Prison & Chain Gang Songs
Prison Worksongs
In the late 1950s, ethnomusicologist professor Dr. Harry Oster made a series of field recordings at state penitentiaries in Louisiana. This collection focuses on the type of prison work songs sung by inmates performing physically demanding labor. Of note is a version of the African American ballad “John Henry” sung by a trio with Robert Pete Williams and two songs sung by Odea Matthews, a female inmate at the state penitentiary in Angola. The liner notes are written by Dr. Oster.
https://folkways.si.edu/prison-worksongs/blues/music/album/smithsonian
Negro Prison Songs / “Old Alabama”1947 [RARE]
Pete and Toshi Seeger, their son Daniel, and folklorist Bruce Jackson visited a Texas prison in Huntsville in March of 1966 and produced this rare document of worksongs by inmates of the Ellis Unit. Watch the entire film on Folkstreams
https://www.folkstreams.net/films/afro-american-work-songs-in-a-texas-prison
