A01=Colin Asher
alam lomax
Author_Colin Asher
black folk song
Category=AVA
Category=AVC
Category=JBCC1
Category=JKVP
earl bud powell
elmo hope
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
folk songs
forthcoming
glen sherley
huddie william ledbetter
ike white
johnny cash
prison reform
prison songsprison blues criminal justice system
thelonious monk
Product details
- ISBN 9781324051398
- Weight: 536g
- Dimensions: 160 x 239mm
- Publication Date: 30 Jun 2026
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In American popular music, we often glorify rebellious artists and “outlaws.” But The Midnight Special reveals an untold story about the way criminal justice has impacted the lives and work of US musicians. Examining five pivotal albums, Colin Asher’s narrative traces the history of twentieth-century incarceration from southern prison-farms to the heroin-driven drug war that villainized a generation of jazz artists to the dawn of mass incarceration. He argues that white artists, unlike their Black colleagues, often avoided severe punishment or even profited from jailtime. And he shows how prisons occasionally incubated talent, but more often shortened careers and distorted the public’s perception of musicians and their value to society. With keen musical analysis and thrilling biographical portraits of Huddie Ledbetter, Elmo Hope, Johnny Cash, Ike White, and Tupac Shakur, The Midnight Special writes the history of prisons into American music—a story as important as it is overlooked.
Colin Asher is the author of the critically acclaimed Never a Lovely So Real. His work has been featured in the Believer, the Baffler, the New Republic, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
