February 4, 2025 • 38 mins
Harry “Cupcake” Coleman was 29 years old and staring down a 50-year sentence at the
Powhatan Correctional Center, the Virginia penitentiary farm just 30 miles west of Richmond. Cupcake was a star vocalist in the prison’s soul ensemble, Edge of Daybreak. On Sept. 14, 1979, she and her bandmates rose to an incredible challenge: they recorded an eight-song LP called Eyes of Love, live from the prison visiting room, in only five hours.
Decades later, music and culture writer Jamie Pietras tracks down Cupcake and her former bandmates, the guitarist Neal Cade and drummer Jamal Jaha Nubi, to find out how they recorded one of the most coveted soul albums of their era under such extraordinary circumstances. Out of prison and in their seventies, the former bandmates feel like they still have something to prove - and they want Jamie’s help.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In A and E original podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
People ask me, what's the record that's in your collection
is very special to you that you would have to have,
or if something was to happen in your house, what
would you grab.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
This record's always in it.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
I've been wanting to record my songs, you know, a
long time, and that would be time to do it.
Speaker 5 (00:25):
When we did that album, it was for fun. It
wasn't to fail, it wasn't to become famous. It was
something we did to occupy Alma and everything just came
out and we had in five hours. We did a
whole album in five hugs.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
This is the story of Edge of Daybreak, the band
behind the most coveted soul album you've probably never heard
the album Eyes of Love is hate pitch perfect track.
It's become a cult legend among rare record collectors. A
copy can go for one thousand dollars if you're lucky
enough to find one. They were black musicians who'd grown
(01:12):
up in the segregated South and paid their dues on
local stages. By the mid nineteen seventies, three of them
were poised to break out on their own. Then, at
the height of their individual careers, they each landed in
Virginia's Powatan Correctional Center.
Speaker 6 (01:31):
I'd got thirty five years.
Speaker 5 (01:33):
I had fifty years.
Speaker 7 (01:34):
They decided to give us twenty five years the piece.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
I couldn't comprehend it at all.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
These were artists facing decades long sentences in one of
the worst places imaginable, and somehow they created the impossible.
They recorded Eyes of Love inside the prison in a
single five hour session, no edits, no overdubs. I had
to know how they did it. But as soon as
(02:02):
I started talking to the band and digging into their stories,
I realized there was another question I should be asking,
can they make another album? I'm Jamie Petris, music and
(02:23):
culture writer. Edge of Daybreak made their one and only
album at Virginia's Powatan Correctional Center in nineteen seventy nine.
Powatan was where men convicted of felonies served out their
sentences for offenses ranging from violent crimes to selling marijuana.
The penitentiary was also a farm, and the men doing
(02:45):
time there worked the prisons fields and slaughterhouses that supplied
meat to prisons across the Virginia Commonwealth. It was a
lonely and devastating place, often violent. Not exactly where you'd
expect to find musicians recording fun dance tracks in pretty
love ballads, but that's what Edge of Daybreak did. The
(03:11):
band's music incorporated elements of Golden Age soul, disco, funk, jazz,
and doop. When the album came out, it wasn't widely distributed.
Only a thousand copies were made. You could find the
vinyl at a record shop in Richmond and a few
others in Roanoke, but nowhere outside of Virginia. It got
a little local radio play, but mostly fell into obscurity
(03:33):
except for a small community of DJs and vinyl collectors,
so the band never got the recognition they most certainly deserved. Eventually,
they all got released from prison and went their separate ways.
Decades past, life moved on, the guys got older. Then suddenly,
(03:56):
in twenty fifteen, the album was back on the market worldwide.
An indie label had put out a small re release
of Eyes of Love, and a year later, their biggest
break yet, an Edge of Daybreak track was featured in
the Oscar winning movie Moonlight.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
It few Who.
Speaker 8 (04:18):
From Me?
Speaker 1 (04:21):
What About from You? Edge of Daybreak had unexpectedly found
a second life That's how I stumbled onto their story.
I was researching an entirely different project about prison hip hop,
a project that I immediately dropped to dig up everything
I could about Edge of Daybreak. A friend of a
(04:43):
friend connected me to a rare record enthusiast actor in
DJ in Los Angeles, Dorian Missic.
Speaker 9 (04:50):
The first time I heard the Edge of day Breaks
music was first of all, a DJ played doing a
rare moves. Party looked at him like, was that? And
then I got my hands on it on a compilation
CD or a compilation record, and it was the Edge
of day Break title song, Edge of Daybreak, and I
fell in love with big.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Dorian knows rare music, and he knows what it takes
to make music. I wanted his perspective on just how
exceptional Edge of Daybreak really was. The First thing that
drew me to the music was it was jammy.
Speaker 9 (05:24):
You know, That's where I start square one.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Is it jamming?
Speaker 9 (05:29):
And then you know, I factored in the whole circumstances
of how they recorded the record, and then I realized
how outstanding it is. You know, it's funny because in general,
when you think about black art and the history of
it in America. Fortunately, we're known for making lemonade out
of Lennox, you know, making great art in these really
(05:49):
crazy circumstances, high stress circumstances, And this project exemplifies that.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Those high stress circums dances Dorian talks about, they informed
every single movement of the band members making this album.
The record is a snapshot of emotions captured in a
very specific time and place. Songs written in the penitentiary
by and four other incarcerated people. There are songs of
longing and romance and better days ahead. Each one is
(06:22):
as distinctive as the band members themselves. Then what's happened
in Jamal?
Speaker 10 (06:29):
How are you?
Speaker 6 (06:30):
I guess we're playing musical teas with a poll. How
you doing man?
Speaker 1 (06:34):
That's Jamal Johan Nuby. Some people call him Sly, a
nickname he got in prison for being such a smooth talker.
He was the Edge of Daybreaks drummer and co vocalist.
When I met him in person for the first time,
we talked for almost five hours. I went down there
planning on writing an article about this band and their achievement,
(06:54):
but after that meeting, I realized their story was much
bigger than I expected the name the edge of daybreak.
I think you told me before the daybreak was the
other side, right that.
Speaker 10 (07:08):
Daybreak was.
Speaker 6 (07:11):
Like twilight in some kind of way. It was the
light at the end of the tumb So I'm saying,
because I'm in the dog that's right now, all I
can do is look forward to the light. I know
I'm gonna get out, and I'm standing right on the
edge of daybreak. They tell you don't find positive things
(07:33):
in a negative envibment, you know, but we flipped that.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Jamal was one of Edged day breaks five core members.
