Join First Light Books for an evening with Colin Asher, whose new book opens on Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter being made to perform in prison clothes, and builds from that image into a sweeping argument: that American music as we know it, from the blues to hip-hop, was shaped in no small part by policing and prisons. The Midnight Special tells that story through five musicians across the twentieth century, and asks who our culture lets play the outlaw, and who it punishes.

The night begins with a conversation between Colin and journalist Maurice Chammah from the Marshall Project, followed by a listening session on vinyl. The two will play a curated set of records, and talk between songs about the music and the history behind it.

Come for the conversation, stay to listen.

"A well-written and mesmerizing group portrait of five musical outlaws." —Booklist, starred review

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About the book

This innovative history explores the rich tradition of music behind bars and shows how policing and prisons have shaped our musical culture from blues to hip-hop.

In American popular music, we often glorify rebellious artists and “outlaws.” But in The Midnight Special, Colin Asher tells a deeper story about the criminal justice system’s impact on our musicians, explored through compelling portraits of five artists whose careers span the twentieth century.

Opening with folk and blues artist Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, who was made to perform wearing prison clothes, Asher traces the intertwined histories of music and incarceration, from Southern prison farms of the Jim Crow era, through the heroin-driven mid-century drug wars that villainized a generation of jazz artists, and to our present era of mass incarceration.

Asher shows how the suggestion of criminality has often benefited white artists, while prosecutions often hurt Black musicians. Comparing the divergent trajectories of jazz pianist Elmo Hope with country singer Johnny Cash, Asher examines how violent and discriminatory policing stifled Hope’s career and led to the creation of his album Sounds from Rikers Island (1963), while forgiveness and lenience brought us Cash’s masterpiece At San Quentin (1969).

With keen musical analysis and sociological insight, The Midnight Special examines key themes in culture and criminal justice, from the movement for prison reform that allowed soul musician Ike White to stage thrilling concerts while locked up and record his album Changin’ Times (1977), to the crushing cultural weight of mass incarceration a generation later. Closing with Tupac Shakur’s Me Against the World (1995) and stories of music in prisons today, The Midnight Special recounts how prisons occasionally incubate talent but more often shorten careers and distort the public’s perception of musicians and their value to society.

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About the author

Colin Asher is also the author of Never a Lovely So Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren, a literary biography written as creative nonfiction that earned starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist and was named an Editors' Choice by the New York Times Book Review. Born in Morgantown, West Virginia, and raised in Brooklyn, he dropped out of high school and spent a decade in California working as a bike messenger, a warehouse stocker, and a truck driver before turning to writing. His work has appeared in the Believer, the Baffler, the New Republic, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He lives in Brooklyn.

About the conversation partner

Maurice Chammah is a journalist and staff writer for The Marshall Project, where he writes about the death penalty, prisons, courts, and the art and music made inside them. He was part of the team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and he is the author of Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty, winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award.

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