Texas Jailhouse Music

Texas Jailhouse Music PDF Author: Caroline Gnagy
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625853505
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Inside the Texas State Prison is a surprising story of ingenuity, optimism and musical creativity. During the mid-twentieth century, inmates at the Huntsville unit and neighboring Goree State Farm for Women captured hearts all over Texas during weekly radio broadcasts and live stage performances. WBAP's Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls took listeners inside the penitentiary to hear not only the prisoners? songs but also the stories of those who sang them. Captivating and charismatic, banjo player Reable Childs received thousands of fan letters with the Goree All-Girl String Band during World War II. Hattie Ellis, a young black inmate with a voice that rivaled Billie Holiday's, was immortalized by notable folklorist John Avery Lomax. Cowboys, songsters and champion fiddlers all played a part in one of the most unique prison histories in the nation. Caroline Gnagy presents the decades-long story of the Texas convict bands, informed by prison records, radio show transcripts and the words and music of the inmates themselves.

Texas Jailhouse Music

Texas Jailhouse Music PDF Author: Caroline Gnagy
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625853505
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Get Book

Book Description
Inside the Texas State Prison is a surprising story of ingenuity, optimism and musical creativity. During the mid-twentieth century, inmates at the Huntsville unit and neighboring Goree State Farm for Women captured hearts all over Texas during weekly radio broadcasts and live stage performances. WBAP's Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls took listeners inside the penitentiary to hear not only the prisoners? songs but also the stories of those who sang them. Captivating and charismatic, banjo player Reable Childs received thousands of fan letters with the Goree All-Girl String Band during World War II. Hattie Ellis, a young black inmate with a voice that rivaled Billie Holiday's, was immortalized by notable folklorist John Avery Lomax. Cowboys, songsters and champion fiddlers all played a part in one of the most unique prison histories in the nation. Caroline Gnagy presents the decades-long story of the Texas convict bands, informed by prison records, radio show transcripts and the words and music of the inmates themselves.

Singin' a Lonesome Song

Singin' a Lonesome Song PDF Author: Gary Brown
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
ISBN: 1461625629
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Texas convicts and inmates have made the Texas prison system the most colorful in the world over the past 150 years. T

Texas Jailhouse Music

Texas Jailhouse Music PDF Author: Caroline Gnagy
Publisher: History Press Library Editions
ISBN: 9781540213082
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Inside the Texas State Prison is a surprising story of ingenuity, optimism and musical creativity. During the mid-twentieth century, inmates at the Huntsville unit and neighboring Goree State Farm for Women captured hearts all over Texas during weekly radio broadcasts and live stage performances. WBAP s Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls took listeners inside the penitentiary to hear not only the prisoners? songs but also the stories of those who sang them. Captivating and charismatic, banjo player Reable Childs received thousands of fan letters with the Goree All-Girl String Band during World War II. Hattie Ellis, a young black inmate with a voice that rivaled Billie Holiday s, was immortalized by notable folklorist John Avery Lomax. Cowboys, songsters and champion fiddlers all played a part in one of the most unique prison histories in the nation. Caroline Gnagy presents the decades-long story of the Texas convict bands, informed by prison records, radio show transcripts and the words and music of the inmates themselves."

Legends and Life in Texas

Legends and Life in Texas PDF Author: Kenneth L. Untiedt
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 1574417088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
There is sometimes a fine line between history and folklore. This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society features articles that tell stories about real-life characters from the historical past of Texas, as well as offer personal reflections about life from diverse perspectives throughout the last century. These contributors go beyond merely stating facts about dates or locations or names of the events and people that can be found in court documents or genealogical records; several of these authors provide a very intimate connection to the tales they share. These articles are not just about people that we read about as school children, and they do not merely describe how our culture used to be, or how vastly it has changed; rather, they emphasize the ways we keep our culture alive through the retelling of the events and customs and major figures that are important enough to pass on from one generation to the next. The first section covers legendary characters like Davy Crockett, Mody Boatright, Sam Houston, and Cynthia Ann Parker from our state’s past, as well as people who were bigger or bolder than others, yet seem to have been forgotten. Some of those characters came from different countries, while others are connected directly to our Texas Folklore Society family tree. The second section includes works that examine songs of our youth, as well as the customs and social constructs associated with music, whether it’s on a football field or in a prison yard. The works in the final section recall memories of a simpler time, when cars and home appliances lacked modern conveniences we now take for granted, before Facebook and YouTube allowed us to become Internet movie stars, and when it was a treat just to go and “visit” with family and friends.

Tall Walls and High Fences

Tall Walls and High Fences PDF Author: Bob Alexander
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 1574418165
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 601