The other four were James Carrington, Knackavoy, Cellis Robinson, Harry Coleman,
and Cornelius Kid. Jamal, Harry and Cornelius, who goes by Neil,
are still alive, and they all still live in Virginia
where I track them down. In twenty eighteen. I recorded
(08:00):
our conversations. However, I could no audio crew, no fancy equipment.
I'm calling you from this line so that I can record.
Jamal's in his seventies now and lives in Roanoke, his hometown.
I'd called Jamal the band's resident philosopher maybe spiritualist. Our
(08:21):
conversations often strayed into things like predestination or reincarnation.
Speaker 6 (08:26):
I know I've missed somewhere before, but really, in reality,
I know I haven't. You know, I feel like I
was a king or.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Chris Jamal ended up at Powatan after being convicted of
armed robbery in nineteen seventy six. Though he denies his
involvement even today, that time really crystallized his interest in
spirituality and mystical phenomena. He met with a guru in Powatan.
He studied pyramid power and approaches to fasting. He was
(08:55):
determined to reinvent himself, to separate himself from his past.
When the band got together, that determination showed up in
the music too. For Jamal, the songs were aspirational, a
step toward the person he wanted to be. For another
of the vocalists, it was about expressing exactly who she
(09:19):
was in that moment.
Speaker 10 (09:21):
Oh, everybody calls me Cupcake.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
That's the only name they've ever known me about its Cupcake.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Harry Coleman or Cupcake sang lead vocals on a few
tracks and provided a women's vocal range that really rounded
out the band's sound. Before prison, Cupcake had been a
drag performer and singer. I'll be referring to Cupcake using
the pronouns she a preference, she shared when we started
(09:49):
this project, though Cupcake does go by male or female pronouns.
Cupcake was an unforgettable performer. Everyone who'd seen her at
Tan told me so. She'd been singing since she was
a little kid.
Speaker 5 (10:05):
First time singing period five years old, singing Home on
the Range in the church. I was drifting up like
a little cowboy, singing Home on the Range. I'll help
forget it now. Grandma made me do it. She said,
you're gonna sing that song for that church. I'm gonna
beat yo, de leise.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
But it didn't take long for Cupcake to get up
on stage on her own. She sang in her fifth
grade Christmas pageant. She joined her junior high school choir.
Cupcake was gaining confidence.
Speaker 5 (10:37):
The next sam I sing in public was in a dress,
wig and hat, hair shoes. You know how Queen's Olga's
got to beat forefront.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
That's me.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
That's me. I'm gonna be forefront. I'm gonna be wide open.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
By the time Cupcake landed in prison, she had been
performing in drag singing women's vocals for years. Her voice
was powerful enough to make it big, but in nineteen
seventy nine she was twenty nine years old in prison
for robbery, working down a fifty year sentence. If Jamal
(11:20):
and Cupcake are the flashier stage performers, Neil Cade, the
band's guitarist, is the softer spoken artist. But don't mistake
that for shyness.
Speaker 7 (11:29):
Hello, this is Neil.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
Everybody call me Neil Neil Ky, but my name is
Cornelius Key and the girls prefer that name.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I had to get that.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
In Neil's seventy seven Now in Thin He walks with
a cane and a hitch in his step.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
You're comfortable, You're good there?
Speaker 4 (11:46):
Yeah, I'm good.
Speaker 7 (11:47):
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
You want to you just check the levels.
Speaker 10 (11:50):
We'll do a little talking first.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
In one of our first conversations, Neil told me a
story about how he fell in love with performing as
a child.
Speaker 7 (12:00):
It out a long time ago.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
My mother used to take me to the PTA meet
he's at the school, and somehow when she put me
on the stage and I saw Jill House.
Speaker 7 (12:12):
Rock by Abless Prestley.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
I don't know where I learned it, how I learned
it and I don't know, I just loved to see
the movie. But them and Jill dancing in the balls
and all that stuff, and it just inspired me.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Now. Neil would be the first to say that his
prison experience was nothing like Elvis's in Jailhouse Rock. But
when he got to Powatan in nineteen seventy five on
a robbery charge, he was able to preserve one comfort.
He got the guards to let him keep a guitar
in hisself.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Man, I sit on my bed and practice and play,
and practice and play till I just fell asleep.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Neil wrote his song Our Love in one of these
moments alone in his cell. He says it would have sounded.
Speaker 6 (12:54):
Like this you.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Then, Neil says, writing and playing helped occupy his mind,
but even with that distraction, he was still looking at
twenty five years behind bars. The three band members were
facing a collective one hundred and ten years at Powatan.
(13:23):
The only bright spot Howatan's band room, a cramped basement
space not much bigger than the average living room. Here's
how Cupcake remembers it.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
It was about the size of this room. He had
maybe eighteen sea weeks and maybe a foot Biggel. You
got a drum set in there, you got two guitars
in there, you got two keyboards in it.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
This is the room where Edge of Daybreak was born,
where it's five core members met Cupcake, Neil and Jamal,
plus the band's self appointed leader James Carrington who died
in two thousand and nine, team and arguably the group's
most talented musician, Macavoycellis Robinson who died in two thousand
and three. Before prison, Mac played in backing bands for
(14:11):
artists like Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett. Cupcakes says. With
Mac around, the band jelled and the musicianship went to
another level.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
It was mostly a teaching thing because Mac was a teacher.
Mac told a lot of guys how to believe issue.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
Miss.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Guys would come in and out of that band room.
They were confident enough they'd ask to play like courtside
stragglers and pick up basketball. They were all known by
their nicknames Lucky Acorn, Cool Breeze, little Man, the Edge
of Daybreak stage sharp, practicing a mix of cover songs
and the originals they'd written. How many days a week
(14:47):
did you play together?
Speaker 5 (14:49):
Many Williams and ratt.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Was it just you playing or were there other bands?
Speaker 5 (14:55):
They had the gospel, but you couldn't go in and
it was they practiced in a check. Then you had
the Culture Wesson who they weren't too popular. Then you
had the Chosen Few Bad. They were out rivals, but
they didn't have a cookie.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
And the music wasn't just a release for the band members.
It spilled out into the rest of Poweratan's population too.
Speaker 5 (15:22):
Friday Knights was the Knights that the guards of. Everybody
was staying around. It was partying. We practiced and learned
us all all that week, but Monday and Wednesday Friday
we wed to introduce them to the crowd.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
See, the Edge of Daybreak didn't just play for themselves.
They played for an audience of other incarcerated men, guards,
prison staff, basically anyone at Powertan. The room was packed.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
You had standing room, all that people, all of its walls,
sitting up floors there and.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
They what did the guards think of you guys?
