For decades, the Texas Prison Rodeo gave incarcerated musicians a rare opportunity to perform publicly and record their own songs. A newly recovered archive is preserving that largely forgotten chapter of Texas prison history.

The Marshall Project reported that musicians recorded country, blues, soul, gospel and funk through programs connected to the rodeo. In the 1970s, music professor Harley Rex organized classes and songwriting contests, with selected songs recorded at a studio inside the Wynne Unit.

Morgan White, who worked in the Wynne Unit music department during the 1980s, told the publication that musicians received small payments for songwriting and rodeo performances. He also described limits on what they could say: criticism of prison conditions or racial injustice could jeopardize access to the program.

The annual rodeo ended in 1986. As Texas’s prison population expanded, the public performance and recording program shrank. Some former participants later played professionally after release.

The recovered recordings are valuable because they preserve the voices and creative work of incarcerated Texans in their own time. They also document how prison programs could offer opportunity while remaining tightly controlled by administrators.

Source: The Marshall Project — When Texas Was Fertile Ground for Prison Bands.