James Carter & The Prisoners

Singer James Carter is best known for his rendition of the traditional work song "Po' Lazarus," the opening track on the Grammy-winning soundtrack to the 2000 film O Brother Where Art Thou -- a performance captured over four decades earlier by famed archivist Alan Lomax while Carter was imprisoned in the Mississippi State Penitentiary. The son of a sharecropper, Carter was born and raised in Mississippi, leaving home at age 13 and going on to enter the state prison system on four separate occasions: twice he was convicted of theft, once for parole violations after he was found...