Speaker 5 (15:55):
They would come in and standing around the wall and
this whip would pull off them just like it pulled
off of us, just to heal us play.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
The Edge of Daybreak was so good. The administration even
let them play other prisons people love them.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
Put it this way, we were debay of the state
penal system.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
At least one of the band members started to think
that their act might be able to make waves outside
the penal system. James Carrington. James played keys and sang,
and he had come up with a plan using the
limited connections he had while in prison. He'd been buying
mail order cassettes from a small record shop in nearby Richmond.
Here he is explaining that to filmmaker Alex Lambert in
(16:43):
Lambert's twenty eighteen short documentary feature on the band Edge
of Daybreak, the real jailhouse Rock.
Speaker 11 (16:50):
Certain musical stores would maybe send a clipping or you
rated in the newspaper where they would send music into
the prison. And so I came in contact with Milton Hoague,
who owned Bohannan's, and I started ordering from him, and
(17:11):
my music would come from his store.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
How did have James enlisted the help of his wife, Pat.
Speaker 11 (17:16):
And so I asked her, would she go by and
talk to mister Hoag and see what he'd be interested
in coming in and listening to our music in hopes
that he would like to finess us and do a recording.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Neil remembers Milton driving to the prison for an audition.
Cupcake says they might have sent Milton a cassette. Whatever
the case, they only had three original songs between them,
and Milton liked what he heard. He told them to
write five more and he'd put up the three thousand
dollars to cover the costs of recording them inside the prison.
(17:53):
He'd also press a thousand copies of their music to Vinyl.
Hoak's distribution plan was to sell the record right from
his shop, as well as a few others around Virginia.
He approached an audio engineer, Eric Johnson about the job.
Eric remembers Milton asking, Hey, do you guys want to
record this great local rhythm and blues group.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
So well, there's only one small detail that we got
to work out, and I said what's that? He said, Well,
they're in prison.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
James and Milton made their case to prison officials, who
surprisingly agreed to the recording session. This was a big deal.
They were finally going to record a proper album. The
Edge of Daybreak wasn't the first band to record in prison.
The Blue Singer led Belly recorded at a Louisiana Penitentiary
in nineteen thirty four, his songs went to the Library
(18:42):
of Congress. After he got out of prison, he went
on to major label deals and a spot in the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In nineteen seventy three,
The es Courts recorded at New Jersey's Rahway State Penitentiary
and were eventually sampled by Public Enemy and Jay Dilla.
With Eyes of Love The Edge of Daybreak joined the
(19:02):
small and exclusive group of artists whose music made it
beyond prison walls. But for Jamal it felt bittersweet.
Speaker 6 (19:11):
I said, Maya, here's my opportunity. Of all places, my
dream will come true.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Independitent September fourteenth, nineteen seventy nine, three audio engineers left
(19:38):
Richmond for Powatan, pushing along in a big blue Ultimobile
eighty eight. It was loaded up with recording equipment.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Eric Johnson and I was an owner and vice president
of Alpha Audio Recording Studios from nineteen seventy four till
nineteen ninety. Michael Lanning and Eric used to be my
boss off a audio. My job was do what we
(20:08):
tell you to do.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Eric says. When they got there, the guards were pretty hostile.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
It was. It was not a fun uh load in
shall we say, didn't want us to waste any time
doing anything but getting it in there. You know, now
now now yeah? And they checked through the equipment very carefully.
You know, what do you got here? What you got there?
You know you don't have anything hidden underneath.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
I asked Eric if he was nervous about walking into
a prison to record with men who, for all he knew,
could have been in for murder.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I remember when we were setting up, the guards told us, hey,
don't turn your back when these guys, they will hurt you.
And I looked at Mike, Mike and oh shit, have
you ever been to a prison before. Yeah, I've been
to playing I've been entertained presidents before. You know, pretty
(21:03):
much knew what to expect on the enter concrete and steel.
Did you know what they were in for? No, I
had no idea. You know, they could have been murders
or anything else. The way the guards portrayed him. I mean,
you know, just don't turn your back on these guys.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
At that moment, Eric and Michael were mostly concerned with
the acoustical challenge of setting up a recording session in
the prison. Visiting room and they got to work unpacking
their gear. They had five hours to get everything done.
The clock was ticking. Meanwhile, the guards started to gather
the band. Jamala just wrapped up a shift at Powatan's
(21:41):
mess hall when he heard his name on the intercom Loopie.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
Getting the guys. He go, y'all need to get over
to the visual as soon as you can.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
The thing is, the band members didn't know why they
were being called. Here's Cupcake.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
The guards came around, go Jen ninety three sixty one.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
So, oh, Lord, must be some series Cupcake. Jamal and'
neil all tell me they knew a recording session was
in the works. It's just that no one had told
them when. So on September fourteenth, they were caught off guard.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Oh it was crazy.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
We didn't know they were coming that day.
Speaker 10 (22:19):
Put it that way.
Speaker 5 (22:20):
We had been told that they wanted to do it,
but they didn't tell us when they were coming.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
The recording session would include the Edge of Day Breaks,
five core members, plus four supporting musicians who joined them,
fellow incarcerated men they used to practice and jam with.
Jamal went to get the drum kit and keyboard with
the help of Bill Crawley, their equipment manager and sound guy. Yes,
Edge of Daybreak had a sound guy, and he.
Speaker 10 (22:49):
Was William crawl and everybody called me Bill. My role
was to be the sound technician. I made sure that
the band everything was set up. I made sure that
the all microphone and the music was set up to
be clean.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Side note about Bill, he hung out in the weight
room a lot. He tells me. He used to curl
two hundred and twenty five pounds ten times. That's nuts.
Cupcake was happy to leave the equipment to him, but
he was huge.
Speaker 5 (23:20):
He was a bigger.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
He used.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
They had it all the equipment because I I ain't
moving and mess y'all gonna move it because I ain't
moving nothing. I break my nails all crazy. I said,
I'm a girt and I ain't doing nothing but say.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Bill and Jamal loaded up the instruments and started wheeling
them out as fast as they could. Different songs had
different lineups of musicians and lead vocalists. That meant they
were going to need to reconfigure their setup between tracks.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I think Paul the furniture was screwed down to the
floor so they couldn't throw it at each other. Yeah,
it wasn't much. I mean it remind me of maybe
an elementary school cap interior or something that didn't. But
we do what we have to do. We have all
to do a job and had no time to fix
the acoustics.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
The engineers tried their best. Somebody hung State issued blankets
against the walls and windows to minimize echo. They had
to hurry.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
Sound tested for about a couple of balls. And it's
not all right, let's tape.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
They had to record everything all at once. There was
no doing the lead vocals, the backing vocals, and all
the instruments separately. There'd be no enhancements, no overdubs, no effects.
