Jazz in jail: The supplement of the musicians’ narratives

Although the prison experience has been an integral part of the lives of many of them, the narratives of criminalized and incarcerated jazz musicians have hardly been identified or examined as such within critical prison studies. This article – originally published in 2002 – intends to help fill this gap by arguing that autobiographies of jazz musicians, many of whom have been incarcerated on narcotics charges, deserve closer consideration as a sub-genre of prison literature. Drawing primarily on Raise Up Off Me, the 1974 life story of African-American pianist Hampton Hawes, and Straight Life, the 1979 narrative of white saxophone player Art Pepper, it elaborates upon how imprisonment did affect their respective attitudes about racial and social issues, emphasizing the tension between the destructive logic of the jail scene and the emancipatory effect of the jazz scene.