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Past Work

The B-Side: “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons,” A Record Album Interpretation

2016-2022

The B-Side is based on the 1965 LP “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons,” which features work songs, blues, spirituals, preaching, and toasts from inmates in Texas’ then-segregated agricultural prison farms. The men on the album were all inmates sentenced to hard labor. They cut down trees, chopped wood, harvested sugar cane, picked cotton and weeded fields.

In The B-Side, performers Eric Berryman, Jasper McGruder, and Philip Moore channel the inmates’ voices from the album, via in-ear receivers, and transmit them live, remixing their voices with the original recording. Berryman also provides context from the book Wake Up Dead Man: Hard Labor and Southern Blues by Bruce Jackson, the folklorist who recorded the album in 1964.

Berryman brought the album to the Group after he saw the Group’s previous record album interpretation Early Shaker Spirituals.

Media & Ephemera

Eric Berryman, Jasper McGruder, and Phillip Moore in The Wooster Group's THE B-SIDE. Photo: Bruce Jackson, 2016.
Eric Berryman in The Wooster Group's THE B-SIDE. Photo: Bruce Jackson, 2016.
Eric Berryman and Phillip Moore in The Wooster Group's THE B-SIDE. Photo: Bruce Jackson, 2017.
Phillip Moore, Eric Berryman, and Jasper McGruder in The Wooster Group's THE B-SIDE. Photo: Bruce Jackson, 2017.
Eric Berryman, Jasper McGruder, and Phillip Moore in The Wooster Group's THE B-SIDE. Photo: Bruce Jackson, 2017.
Eric Berryman and Jasper McGruder [on screen] in The Wooster Group's THE B-SIDE. Photo: Steven Gunther, 2019.
Jasper McGruder in The Wooster Group's THE B-SIDE. Photo: Steven Gunther, 2019.
Phillip Moore in The Wooster Group's THE B-SIDE. Photo: Steven Gunther, 2019.
Eric Berryman, Jasper McGruder, and Phillip Moore in The Wooster Group's THE B-SIDE. Photo: Teddy Wolff, 2019.
Eric Berryman in The Wooster Group's THE B-SIDE. Photo: Teddy Wolff, 2019.
Eric Berryman in The Wooster Group's THE B-SIDE. Photo: Teddy Wolff, 2019.

Production History

Additional Credits

Special thanks to Bruce Jackson.

Thanks to Jennifer Tipton, Ruud van den Akker, Antonia Belt, Daivd Sexton, and Andrew Maillet.

Based on Negro Folklore From Texas State Prisons (Elektra 1965), an LP recorded, edited, and anonotated by Bruce Jackson, featuring performances by Johnnie Adams, W.D. “Alec” Alexander, Virgil Asbury, John Bell, Douglas Cannon, James A. Champion, William Evans, John Gibson, James Hampton, James W. Hobbs, Louis “Bacon & Porkchop” Houston, Johnny Jackson, Floyd James, Lemon Jefferson, Jesse “G.I. Jazz” Hendricks, James Johnson, Joseph “Chinaman” Johnson, C.B. “Snuffy” Kimble, Henry Landers, L.Z. Lee, Clem A. Martin, Leroy Martindell, Mack Maze, D.J. Miller, Houston Page, Marshall Phillips, Johnnie H. Robinson, Arthur “Lightning” Sherrod, Albert Spencer, Lee Curtis Tyler, David Walker, Jesse Lee Warren, Venesty Weles, George White, Morgan White, Matt Williams, and Eddie Ray Zachary.

Film footage from Afro-American Worksongs in a Texas Prison, by Pete, Toshi and Dan Seeger, and Bruce Jackson, 1966.

Development of this piece was made possible by: the Princess Grace Foundation-USA, which awarded Mr. Berryman a 2016-17 honorarium in theater; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which awarded Ms. Valk a fellowship in 2016; the Persephone Gift; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Performances in Taipei, Gwangju, Haarlem, Stuttgart, and Barcelona were supported by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through USArtists International in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Howard Gilman Foundation.

Selected Press

Tags

Record Album Interpretation