This was their only shot.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
Okay, first song one, two, three or four boom right
in two stop, four minute to get the sound right
for the next one, one, two, three or four boom.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
What I noticed, you know right off the bat that
the musicianship was very, very good, and they were for
the most part tight. There were little things here and there,
you know that they go loose with anybody, but for
the most part the musicians were very tight.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Despite the less than ideal conditions, the band sailed through
their first seven songs and nailed them.
Speaker 6 (25:31):
We already didn't do the songs.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
It was just main grieving.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
And they were having a good time.
Speaker 11 (25:39):
That was the most fun thing.
Speaker 10 (25:40):
I and we're.
Speaker 11 (25:44):
Done.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Really we were just dull plague. As musicians. They were
being taken seriously. They took themselves seriously too. They were
recording an album of their own original music.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
But the vocals really blew me away.
Speaker 10 (26:09):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
The vocals were incredible, all those harmonies and no altitude,
no bad notes, no nothing.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
There was, however, still an eighth song to go, Neil's
song Our Love. Neil wasn't the front man. He was
the guitarist who kept his head down, but this was
his moment, his only chance to sing lead vocals. You
(26:49):
they were counting their minutes. Five hours was almost up.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
And then at the end of it, I think we
hit about two minutes left. And on the end of
that song Our Love, God came in the God a
go if you get the original, just like they did mastering.
That's only.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
They cut the last song short. They had to get
back to their cells for roll Call, but they had
done it. In those five sweaty, pressure packed hours. They
tracked eight songs, a real record, and according to sound
engineer Eric Johnson, even in the room, they knew what
they had.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
You know, it was just one of those lucky moments
light he was struck in prison, and no matter how
hard you try, I don't know if you can duplicate that.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
The artists returned to their routines. They say they didn't
know much about what would happen with the music they'd
just done, how it would be distributed, marketed, or anything else.
They tell me they just kind of went back to
what they'd been doing.
Speaker 9 (28:06):
We just love to play music, and that's why we
went in and played that music.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
As far as.
Speaker 9 (28:11):
Ha's gonna come out, what they're gonna do, like I'm
an album, they're gonna press, how they go market it,
or We've got none of that.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
We didn't have nothing to look forward to because we
weren't told anything. Meanwhile, the engineers Eric and Michael took
the reel to real tape back to Milton Hoague, who
then pressed the tracks into Edge of Daybreaks first and
only album, Eyes of Love. According to the band, it
(28:38):
was a long wait.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
It took a long time for me to even hear
the a themause when Milton set to ab them off
to be pressed somewhere in Tennessee on North Carolina, somewhere
to get copies made, you know, to be pressed. We
didn't know anything.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Until a year later.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Eyes of Love came out. In nineteen Jamal heard his
song for the first time in prison. First time I
heard the music.
Speaker 6 (29:06):
Song came on the radio, my song let Us Make
It Look. It was ninety degrees outside. I got on
a short sleeve shirt and everything, and I looked at
my arms goosebam.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
I got a chill.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Cupcake was nervous to hear her vocals.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Cupcake, what did you think? How'd you think the record
was going to turn out? I had no idea. For one.
Speaker 5 (29:25):
I never liked to record myself. I never liked to
record myself, even when we had bad practice. I didn't
want to hear myself on the tape. But when it
came out after I heard it, I thought it was squeek.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
She sent her copy of the record to her mom
in Richmond.
Speaker 10 (29:44):
She was so proud.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
Oh my god, you'd have thought I was Steven wonder
Us on that. She was so proud of that album.
Every damn one of her friends that came get out,
she played.
Speaker 10 (29:56):
That damn ma'am.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Looking back now, Cupcake insists there was a lot Eric
and Michael or any other producers could have gotten.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
Oh my goodness, we could have made thousands of songs,
but we just didn't have there. We couldn't get out
to do it. We were inmates. We weren't supposed to
have all then, but we did it.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Marty Key is one of the rare album collectors that
managed to snag an original copy of Eyes of Love.
He actually knew James Carrington and he told me just
how monumental.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
This achievement was.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
The Edge Daybreak was like kind of the highest, like,
you know, they were the high echelon, you know, sort
of group. Like just finding that record was like, wow,
that's like the one that's the best sole record out
of Richmond, the best soul record, I think so by far.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Nobody really knows how many of those original copies are
still in circulation. The majority are said to have been
destroyed in a flood in the basement of one of
the record shops James Caring operated after prison. The album
made a small splash when it came out. A news
crew came to Powatan to do a feature on the band.
(31:11):
The Richmond Times Dispatch also published an article about the
record they called Cupcake Quote, the band's standout soul tenor
falsetto Neil was a budding funk guitar virtuoso, and it
ended with a provocative line from Milton Hoak, the record
store owner, said, hopefully, the next time we can arrange
(31:31):
the technically sophisticated recording the group deserves. When I met
with Neil a few years back, he told me he'd
been doing some odd jobs, like helping neighbors fix up
their cars during the COVID lockdowns. He worked at an
(31:52):
Amazon warehouse so he could make some money to fix
up his own car, but music was still his passion.
He was writing songs and making cassette demos, the same
kind he recorded in the prison yard more than forty
years earlier.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
But I got a lot of song I got about
forty fifty songs.
Speaker 8 (32:08):
Do you have backups of your music?
Speaker 4 (32:10):
I got cassettes, cassettes I got, I got shoe bus.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
I was expecting to take a trip into his past,
his life and his music during and after prison, But
he'd been writing and practicing songs not just for himself
but for other popular recording artists he had yet to meet.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
And I got the song for carry on the Wood.
Girls have a hard times, girls.
Speaker 6 (32:38):
Have a hot time.
Speaker 8 (32:41):
Be Let me tell you I can write for anybody. Well,
you said Whitesnake earlier, and I was surprised by that.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
Yes, sir, see that while I'm telling you not, I
do stuff that people don't even think about doing and
don't have no idea.
Speaker 7 (32:59):
Say wow, that's what they're gonna say when you hear.
Speaker 8 (33:03):
Have a lough time.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Receiveing.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
I realized for Neil and the rest of the band,
this isn't a past tense story. They want another shot,
and the way they see it, there's not that much
standing in their way.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Let's see who.
Speaker 7 (33:28):
I was ready to do another album, which amorrow on them,
because I wrote two more songs for each one of them.
When I got him now, I.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Wrote him at home, When were you gonna do the album?
