either. Spending one of the best years of his life. Notice it's one of the best years of life, playing in a band with Spencer Ackerman, who is a website I've read often, uh, Forever Wars. What tell me about your rock and roll career? What what what did that entail?
SPEAKER_07Uh there was no rock and roll career, but Spence and I did have a band back when Spence is a year older than me. I think I would have been in middle school and he would have been in high school. Okay. Yeah, no, we, you know, I yelled into a mic and he played competent drums. Uh oh, okay.
SPEAKER_04I was I was afraid he was gonna say he was a bass player, David.
SPEAKER_07No, no, no, no. Okay, good. Singer and songwriter, uh, inasmuch as uh I can even call myself that. But uh Spence has got a book coming out next year. If anybody who's listening doesn't know the name, you should check Spencer out. He's yeah, Forever War is one of the best reports on American military.
SPEAKER_05Uh there was a terrible uh document, no, like uh a recreation of uh Hootie's life. And until I read this book, I thought it was correct, but the the thing was completely inaccurate. Do you know what the name of that movie was?
SPEAKER_07I don't. Um I don't even talk about that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it was terrible. It really was. When you think about all the research you did, that that movie was just insanely inaccurate.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I mean, plenty of stuff. I yeah, as a writer, you know, the things that like stick in your craw that other people won't even notice. But Hughie is one of those things. You know, if you Google him right now, I don't know if it's true in this moment, but when I was still fact-checking, you know, if you Google Hughie, one of the first things that comes up is some article that's like, you know, America's first gangster or like music's first gangster or something. You know, there, you know, all of this stuff that was put out out of ignorance in 1935 is still floating around, man. I mean, if you Google him, you will probably find more articles than not that say he was twice convicted of murder. Which is just not, you know, it is not true. Even in 1935, everybody knew it was not true, but it was just a better story. Like it was just better to promote him to make him seem as savage as possible. Right. That was low. All of that shit is still floating around the culture's bloodstream. Um, but yes, that yeah, there was this film, it didn't get a wide theatrical release, and I'm gonna totally space on the name right now. But yes, pretty offensive. There was also um a novel that had a limited release in the 60s that played to the same tropes that just presents him as this like hypersexualized, violent man child. Um, which, you know, according to everybody who actually knew him, couldn't be farther from the truth. You know, I mean, this is when myths sometimes have the greatest power, right? When they are so contrary to reality. I mean, this is a man who wouldn't leave the house without a freshly pressed suit, refused to carry his guitar anywhere unless he had a case because that was unprofessional, shined his shoes every morning. You know, he was he was a serious human being who wanted to be taken seriously um and incredibly dignified. So, you know, I think that I again I think that one of the reasons the myths are so powerful is that they just attack all of that, right? They attack the talent, they attack the dignity. And you know, they're still out there.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Well, I gotta tell you that as I said earlier, it's a great book.
SPEAKER_04It's a fabulous book. Colin, what's your next book? Come on, you gotta get to work.
SPEAKER_07What's oh man, uh everybody asks. I I don't have anything solid yet. I got a couple ideas. Uh, my agent wants me to pitch around some ideas before the end of the summer, so I gotta turn them into something more material, but I don't have a good answer for you, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_04He pleads the fifth, David. All right, Colin, thanks so much for being on the show. We'll send you links so you can break the uh internet like a Kardashian. Hopefully sell a few books for you, and keep us posted on what you're doing.
SPEAKER_07I will. Thank you guys for having me on. It was a pleasure.
SPEAKER_04All right, thanks so much. Take care.
SPEAKER_07Bye-bye now.
SPEAKER_04David, what a pleasure to have Colin Asher on the show. We had him discuss his latest book, The Midnight Special, The Secret Prison History of American Music, which is out on Norton Books right now. You can get it in a hard copy or you can get a digital format. And fascinating book and a topic that we don't discuss much on our podcast, the prison industrial complex.
