Parchman Farm: Photographs and Field Recordings: 1947–1959

Searing work songs, prison hollers, and stark photographs bring to life the brutal reality of Mississippi’s notorious Parchman Farm.

In 1947, 1948, and 1959, folklorist Alan Lomax went behind the barbed wire of the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. With a reel-to-reel recorder—and later a camera—he documented the haunting music of imprisoned Black men laboring “from can’t to can’t,” chopping timber, clearing land, and picking cotton for the state. They sang to keep rhythm with axes and hoes, adapting slavery-time hollers into new songs that testify to resilience, endurance, and humanity under oppression.

This collection brings together 44 remastered audio recordings, 77 photographs (many previously unpublished), and essays by Alan Lomax, Anna Lomax Wood, and Bruce Jackson. The result is both a sonic and visual testimony of a system of forced labor and social control that endured for generations.

What’s Included

• 44 field recordings
• (12 previously unreleased) recorded at Parchman between 1947–1959
• View the complete tracklist here: [Insert hosted PDF link]
• 124-page digital book (PDF) featuring:
• Essays by Alan Lomax, Anna Lomax Wood, and Bruce Jackson
• 77 photographs by Alan Lomax, published here for the first time

Praise & Reviews

“The set is the most complete collection ever released of the field recordings that the legendary musicologist Alan Lomax made at Mississippi’s notorious Parchman Farm… No one’s ever linked the music to his photographs that he made in ’59 in the way that I thought should be done.” — The Bittersoutherner