Speaker 7 (33:37):
Well, we can't get together because slide we down in
a row.
Speaker 10 (33:42):
Note.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
He gonna have to come up and spend.
Speaker 7 (33:44):
A few weeks, you know, And if he can do that,
we can put them songs together in a day one day.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Jamal lives about three hours away from Meal and Cupcake.
So the only thing that's preventing that right now is
Jamal being able to get here to Richmond to record
with you in Cupcake.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
That's it. Is it a full album or is it
just all album?
Speaker 11 (34:07):
Man?
Speaker 7 (34:07):
I told you about fifty six. The song fifty or
sixty fifty six is ready to go finished. I was
saying every one of them right now, I know I
can make meetings of dollars, man, I just know it.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
This is when I became part of the events i'd
merely set out to report. They agreed to let me
help tell their story. On the one hand, it's about
a collective triumph artists creating something beautiful in one of
the darkest places imaginable. But there were other aspects, deeply personal,
sometimes painful. Their experiences said something about the nature of
(34:48):
corrections in the nineteen seventies. That's something I wanted to
dig into more. But what surprised me the most of
all was that this story isn't over for them. I
expected to be looking back into the nineteen seventies, but
they still have their eyes on the future. Another album,
maybe more. I told them I'd help them try to
(35:10):
find a way to get into a recording studio. I
had no idea how it was going to turn out,
and looking back now, I had no idea how farth
this thing would go.
Speaker 7 (35:22):
You see, but we can rob that motail right there.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
I said, no, man, I ain't come up here for that.
Speaker 6 (35:27):
Two also standing in the hallway be saide my sister
and my son put the hand on the gun telling
me I'm on the rest for rob.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Don't think I.
Speaker 5 (35:34):
Did stupid was an introduction to crack.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
I couldn't do without it. The guitar was put in
the closet for twenty three years.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
That feeling, that vibe, those guys who met in that prison,
pouring their heart and soul into that tape, you can't
really capture digitally.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
This is what I would suggest you guys coming out here.
We go through the songs. We picked the best five.
Thank you. Ovasing to now.
Speaker 6 (36:02):
I feel like I'm stepping into my desk. Even though
all this hold them before my eyes, you still as
a dream.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
That's this season on Soul Incarcerated.
Speaker 9 (36:14):
If you want to hear more of Edged day Breaks music,
their new EP, New Horizon, is available on all digital platforms.
Speaker 11 (36:22):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Sole Incarcerated was written and hosted by me Jamie Petris,
co hosted and produced by Dorian Missi. Story edited by
Yasmine Kahan, and sound designed by Bill Moss and Isaac Lee.
Executive producers are Mcamie Lynn, Jesse Katz, and Warren Ostergard.
Additional interviews provided by Alex Lambert from the short film
(36:48):
Edge of Daybreak by Alex Lambert. Special thanks to everyone
who helped us research this story. To Marv Hyman, Bill Crawley,
and Sanethia Lewis. To the author, Dale Broomfield, attorneys David
Baugh and Mara Meltzer Cohen. To doctor Heather Thompson and
Lisha McCarney for lending insights on American carceral history. Thanks
(37:09):
to the entire staff of the Library of Virginia and
to Ben Himmelfarb from the Henrico County Public Library. To
the vocal coaches kJ Rose and Elise tugnak A and
Ese Jennifer and Sonia, Michael Greenwald and Elaine Fontaine Bryant.
Thanks to the team at silver Lining Entertained One Story
Up Productions, the Numeral Group, the crew at Sunset Sound,
(37:32):
and In Your Ear Studios, Alex Lambert, Lucas Benkin, Will
Bethel and Marty Keith. Thanks to all of the band's friends,
family members and associates who took the time to talk
to me for this story, and most of all, to
the Edge of Daybreak Harry Coleman, Jamal Newby and Neil
Cade for sharing.
Speaker 11 (37:51):
It with me.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
The red to b M later
In A and E original podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
People ask me, what's the record that's in your collection
is very special to you that you would have to have,
or if something was to happen in your house, what
would you grab.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
This record's always in it.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
I've been wanting to record my songs, you know, a
long time, and that would be time to do it.
Speaker 5 (00:25):
When we did that album, it was for fun. It
wasn't to fail, it wasn't to become famous. It was
something we did to occupy Alma and everything just came
out and we had in five hours. We did a
whole album in five hugs.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
This is the story of Edge of Daybreak, the band
behind the most coveted soul album you've probably never heard
the album Eyes of Love is hate pitch perfect track.
It's become a cult legend among rare record collectors. A
copy can go for one thousand dollars if you're lucky
enough to find one. They were black musicians who'd grown
(01:12):
up in the segregated South and paid their dues on
local stages. By the mid nineteen seventies, three of them
were poised to break out on their own. Then, at
the height of their individual careers, they each landed in
Virginia's Powatan Correctional Center.
Speaker 6 (01:31):
I'd got thirty five years.
Speaker 5 (01:33):
I had fifty years.
Speaker 7 (01:34):
They decided to give us twenty five years the piece.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
I couldn't comprehend it at all.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
These were artists facing decades long sentences in one of
the worst places imaginable, and somehow they created the impossible.
They recorded Eyes of Love inside the prison in a
single five hour session, no edits, no overdubs. I had
to know how they did it. But as soon as
(02:02):
I started talking to the band and digging into their stories,
I realized there was another question I should be asking,
can they make another album? I'm Jamie Petris, music and
(02:23):
culture writer. Edge of Daybreak made their one and only
album at Virginia's Powatan Correctional Center in nineteen seventy nine.
Powatan was where men convicted of felonies served out their
sentences for offenses ranging from violent crimes to selling marijuana.
The penitentiary was also a farm, and the men doing
(02:45):
time there worked the prisons fields and slaughterhouses that supplied
meat to prisons across the Virginia Commonwealth. It was a
lonely and devastating place, often violent. Not exactly where you'd
expect to find musicians recording fun dance tracks in pretty
love ballads, but that's what Edge of Daybreak did. The
(03:11):
band's music incorporated elements of Golden Age soul, disco, funk, jazz,
and doop. When the album came out, it wasn't widely distributed.
Only a thousand copies were made. You could find the
vinyl at a record shop in Richmond and a few
others in Roanoke, but nowhere outside of Virginia. It got
a little local radio play, but mostly fell into obscurity
(03:33):
except for a small community of DJs and vinyl collectors,
so the band never got the recognition they most certainly deserved. Eventually,
they all got released from prison and went their separate ways.
Decades past, life moved on, the guys got older. Then suddenly,
(03:56):
in twenty fifteen, the album was back on the market worldwide.
