Parchman Farm, a Mississippi prison with a musical history | Hacker News Reader

Parchman Farm, a Mississippi prison with a musical history

theguardian.com

30 pointstintinnabula15 comments

For a specific example of the abuses that many prison plantations in the South were founded on (since the article implies but doesn't actually mention any details), it was extremely common post-slavery in the US for Black men to be arrested en masse for 'vagrancy' or other nonsense charges just before harvesting season and sentenced to hard labor for just long enough to finish the harvest, then get dumped on the street again.

There's an excellent and pulitzer-winning book about this widespread dynamic called "slavery by another name." The practice continued routinely in huge swathes of the south until world war 1, and in a few places decades even after that.

There are great John Mayall and Mose Allison recordings of the eponymous song by Bukka White . Mayall did it live quite a bit, not sure if he's kept it on the repertoire.

Bukka White (1940): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM23S12LXaE (this is also in the article)

Mose Allison (1958): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB1CYXBSHP0

John Mayall (1969): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_Z98S1quok

Nice. Prison-positive propaganda. Er...I mean...independent, investigative journalism.

From the Guardian.

I had the same thought. My (white sharecropper fwiw) great grandfather went to Parchman (probably in the 30s or 40s) and supposedly came out broken and insane. I've always understood it to be a hell on earth on par with Alcatraz so it seems strange to see it framed as a place where people made some cool music :/

I did time in Parchman in the early 00s as I was transferred from prison to prison for RID (Regimented Inmate Discipline.) Intake was Rankin county, I started at Walnut Grove, then off to Parchman as I was too old for Walnut Grove (turned adult,) we buried people at Parchman. Then off to SMCI on the coast.

I'm glad you're back out, but I know that this side of the fence never looks the same after being on that side.

I don't know if it ever does.

Nope. Never looks the same. Because what you see inside is more honest than what's outside.

dang, are you still in mississippi?

Oh hell no. I'm on the other side of the country.

Contact the author and tell them the other sides. Every journalist I've met/worked with appreciates that kind of thing, another source/another side. They definitely will give you time.

not really

> the singer recorded a few songs for the white musicologist John Lomax

Are we doing this now? Marking the race of people when we report on them?

Anyway, you can explore the Lomax archive of original recordings:

https://archive.culturalequity.org/

Let's not forget Mose Allison's classic Parchman Farm.

I saw Mose play a couple real small venues in the 90s and remember one time someone asked him to play it. He pretty much said “I don’t play that one anymore.” No point, just an anecdote.

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