MUSIC HAS A PLACE IN THE JAIL HOUSE

ANGOLA -- Prisons aren't thought of as places where music flourishes, but
music's ability to console troubled spirits and lift broken hearts does
indeed have a place behind the stubborn walls and razor wire that surround
the jail house.

That's especially true at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, or simply
Angola. The plantation-turned-prison and its 5,100 inmates reside on 8,000
acres along the Mississippi River.

It's a long time coming, buddy, but you're welcome home. Down here in
Angola, Louisiana, where you get your burden on. Yeah, Buddy, you go get
your burden on.

You don't mind rolling, but you roll so long, it'll make you wish you was a
baby in your mother's arms. Yeah, buddy, in your mother's arms. And, say,
see that big white man on that big white horse? You don't know his name,
but you better call him boss." - "Angola Bound"

Charles Neville of the Neville Brothers learned those words when he reached
Angola in the 1960s.

"I came here after I was arrested for the most heinous crime of possession
of two marijuana cigarettes," Neville told a crowd of 200 at Angola's
recent prison music symposium.

"For which I was sentenced to five years at hard labor," Neville added. "At
the time I was smoking marijuana and doing other drugs, too. I was kind of
a bad guy. I was playing music, but I didn't have time to really practice.
I had to get out there and get some money to get the drugs and I had to be
hip and do all that stuff."

But Neville had plenty of time to practice at Angola.

"I got here and I got the job teaching music. I'm in the music room all
day, but everybody's working. So in the daytime all I do is practice."

Neville taught music classes three nights a week and performed with the
Angola band at prison football games and Christmas parties.

"So we all were studying music together," Neville said. "Those of us who
were at higher levels were helping the guys who were at lower levels. We
put together a band that was performing not only for inmates but for the
free population as well."

Besides plenty of practice time, Neville had time to meditate upon his
life's direction. He subsequently experienced a change of heart.

"OK, I'm here because of the kind of life I was leading and, OK, I did
that, it was my choice to do that - but I've got something else. I don't
have to go back out from here and all I know how to do is steal, do drugs
and sell drugs. No, I can play music. And while I'm in here, rather than
sitting around talking about how much money I got that time and my narrow
escape that time - although we did do that - I can also spend the time
learning as much as I can about music."

Though the prison population at large didn't attend the symposium, Leotha
Brown, an inmate who's been in Angola since Neville was there in the '60s,
was on hand for presentations by Southern University jazz educator Alvin
Batiste, drummer Herman Jackson, guitarist Harvey Knox, Leadbelly
biographer Kip Lornell and others.

"Leotha has been here all that time and it looks like he's gonna be here,"
Neville said. "But he can play music and get some solace."

"At some of my most downtrodden moments," Brown said, "it was my music that
gave me strength to carry on. And knowing that all good things come from
our father up above, I look at music as a gift."

Musicians, Neville added with a laugh, aren't entering Angola's gates as
much as they used to.

"A lot of musicians went into jail because of the drug and the music
connection, but the whole music scene has gotten away from the drug scene.
Leotha said, 'Yeah, man, the horn players are not coming in here anymore.' "

Letters from music-loving inmates, however, inspired Nick Spitzer, host of
the public radio show, American Routes, to broadcast a prison music program.

"The terrible irony of prisons in the South," Spitzer said, "has been that
African culture has been preserved in prisons because most of the people
imprisoned were African-Americans."

The most moving presentation of the day was about the late blues
singer-guitarist, Robert "Pete" Williams. He was confined in Angola in the
1950s after a deadly altercation in a tavern. The incident was described in
detail by Williams' manager, Dick Waterman.

"A guy came in, got very drunk at the bar, turned to Robert and started to
curse him, ready to attack him. So Robert said, 'I ain't who you think I
am, man. Move along. Let me be.'

"The guy turned from the bar and he pulled a gun. Robert had an owl-head
derringer. The hammers look like an owl's head. Robert said, 'Leave me be,
man. You're making a mistake here.' And, as Robert said later, 'I give the
man the first shot, and then I had to burn the man.'

"Certainly," Waterman added, "the ultimate generosity in the world was
giving the guy the first shot."

That got a big laugh.

Arhoolie Records founder Chris Strachwitz and folklorist Bruce Jackson also
shared memories of Williams. Two of Williams' children and his sister
spoke, too.

"He was the sweetest, kindest, most gentle man," Waterman said with obvious
affection. "He was a friend of anyone who was a friend to him. His word was
his bond. He loved his wife and his children.

"The devil here is he was illiterate. Now we all take literacy as
automatic, but an adult illiterate lives in another world. The world of an
adult illiterate is a real prison. You have to understand that in order to
know and understand Robert Pete. But he gave me a friendship that I look
back on and say, 'Why me?' He gave me faith and trust."

"My father was a great man," Robert Pete Williams, Jr., said. "His
particular kind of music will live on forever - but we miss our father."