An indie label had put out a small re release
of Eyes of Love, and a year later, their biggest
break yet, an Edge of Daybreak track was featured in
the Oscar winning movie Moonlight.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
It few Who.
Speaker 8 (04:18):
From Me?
Speaker 1 (04:21):
What About from You? Edge of Daybreak had unexpectedly found
a second life That's how I stumbled onto their story.
I was researching an entirely different project about prison hip hop,
a project that I immediately dropped to dig up everything
I could about Edge of Daybreak. A friend of a
(04:43):
friend connected me to a rare record enthusiast actor in
DJ in Los Angeles, Dorian Missic.
Speaker 9 (04:50):
The first time I heard the Edge of day Breaks
music was first of all, a DJ played doing a
rare moves. Party looked at him like, was that? And
then I got my hands on it on a compilation
CD or a compilation record, and it was the Edge
of day Break title song, Edge of Daybreak, and I
fell in love with big.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Dorian knows rare music, and he knows what it takes
to make music. I wanted his perspective on just how
exceptional Edge of Daybreak really was. The First thing that
drew me to the music was it was jammy.
Speaker 9 (05:24):
You know, That's where I start square one.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Is it jamming?
Speaker 9 (05:29):
And then you know, I factored in the whole circumstances
of how they recorded the record, and then I realized
how outstanding it is. You know, it's funny because in general,
when you think about black art and the history of
it in America. Fortunately, we're known for making lemonade out
of Lennox, you know, making great art in these really
(05:49):
crazy circumstances, high stress circumstances, And this project exemplifies that.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Those high stress circums dances Dorian talks about, they informed
every single movement of the band members making this album.
The record is a snapshot of emotions captured in a
very specific time and place. Songs written in the penitentiary
by and four other incarcerated people. There are songs of
longing and romance and better days ahead. Each one is
(06:22):
as distinctive as the band members themselves. Then what's happened
in Jamal?
Speaker 10 (06:29):
How are you?
Speaker 6 (06:30):
I guess we're playing musical teas with a poll. How
you doing man?
Speaker 1 (06:34):
That's Jamal Johan Nuby. Some people call him Sly, a
nickname he got in prison for being such a smooth talker.
He was the Edge of Daybreaks drummer and co vocalist.
When I met him in person for the first time,
we talked for almost five hours. I went down there
planning on writing an article about this band and their achievement,
(06:54):
but after that meeting, I realized their story was much
bigger than I expected the name the edge of daybreak.
I think you told me before the daybreak was the
other side, right that.
Speaker 10 (07:08):
Daybreak was.
Speaker 6 (07:11):
Like twilight in some kind of way. It was the
light at the end of the tumb So I'm saying,
because I'm in the dog that's right now, all I
can do is look forward to the light. I know
I'm gonna get out, and I'm standing right on the
edge of daybreak. They tell you don't find positive things
(07:33):
in a negative envibment, you know, but we flipped that.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Jamal was one of Edged day breaks five core members.
The other four were James Carrington, Knackavoy, Cellis Robinson, Harry Coleman,
and Cornelius Kid. Jamal, Harry and Cornelius, who goes by Neil,
are still alive, and they all still live in Virginia
where I track them down. In twenty eighteen. I recorded
(08:00):
our conversations. However, I could no audio crew, no fancy equipment.
I'm calling you from this line so that I can record.
Jamal's in his seventies now and lives in Roanoke, his hometown.
I'd called Jamal the band's resident philosopher maybe spiritualist. Our
(08:21):
conversations often strayed into things like predestination or reincarnation.
Speaker 6 (08:26):
I know I've missed somewhere before, but really, in reality,
I know I haven't. You know, I feel like I
was a king or.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Chris Jamal ended up at Powatan after being convicted of
armed robbery in nineteen seventy six. Though he denies his
involvement even today, that time really crystallized his interest in
spirituality and mystical phenomena. He met with a guru in Powatan.
He studied pyramid power and approaches to fasting. He was
(08:55):
determined to reinvent himself, to separate himself from his past.
When the band got together, that determination showed up in
the music too. For Jamal, the songs were aspirational, a
step toward the person he wanted to be. For another
of the vocalists, it was about expressing exactly who she
(09:19):
was in that moment.
Speaker 10 (09:21):
Oh, everybody calls me Cupcake.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
That's the only name they've ever known me about its Cupcake.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Harry Coleman or Cupcake sang lead vocals on a few
tracks and provided a women's vocal range that really rounded
out the band's sound. Before prison, Cupcake had been a
drag performer and singer. I'll be referring to Cupcake using
the pronouns she a preference, she shared when we started
(09:49):
this project, though Cupcake does go by male or female pronouns.
Cupcake was an unforgettable performer. Everyone who'd seen her at
Tan told me so. She'd been singing since she was
a little kid.
Speaker 5 (10:05):
First time singing period five years old, singing Home on
the Range in the church. I was drifting up like
a little cowboy, singing Home on the Range. I'll help
forget it now. Grandma made me do it. She said,
you're gonna sing that song for that church. I'm gonna
beat yo, de leise.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
But it didn't take long for Cupcake to get up
on stage on her own. She sang in her fifth
grade Christmas pageant. She joined her junior high school choir.
Cupcake was gaining confidence.
Speaker 5 (10:37):
The next sam I sing in public was in a dress,
wig and hat, hair shoes. You know how Queen's Olga's
got to beat forefront.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
That's me.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
That's me. I'm gonna be forefront. I'm gonna be wide open.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
By the time Cupcake landed in prison, she had been
performing in drag singing women's vocals for years. Her voice
was powerful enough to make it big, but in nineteen
seventy nine she was twenty nine years old in prison
for robbery, working down a fifty year sentence. If Jamal
(11:20):
and Cupcake are the flashier stage performers, Neil Cade, the
band's guitarist, is the softer spoken artist. But don't mistake
that for shyness.
Speaker 7 (11:29):
Hello, this is Neil.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
Everybody call me Neil Neil Ky, but my name is
Cornelius Key and the girls prefer that name.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I had to get that.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
In Neil's seventy seven Now in Thin He walks with
a cane and a hitch in his step.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
You're comfortable, You're good there?
Speaker 4 (11:46):
Yeah, I'm good.
Speaker 7 (11:47):
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
You want to you just check the levels.
Speaker 10 (11:50):
We'll do a little talking first.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
In one of our first conversations, Neil told me a
story about how he fell in love with performing as
a child.
Speaker 7 (12:00):
It out a long time ago.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
My mother used to take me to the PTA meet
he's at the school, and somehow when she put me
on the stage and I saw Jill House.
