Jazz, blues and nostalgia. Theme: For better and (especially) for worse behind bars.
Jimmy Rodgers sings ‘I’m in the jailhouse now’. Also sad is the end of Tom Dooley, sang about by the Kingston Trio. Dooley sat behind bars after a murder, waiting till the rope would end his life. Various jazz musicians have seen, due to drug abuse, the inside of prison. Like the obscure trumpet player Tony Fruscella, who played in the fifties even more cool than Miles Davis, but whose record oeuvre is very small because he spent a lot of years in prison. Or Tadd Dameron, who accomplished to make an impressive oeuvre inside the Lexington Prison Hospital, and not to forget: Lester Young, who came out of prison a broken man and put his sorrows into words in ‘Detention Barracks Blues’. In short, one hour full with music about the world behind bars. With also among others Johnny Cash with the ‘Folson Prison Blues’, Edith Piaf, the story behind the prison song ‘Just Walkin’ in the Rain’, Jo Stafford with ‘Allentown Jail’, Willy Alberti with a heart-breaking performance of ‘De Dievenwagen’ (the police car) and blues singer Lil Green, whose career sort of started in prison.
