NEGRO PRISON SONGS - by alan lomax Mississippi State Penitentiary
$
30
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Description
I'm calling this a new album because it doesn't look like it's ever been played. The record is pristine, clean, free of any marks. But, it has been opened. It has the inside record sleeve intact but you can see some smudges center bottom. From the record cover....These recordings were made in 1947 in the MIssissippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. The singers were all Negro prisoners, who, according to the practice of Mississippi, were serving their time by working on a huge state cotton plantation in the fertile Yazoo Delta. Only a few strands of wire separated the prison from adjoining plantations. Only the sight of an occasional armed guard or a barred window in one of the frame dormitories made one realize that this was a prison. The land produced the same crop; there was the same work for the Negroes to do on both sides of the fence. And there was no Delta Negro who was not aware of how easy it was for him to find himself on the wrong side of those few strands of bared wire. As one of the prison work songs ironically remarked......"It ain't but the one thing I done wrong, I stayed in Mississippi just a day too long...."
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