Today’s Houston Jazz Spotlight was created in response to a request to hear music from Duke Ellington’s “Black, Brown and Beige Suite.” A request to hear music is not unusual. What was special about this request was the cat who made it. It was made by a brother who has been on death row in solitary confinement for almost two decades. Imagine that you are waiting to pay the ultimate price for a mistake you made as a teenager and you are facing that reality in a 6x9 room, 23 hours a day with little or no human contact. Solitary confinement was first used in a Philadelphia penitentiary in 1829 and was immediately found to be detrimental to the mental and physical well-being of all those subject to it. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1890 acknowledged these troubling findings. Yet today, it is a very common form of punishment for most prisons in this country and is mandatory for all those who receive a death sentence. So, today’s show is a musical mediation on solitary confinement and we will also play Ellington’s “Black, Brown and Beige Suite” in its entirety.
The Houston Jazz Spotlight is a labor of love by Visual Artist, Jazz Historian, and DJ, Tierney L. Malone.