Speaker 7 (12:12):
Rock by Abless Prestley.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
I don't know where I learned it, how I learned
it and I don't know, I just loved to see
the movie. But them and Jill dancing in the balls
and all that stuff, and it just inspired me.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Now. Neil would be the first to say that his
prison experience was nothing like Elvis's in Jailhouse Rock. But
when he got to Powatan in nineteen seventy five on
a robbery charge, he was able to preserve one comfort.
He got the guards to let him keep a guitar
in hisself.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Man, I sit on my bed and practice and play,
and practice and play till I just fell asleep.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Neil wrote his song Our Love in one of these
moments alone in his cell. He says it would have sounded.
Speaker 6 (12:54):
Like this you.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Then, Neil says, writing and playing helped occupy his mind,
but even with that distraction, he was still looking at
twenty five years behind bars. The three band members were
facing a collective one hundred and ten years at Powatan.
(13:23):
The only bright spot Howatan's band room, a cramped basement
space not much bigger than the average living room. Here's
how Cupcake remembers it.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
It was about the size of this room. He had
maybe eighteen sea weeks and maybe a foot Biggel. You
got a drum set in there, you got two guitars
in there, you got two keyboards in it.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
This is the room where Edge of Daybreak was born,
where it's five core members met Cupcake, Neil and Jamal,
plus the band's self appointed leader James Carrington who died
in two thousand and nine, team and arguably the group's
most talented musician, Macavoycellis Robinson who died in two thousand
and three. Before prison, Mac played in backing bands for
(14:11):
artists like Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett. Cupcakes says. With
Mac around, the band jelled and the musicianship went to
another level.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
It was mostly a teaching thing because Mac was a teacher.
Mac told a lot of guys how to believe issue.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
Miss.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Guys would come in and out of that band room.
They were confident enough they'd ask to play like courtside
stragglers and pick up basketball. They were all known by
their nicknames Lucky Acorn, Cool Breeze, little Man, the Edge
of Daybreak stage sharp, practicing a mix of cover songs
and the originals they'd written. How many days a week
(14:47):
did you play together?
Speaker 5 (14:49):
Many Williams and ratt.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Was it just you playing or were there other bands?
Speaker 5 (14:55):
They had the gospel, but you couldn't go in and
it was they practiced in a check. Then you had
the Culture Wesson who they weren't too popular. Then you
had the Chosen Few Bad. They were out rivals, but
they didn't have a cookie.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
And the music wasn't just a release for the band members.
It spilled out into the rest of Poweratan's population too.
Speaker 5 (15:22):
Friday Knights was the Knights that the guards of. Everybody
was staying around. It was partying. We practiced and learned
us all all that week, but Monday and Wednesday Friday
we wed to introduce them to the crowd.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
See, the Edge of Daybreak didn't just play for themselves.
They played for an audience of other incarcerated men, guards,
prison staff, basically anyone at Powertan. The room was packed.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
You had standing room, all that people, all of its walls,
sitting up floors there and.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
They what did the guards think of you guys?
Speaker 5 (15:55):
They would come in and standing around the wall and
this whip would pull off them just like it pulled
off of us, just to heal us play.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
The Edge of Daybreak was so good. The administration even
let them play other prisons people love them.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
Put it this way, we were debay of the state
penal system.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
At least one of the band members started to think
that their act might be able to make waves outside
the penal system. James Carrington. James played keys and sang,
and he had come up with a plan using the
limited connections he had while in prison. He'd been buying
mail order cassettes from a small record shop in nearby Richmond.
Here he is explaining that to filmmaker Alex Lambert in
(16:43):
Lambert's twenty eighteen short documentary feature on the band Edge
of Daybreak, the real jailhouse Rock.
Speaker 11 (16:50):
Certain musical stores would maybe send a clipping or you
rated in the newspaper where they would send music into
the prison. And so I came in contact with Milton Hoague,
who owned Bohannan's, and I started ordering from him, and
(17:11):
my music would come from his store.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
How did have James enlisted the help of his wife, Pat.
Speaker 11 (17:16):
And so I asked her, would she go by and
talk to mister Hoag and see what he'd be interested
in coming in and listening to our music in hopes
that he would like to finess us and do a recording.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Neil remembers Milton driving to the prison for an audition.
Cupcake says they might have sent Milton a cassette. Whatever
the case, they only had three original songs between them,
and Milton liked what he heard. He told them to
write five more and he'd put up the three thousand
dollars to cover the costs of recording them inside the prison.
(17:53):
He'd also press a thousand copies of their music to Vinyl.
Hoak's distribution plan was to sell the record right from
his shop, as well as a few others around Virginia.
He approached an audio engineer, Eric Johnson about the job.
Eric remembers Milton asking, Hey, do you guys want to
record this great local rhythm and blues group.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
So well, there's only one small detail that we got
to work out, and I said what's that? He said, Well,
they're in prison.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
James and Milton made their case to prison officials, who
surprisingly agreed to the recording session. This was a big deal.
They were finally going to record a proper album. The
Edge of Daybreak wasn't the first band to record in prison.
The Blue Singer led Belly recorded at a Louisiana Penitentiary
in nineteen thirty four, his songs went to the Library
(18:42):
of Congress. After he got out of prison, he went
on to major label deals and a spot in the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In nineteen seventy three,
The es Courts recorded at New Jersey's Rahway State Penitentiary
and were eventually sampled by Public Enemy and Jay Dilla.
With Eyes of Love The Edge of Daybreak joined the
(19:02):
small and exclusive group of artists whose music made it
beyond prison walls. But for Jamal it felt bittersweet.
Speaker 6 (19:11):
I said, Maya, here's my opportunity. Of all places, my
dream will come true.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Independitent September fourteenth, nineteen seventy nine, three audio engineers left
(19:38):
Richmond for Powatan, pushing along in a big blue Ultimobile
eighty eight. It was loaded up with recording equipment.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Eric Johnson and I was an owner and vice president
of Alpha Audio Recording Studios from nineteen seventy four till
nineteen ninety. Michael Lanning and Eric used to be my
boss off a audio. My job was do what we
(20:08):
tell you to do.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Eric says. When they got there, the guards were pretty hostile.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
It was. It was not a fun uh load in
shall we say, didn't want us to waste any time
doing anything but getting it in there. You know, now
now now yeah? And they checked through the equipment very carefully.
You know, what do you got here? What you got there?
You know you don't have anything hidden underneath.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
I asked Eric if he was nervous about walking into
a prison to record with men who, for all he knew,
could have been in for murder.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I remember when we were setting up, the guards told us, hey,
don't turn your back when these guys, they will hurt you.
