"PRISON BLUES" (Catfish)

The nomadic lifestyle of the blues performer in the American South in the 1920s and '30s, coupled with the necessity of plying one's trade in juke joints and gin mills, often led to incarceration, and songs about jailhouses and prison farms abound. Catfish Records, a fine blues reissue label out of London, has collected some two dozen of those laments here, remastered from the original 78s. They range from the familiar (Leadbelly's "Midnight Special") to the obscure (Peg Leg Howell's "New Prison Blues," which contains the line "drink your blood like wine," cribbed by Bob Dylan for "Stuck Inside of Mobile"), from the resigned (Blind Boy Fuller's "Big House Bound") to the humorous (in "Christmas in Jail, Ain't That a Pain," Leroy Carr pleads with Santa to give him a break). Also includes Bukka White's thundering original version of "Parchman Farm Blues." (Steve Leggett, Allmusic)

trax:

1. Chain Gang Blues - Kokomo Arnold 2. Big Rock Jail - Ed Bell 3. He's In The Jailhouse Now - Jim Jackson 4. Prison Blues - Alice Moore 5. Jailhouse Fire - Buddy Boy Hawkins 6. Christmas Jail-Ain't That A Pain - Leroy Carr 7. Penitentiary Bound Blues - Sylvester Weaver 8. Blind Lemon's Penitentiary Blues - Blind Lemon Jefferson 9. Midnight Special - Leadbelly 10. County Jail Special - Champion Jack Dupree 11. The County Farm Blues - Mae Glover 12. New Prison Blues - Peg Leg Howell 13. De Kalb Chain Gang - Fred McMullen 14. The County Farm Blues - Bo Carter 15. Alabama Prison Blues - Jesse Wadley 16. County Jail - Big Maceo 17. Crime Doesn't Pay - Merline Johnson 18. County Jail Blues - 'Funny Paper' Smith 19. Big House Bound - Blind Boy Fuller 20. Ninety-Nine Year Blues - Julius Daniels 21. Doin' A Stretch - Blind Blake 22. Parchman Farm Blues - Bukka White 23. Prisoner Bound - Frank Busby

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