SPEAKER_05Well, that's only because once we left prison, we didn't really want to talk much. Exactly.
SPEAKER_04We're in our own personal prison right now.
SPEAKER_05That's it. I've been in the personal prison. My mind is completely behind bars. Speaking of which, I think we should go to the bars.
SPEAKER_04One of the fascinating things about this book is thanks to digital technology and streaming, we can hear the music that uh Colin uh details in this book were from Tupac Shakur to Ike White to Johnny Cash. David, what do you have for our playlist?
SPEAKER_05First of all, there were five people in the book that were profiled Elmo Hope, Leadbelly, Tupac Shakur, Ike White, Johnny Cash. But there was one record, and I think you were even listening to it when we spoke of about a week or so ago, was Calvin Levy doing Cummins Prison. Do you remember that? Yes. And I think that was one of the records that uh spurned Colin on to do this book. We have four tunes by Leadbelly, about five tunes by Elmo Hope, by the way. Elmo Hope was one of my favorite keyboard players. I discovered him about two years ago. And what a brilliant piano player. Ike White, who I never knew this guy existed, and what a great soul record, right?
SPEAKER_04It is an actual, it's a fabulous record, and you have members of Santana actually on that record. The late great Doug Roush, I think Greg Erico from Slying the Family Stone. I think Michael Shreve is on that record. Interesting because I'm always perusing the reissue record bins, and I'd seen Ike White, and I said, wow, this looks like a cool record. I wonder who this guy is. And then, of course, the book drops in our lap. But yes, another um another episode where we discover stuff that we missed the first time around.
SPEAKER_05And also, I think a lot of the stuff on Johnny Cash, I did not know. Uh so we have some Johnny Cash songs and some Tupac Shakur songs.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the Tupac segments are fascinating. And I am going to read up more about uh Tupac Shakur. But once again, notes from an artist, David. What can I say about Notes from an Artist that I haven't said before? Uh, we are in the top 9% of all registered podcasts on the planet Earth, which is 33.2 million. Last time I checked. David, how many countries are we in?
SPEAKER_05We are in 157 countries.
SPEAKER_04Wow. And how many territories does that include?
SPEAKER_05I I don't get into territories anymore, you know. They're just countries.
SPEAKER_04How about how about cities? I last counted 2,221. Have we gone up from that?
SPEAKER_05Wow, have we? We're at 2,682.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_04I'm gonna make a note of that.
SPEAKER_05And again, what's I didn't know there were that many cities in the world.
SPEAKER_04I didn't know there were that many cities. And of course, we've had so many great authors and musicians on the show and author musicians, among them Phil Manzanera, Ron Carter, Bill Wyman, Steve Hackett, Glenn Matlock, Richard Thompson, Bob Gruen, great episode we did a few years ago. Anil Prasad, David Less, who we get into our big weather report kerfuffle, and uh Phil Freeman, fabulous author who we'll have back on again. So do look in the notes from an artist archives.
SPEAKER_05And where can you find these great things?
SPEAKER_04Well, you find them, David, on the streaming services, I guess. Uh Apple, Amazon, Buzz Sprout, Spotify, Pandora, and whenever, wherever and wherever, Podcast or Potified.
SPEAKER_05This is so true. The thing that I love about this show is that it is as improvisational as an AI band.
SPEAKER_04As an AI band. And you know what, David? Let's talk about the music we're working on. You're doing some fabulous soundtrack work. I just released a dub uh compilation, so let's have ourselves back on the show.
SPEAKER_05If we can get invited on, we should do that.
SPEAKER_04We'll send invitations to ourselves. Thanks for listening. My name is Tomazzo Semioli.
SPEAKER_05I'm David C. Gross.
SPEAKER_04See you next week.
SPEAKER_06Bye-bye.
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SPEAKER_00You gotta fucking be kidding me, kidding me, kidding me. How dare you call yourself professional?
SPEAKER_08Through unforeseen circumstances, this show will remain on the air until further notice.
