REDEMPTION SONGS:
Stevie Wonder and James Brown Put This Prison Funk Band on the Map (The Marshall Project)
This story might have faded into history. But a few years ago an elderly, unhoused man named Charles McDowell walked into the Philadelphia record store Brewerytown Beats, looking for a copy of the “From The Inside…” He revealed to the store’s owner, Max Ochester, that he had played bass in the band. McDowell later passed away, but Ochester tracked down the former lead singer, Ron Aikens, singing street karaoke for tips outside of Philadelphia City Hall.Aikens told me in an interview that the band had been allowed to spend entire nights away from the prison attending industry parties, wearing free-world clothes. When they returned, he recalled, other prisoners called them “idiots” for not using the opportunity to escape.
At least one member took the bait. At the Stevie Wonder gig, Aikens recalls McDowell, the bass player, fled the venue and remained on the lam for a few months until he was caught. But even with the occasional scandal, the band was good PR for the state: “We were ambassadors for the prison system,” Aikens said. “If something was going wrong, they’d roll us out to show what wonderful things they were doing.”
