James Carter (December 18, 1925 – November 26, 2003) was an American singer. He was born a Mississippi sharecropper and as a young man was several times an inmate of the
Mississippi
Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
prison system. He was paid $20,000, and credited, for a four-decade-old lead-vocalist performance in a prison work song used in the 2000 film ''
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' is a 2000 comedy drama film written, produced, co-edited, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson, with Chris Thomas King, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and C ...
''
Biography
Early life
In 1959, Carter was a prisoner in Camp B of
Parchman Farm
Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP), also known as Parchman Farm, is a maximum-security prison farm located in unincorporated Sunflower County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region. Occupying about of land,Mississippi State Penitentiary
Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP), also known as Parchman Farm, is a maximum-security prison farm located in unincorporated Sunflower County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region. Occupying about of land,Lambert, Quitman County, Mississippi, when
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax (; January 31, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century. He was also a musician himself, as well as a folklorist, archivist, writer, sch ...
and
Shirley Collins
Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE (born 5 July 1935) is an English folk singer who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s. She often performed and recorded with her sister Dolly, whose accompaniment on ...
recorded him in stereo sound leading a group of prisoners singing "Po' Lazarus", an African-American "bad man ballad" (which is also a work song), while chopping logs in time to the music. The recording and an iconic cover photograph of the prisoners in striped uniforms were issued on volume nine, ''Bad Man Ballads'', in Alan Lomax's 1959 Southern Journey LP series on
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Recording Corporation (simply known as Atlantic Records) is an American record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson. Over its first 20 years of operation, Atlantic earned a reputation as one of the most i ...
.
Legacy
Decades later, the recording was licensed for use in the soundtrack to the
Coen brothers
Joel Daniel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957),State of Minnesota. ''Minnesota Birth Index, 1935–2002''. Minnesota Department of Health. collectively known as the Coen brothers (), are American film ...
T-Bone Burnett
Joseph Henry "T Bone" Burnett III (born January 14, 1948) is an American record producer, guitarist and songwriter. He rose to fame as a guitarist in Bob Dylan's band during the 1970s. He has received multiple Grammy awards for his work in film ...
. Burnett's soundtrack topped the ''Billboard'' charts for many weeks and went on to win a
Grammy
The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pre ...
for Album of the Year. Alan Lomax's daughter Anna Lomax Chairetakis (now Anna Lomax Wood), director of the Alan Lomax Archive, and Don Fleming, director of Licensing for the Archive, hoped that Carter was still alive and determined to track him down:
Searching through the archives of the Mississippi penal system, Social Security files, property records and other public records and various databases, the record's producer, T-Bone Burnett; the Lomax archives; and an investigative journalist for a Florida newspaper found Mr. Carter in Chicago with his wife, Rosie Lee Carter, a longtime minister of the Holy Temple Church of God.
Chairetakis and Fleming flew to Chicago to personally present Carter with a royalty check. Carter who had spent much of his adult life working as a shipping clerk, told them he did not remember having sung the song 40 years previously. Fleming then informed him that the soundtrack album was outselling the latest CDs of Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey. "I told him, you beat both of them out," Mr. Fleming said. "He got a real kick out of that. He left the room to roll a cigarette and when he came back, he said, You tell Michael that I'll slow down so that he can catch up with me." Carter flew to Los Angeles to attend the Grammy Award ceremony and to Tennessee for the
benefit concert
A benefit concert or charity concert is a type of musical benefit performance (e.g., concert, show, or gala) featuring musicians, comedians, or other performers that is held for a charitable purpose, often directed at a specific and immediate hu ...
held in
Ryman Auditorium
Ryman Auditorium (also known as Grand Ole Opry House and Union Gospel Tabernacle) is a 2,362-seat live-performance venue located at 116 Rep. John Lewis Way North, in Nashville, Tennessee. It is best known as the home of the ''Grand Ole Opry'' fr ...
in
Nashville
Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and the ...
, which featured repeat performances by the performers of other numbers on the soundtrack (although Carter himself did not perform).
As the other prisoners have not been identified (and likely never will be), the official credit for the artist on the soundtrack is for "James Carter & the Prisoners".
Death
On November 26, 2003, Carter died of a stroke in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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