THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL is coming soon . . .
It Probes the Secret Prison History of American Music

Colin Asher, author of a critically acclaimed biography of Nelson Algren, Never a Lovely So Real, now focuses on five emblematic figures — Huddle Ledbetter, Elmo Hope, Johnny Cash, Ike White, and Tupac Shakur — as he explores the influence of incarceration on blues artists, jazz musicians, country singers, rock’n’rollers, and hip-hop creators. With his characteristic style of objective analysis, his keen appreciation of people regarded as reprobates and all manner of miscreant, Asher traces their individual histories and puts on display their contributions to America’s unique 20th-century musical idioms . . . improbably achieved in some cases from behind prison walls. He has also curated a playlist for anyone who wants to sample the music he writes about. Cock your ear.

"If there's a sensibility common to the artists featured in this book, free or imprisoned, it's that the act of expression binds us to one another and has irreducible value. Some, like Elmo Hope or Ike White, desired fame they were denied, and some, like Glen Sherley, might have hoped for redemption they couldn't earn, and others, like Johnny Cash, managed to turn their talent into wealth. But at base, each pursued a simpler and more profound goal — asserting that, no matter how pronounced their failings, they retained an equal right to add their voices to the messy, raucous, sprawling, story of our collective humanity."  — Colin Asher