Destination Jail: 31 Prison Songs From / Various - Destination Jail: 31 Prison Songs From / Various [CD]

2023 compilation. Song titles such as 'The Hanging Tree,' 'One Dead Man Ago,' 'Midnight Train,' 'Walking the Last Mile,' 'Lilly's Lament (Cell 29)' and 'Shot Four Times And Dying' describe what this CD album is all about. Incarceration is a frequent theme in American roots music. There is plenty of songs about hideous crimes, boastful escapes, self-pity, and remorseful pleading for a second chance in exchange for XYZ. Especially in old-time and early country music, we find good examples of the jail theme. One might think the motif may have been derived from pieces from the Anglo-Celtic tradition. Indeed, songs about murder, theft, and other sinful deeds are frequent in the British songbook, yet, jail, as a metaphor or as a place of self-reflection and transformation, is an American specialty: In the Land of the Free and the Home of the Evangelically Oppressed, incarceration serves as a mirror of the self. Jail is an implicitness, like death, heaven and hell. With Destination Jail, Bear Family Records offers a hodgepodge of hillbilly and rock & roll obscurities and classics dealing with life behind bars. The songs feature all the various elements of the US detention system: prison - county farm, prison, and penitentiary.