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Until the 1970s, some musicians in prison were allowed to play concerts in the free world. A few even rubbed shoulders with Stevie Wonder and Elvis Presley. I assumed this sort of thing would never happen again. But earlier this year, my colleague Daja E. Henry got a tip about a concert in Cleveland, a small town in the Mississippi Delta, featuring men from the notorious prison known as Parchman Farm.
Daja has a new story about The Parchman Band, with photos by Rory Doyle, and I’m featuring a video of the band playing “Tennessee Whiskey” that Daja took at the GRAMMY Museum Mississippi in May. Here, she describes the rare experience of watching incarcerated musicians onstage in the free world.
Listen if you like: Al Green, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Chris Stapleton
Maurice: Who are The Parchman Band?
Daja: It turns out there have been iterations of a Parchman house band going back to the 1930s. There were even White and Black versions during segregation. And at one point, Parchman housed women, and the band was co-ed!
This is part of a bigger musical culture at the prison, which happens to be in the birthplace of the blues, the Mississippi Delta. The blues singer Bukka White was recorded there in the 1930s, and church services have been released as records and put on YouTube. But sometime in the 1990s, the band went dormant as the prison population exploded.
Maurice: So how did it come back?
Daja: A few years ago, the prison superintendent, Marc McClure, decided the band was good for morale. He asked a keyboard player inside, Houston Jones, to hold auditions. Jones also researched and wrote about the history of the band, and the members call themselves torchbearers for a larger tradition.
The band plays a bunch of genres and leaves the prison to play festivals and concerts. The members are in minimum custody, and they have to have good behavior. They went on a tour with a local singer named Charlie Worsham. They’re planning to release an album next year.
Maurice: This is all surprising because of the horrible conditions at Parchman, which is on former slave plantation land and is famous for brutal, unpaid farm labor. You’ve reported on the huge number of homicides there.
Daja: Yes, and McClure said, “We never need to gloss over history,” and that they want to learn from it so they don’t repeat it.
There is a P.R. aspect to concerts like this that is unavoidable. The state’s prisons are run by Burl Cain, who used to be the warden at Angola State Prison in Louisiana, which also had abuses and violence along with a lot of music. Cain puts a heavy emphasis on Christianity and being saved, and the music culture is connected to that. The Parchman band’s bass player is also a worship leader.
Although not all the music is religious, the men in the band told me how much they thank God for the freedom to create music while living under such conditions. Lee Smith, the guitarist, is 18 years into a life sentence for murder. He’s married, and his wife was at the concert. She said, “Music is his freedom.” It can be the way they find meaning within a life sentence.
Maurice: What was the vibe of the show?
Daja: It was a sold-out show, and they mostly do high-energy music. The crowd had a lot of older White listeners who may have heard about this through the museum. Then there were family members of the band, including a few significant others and kids. Smith said “Tennessee Whiskey” reminded him of his wife, and he dedicated that song to her and pointed to her when he took his guitar solo. It was really sweet.
I have also been to the Angola prison rodeo, and there is always the risk in these situations of people gawking across racial lines or enjoying the perception of danger. But in the room, you could tell everyone was also blown away by how talented they are. I do think they are changing people’s minds about what incarcerated people are capable of.
Artist: The Parchman Band | Song: “Tennessee Whiskey” | Guitar: Lee Andrew Smith | Bass: Leonard “LJ” Stevenson Jr. | Keyboard and Guitar: Houston Jones | Drums: Jakellsey Hollis | Vocals: Steven Chambers (lead on “Tennessee Whiskey”), Charles Glassco IV, and Michael Snell | Songwriters: Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove | Venue: GRAMMY Museum Mississippi | Date: May 29, 2026
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