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Book Description
Texas has one of the world’s largest prison systems, in operation for more than 170 years and currently employing more than 28,000 people. Hundreds of thousands of people have been involved in the prison business in Texas: inmates, correctional officers, public officials, private industry representatives, and volunteers have all entered the secure facilities and experienced a different world. Previous books on Texas prisons have focused either on records and data of the prisons, personal memoirs by both inmates and correctional officers, or accounts of prison breaks. Tall Walls and High Fences is the first comprehensive history of Texas prisons, written by a former law enforcement officer and an officer of the Texas prisons. Bob Alexander and Richard K. Alford chronicle the significant events and transformation of the Texas prison system from its earliest times to the present day, paying special attention to the human side of the story. Incarceration policy evolved from isolation to hard labor to rodeo and educational opportunities, with reform measures becoming an ever-evolving quest. The complex job of the correctional officer has evolved as well—they must ensure custody and control over the inmate population at all times, in order to provide a proper environment conducive to safety and positive change. Alexander and Alford focus especially on the men and women who work with diligence and dedication at their jobs “inside the walls,” risking their lives and—in too many instances—giving their lives in a peculiar line of duty most would find unpalatable. Within these pages are stories of prison breaks, bloodhounds chasing escapees, and gunfights. Inside the walls are deadly confrontations, human trafficking, rape, clandestine consensual trysts, and tricks turned against correctional officers. Famous people and episodes in Texas prison history receive their due, from Texas Rangers apprehending and placing outlaws in prison to the famed gunfighter John Wesley Hardin’s time in and out of prison. Tall Walls and High Fences covers numerous convict escape attempts and successes, including the 1974 prison siege at Huntsville and the 2007 prisoner gunfight and escape at the Wynne Unit. Throughout this long history Alexander and Alford pay special tribute to the more than 75 correctional officers, lawmen, and civilians who lost their lives in the line of duty.

The Oxford Handbook of Country Music

The Oxford Handbook of Country Music PDF Author: Travis D. Stimeling
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190248173
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 593

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Book Description
Approaches country music through an interdisciplinary lens, Features close analyses of gendered and racial disparities in country music, Examines politics of both the performance of country music and the scholarship surrounding it Book jacket.

The Dallas Music Scene: 1920s-1960s

The Dallas Music Scene: 1920s-1960s PDF Author: Alan Govenar
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 143964523X
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
For much of the 20th century, Dallas was home to a wide range of vital popular music. By the 1920s, the streets, dance halls, and vaudeville houses of Deep Ellum rang with blues and jazz. Blind Lemon Jefferson was discovered singing the blues on the streets of Deep Ellum but never recorded in Dallas. Beginning in the 1930s, however, artists from Western swing pioneer Bob Wills to blues legend Robert Johnson recorded in a three-story zigzag moderne building at 508 Park Avenue. And from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, a wrestling arena called the Sportatorium was home to a Saturday night country and rock-and-roll extravaganza called the Big "D" Jamboree.

Country Boys and Redneck Women

Country Boys and Redneck Women PDF Author: Diane Pecknold
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496804945
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Country music boasts a long tradition of rich, contradictory gender dynamics, creating a world where Kitty Wells could play the demure housewife and the honky-tonk angel simultaneously, Dolly Parton could move from traditionalist "girl singer" to outspoken trans rights advocate, and current radio playlists can alternate between the reckless masculinity of bro-country and the adolescent girlishness of Taylor Swift. In this follow-up volume to A Boy Named Sue, some of the leading authors in the field of country music studies reexamine the place of gender in country music, considering the ways country artists and listeners have negotiated gender and sexuality through their music and how gender has shaped the way that music is made and heard. In addition to shedding new light on such legends as Wells, Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Charley Pride, it traces more recent shifts in gender politics through the performances of such contemporary luminaries as Swift, Gretchen Wilson, and Blake Shelton. The book also explores the intersections of gender, race, class, and nationality in a host of less expected contexts, including the prisons of WWII-era Texas, where the members of the Goree All-Girl String Band became the unlikeliest of radio stars; the studios and offices of Plantation Records, where Jeannie C. Riley and Linda Martell challenged the social hierarchies of a changing South in the 1960s; and the burgeoning cities of present-day Brazil, where "college country" has become one way of negotiating masculinity in an age of economic and social instability.

A Wall Is Just a Wall

A Wall Is Just a Wall PDF Author: Reiko Hillyer
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478025883
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Throughout the twentieth century, even the harshest prison systems in the United States were rather porous. Incarcerated people were regularly released from prison for Christmas holidays; the wives of incarcerated men could visit for seventy-two hours relatively unsupervised; and governors routinely commuted the sentences of people convicted of murder. By the 1990s, these practices had become rarer as politicians and the media—in contrast to corrections officials—described the public as potential victims who required constant protection against the threat of violence. In A Wall Is Just a Wall Reiko Hillyer focuses on gubernatorial clemency, furlough, and conjugal visits to examine the origins and decline of practices that allowed incarcerated people to transcend prison boundaries. Illuminating prisoners’ lived experiences as they suffered, critiqued, survived, and resisted changing penal practices, she shows that the current impermeability of the prison is a recent, uneven, and contested phenomenon. By tracking the “thickening” of prison walls, Hillyer historicizes changing ideas of risk, the growing bipartisan acceptance of permanent exile and fixing the convicted at the moment of their crime as a form of punishment, and prisoners’ efforts to resist.

Convict Cowboys

Convict Cowboys PDF Author: Mitchel P. Roth
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 1574416529
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Convict Cowboys is the first book on the nation’s first prison rodeo, which ran from 1931 to 1986. At its apogee the Texas Prison Rodeo drew 30,000 spectators on October Sundays. Mitchel P. Roth portrays the Texas Prison Rodeo against a backdrop of Texas history, covering the history of rodeo, the prison system, and convict leasing, as well as important figures in Texas penology including Marshall Lee Simmons, O.B. Ellis, and George J. Beto, and the changing prison demimonde. Over the years the rodeo arena not only boasted death-defying entertainment that would make professional cowboys think twice, but featured a virtual who’s who of American popular culture. Readers will be treated to stories about numerous American and Texas folk heroes, including Western film stars ranging from Tom Mix to John Wayne, and music legends such as Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. Through extensive archival research Roth introduces readers to the convict cowboys in both the rodeo arena and behind prison walls, giving voice to a legion of previously forgotten inmate cowboys who risked life and limb for a few dollars and the applause of free-world crowds.