James Carter and the Prisoners

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

James Carter and the Prisoners · James Carter was an American singer, born in 1925 as the son of a sharecropper in Mississippi. As a young man he was in that state's prison several times. In 1959 he was in Camp B of Parchman Farm, the state penitentiary near Lambert. There Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins recorded him in stereo as he led a group of prisoners in Po' Lazarus. It is a bad man ballad and at the same time a work song: the men chopped wood in the rhythm of the music.

Music and breakthrough

The recording appeared with a well-known sleeve photo of prisoners in striped uniforms on volume nine, Bad Man Ballads, of Lomax's Southern Journey series on Prestige Records. Forty years later the song found a new audience when it was used in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? by the Coen brothers, with music produced by T-Bone Burnett. The soundtrack topped the Billboard chart for weeks and won a Grammy for Album of the Year.

Influence

The Lomax family and Burnett looked for Carter and found him in Chicago, where he had worked as a shipping clerk. He no longer remembered having sung the song. He received a royalty cheque and attended the Grammy ceremony. The other prisoners have never been identified, which is why the soundtrack says James Carter & the Prisoners. Carter died in 2003. The recording matters as testimony to Black work songs, out of which the blues and later much popular music grew.

Listening

• 
  Po' Lazarus · James Carter and the Prisoners, 1959
  Apple Music ↗

See also

• Work songs and field hollers