And I looked at Mike, Mike and oh shit, have
you ever been to a prison before. Yeah, I've been
to playing I've been entertained presidents before. You know, pretty
(21:03):
much knew what to expect on the enter concrete and steel.
Did you know what they were in for? No, I
had no idea. You know, they could have been murders
or anything else. The way the guards portrayed him. I mean,
you know, just don't turn your back on these guys.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
At that moment, Eric and Michael were mostly concerned with
the acoustical challenge of setting up a recording session in
the prison. Visiting room and they got to work unpacking
their gear. They had five hours to get everything done.
The clock was ticking. Meanwhile, the guards started to gather
the band. Jamala just wrapped up a shift at Powatan's
(21:41):
mess hall when he heard his name on the intercom Loopie.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
Getting the guys. He go, y'all need to get over
to the visual as soon as you can.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
The thing is, the band members didn't know why they
were being called. Here's Cupcake.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
The guards came around, go Jen ninety three sixty one.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
So, oh, Lord, must be some series Cupcake. Jamal and'
neil all tell me they knew a recording session was
in the works. It's just that no one had told
them when. So on September fourteenth, they were caught off guard.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Oh it was crazy.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
We didn't know they were coming that day.
Speaker 10 (22:19):
Put it that way.
Speaker 5 (22:20):
We had been told that they wanted to do it,
but they didn't tell us when they were coming.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
The recording session would include the Edge of Day Breaks,
five core members, plus four supporting musicians who joined them,
fellow incarcerated men they used to practice and jam with.
Jamal went to get the drum kit and keyboard with
the help of Bill Crawley, their equipment manager and sound guy. Yes,
Edge of Daybreak had a sound guy, and he.
Speaker 10 (22:49):
Was William crawl and everybody called me Bill. My role
was to be the sound technician. I made sure that
the band everything was set up. I made sure that
the all microphone and the music was set up to
be clean.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Side note about Bill, he hung out in the weight
room a lot. He tells me. He used to curl
two hundred and twenty five pounds ten times. That's nuts.
Cupcake was happy to leave the equipment to him, but
he was huge.
Speaker 5 (23:20):
He was a bigger.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
He used.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
They had it all the equipment because I I ain't
moving and mess y'all gonna move it because I ain't
moving nothing. I break my nails all crazy. I said,
I'm a girt and I ain't doing nothing but say.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Bill and Jamal loaded up the instruments and started wheeling
them out as fast as they could. Different songs had
different lineups of musicians and lead vocalists. That meant they
were going to need to reconfigure their setup between tracks.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I think Paul the furniture was screwed down to the
floor so they couldn't throw it at each other. Yeah,
it wasn't much. I mean it remind me of maybe
an elementary school cap interior or something that didn't. But
we do what we have to do. We have all
to do a job and had no time to fix
the acoustics.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
The engineers tried their best. Somebody hung State issued blankets
against the walls and windows to minimize echo. They had
to hurry.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
Sound tested for about a couple of balls. And it's
not all right, let's tape.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
They had to record everything all at once. There was
no doing the lead vocals, the backing vocals, and all
the instruments separately. There'd be no enhancements, no overdubs, no effects.
This was their only shot.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
Okay, first song one, two, three or four boom right
in two stop, four minute to get the sound right
for the next one, one, two, three or four boom.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
What I noticed, you know right off the bat that
the musicianship was very, very good, and they were for
the most part tight. There were little things here and there,
you know that they go loose with anybody, but for
the most part the musicians were very tight.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Despite the less than ideal conditions, the band sailed through
their first seven songs and nailed them.
Speaker 6 (25:31):
We already didn't do the songs.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
It was just main grieving.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
And they were having a good time.
Speaker 11 (25:39):
That was the most fun thing.
Speaker 10 (25:40):
I and we're.
Speaker 11 (25:44):
Done.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Really we were just dull plague. As musicians. They were
being taken seriously. They took themselves seriously too. They were
recording an album of their own original music.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
But the vocals really blew me away.
Speaker 10 (26:09):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
The vocals were incredible, all those harmonies and no altitude,
no bad notes, no nothing.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
There was, however, still an eighth song to go, Neil's
song Our Love. Neil wasn't the front man. He was
the guitarist who kept his head down, but this was
his moment, his only chance to sing lead vocals. You
(26:49):
they were counting their minutes. Five hours was almost up.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
And then at the end of it, I think we
hit about two minutes left. And on the end of
that song Our Love, God came in the God a
go if you get the original, just like they did mastering.
That's only.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
They cut the last song short. They had to get
back to their cells for roll Call, but they had
done it. In those five sweaty, pressure packed hours. They
tracked eight songs, a real record, and according to sound
engineer Eric Johnson, even in the room, they knew what
they had.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
You know, it was just one of those lucky moments
light he was struck in prison, and no matter how
hard you try, I don't know if you can duplicate that.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
The artists returned to their routines. They say they didn't
know much about what would happen with the music they'd
just done, how it would be distributed, marketed, or anything else.
They tell me they just kind of went back to
what they'd been doing.
Speaker 9 (28:06):
We just love to play music, and that's why we
went in and played that music.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
As far as.
Speaker 9 (28:11):
Ha's gonna come out, what they're gonna do, like I'm
an album, they're gonna press, how they go market it,
or We've got none of that.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
We didn't have nothing to look forward to because we
weren't told anything. Meanwhile, the engineers Eric and Michael took
the reel to real tape back to Milton Hoague, who
then pressed the tracks into Edge of Daybreaks first and
only album, Eyes of Love. According to the band, it
(28:38):
was a long wait.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
It took a long time for me to even hear
the a themause when Milton set to ab them off
to be pressed somewhere in Tennessee on North Carolina, somewhere
to get copies made, you know, to be pressed. We
didn't know anything.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Until a year later.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Eyes of Love came out. In nineteen Jamal heard his
song for the first time in prison. First time I
heard the music.
Speaker 6 (29:06):
Song came on the radio, my song let Us Make
It Look. It was ninety degrees outside. I got on
a short sleeve shirt and everything, and I looked at
my arms goosebam.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
I got a chill.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Cupcake was nervous to hear her vocals.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Cupcake, what did you think? How'd you think the record
was going to turn out? I had no idea. For one.
Speaker 5 (29:25):
I never liked to record myself. I never liked to
record myself, even when we had bad practice. I didn't
want to hear myself on the tape. But when it
came out after I heard it, I thought it was squeek.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
She sent her copy of the record to her mom
in Richmond.
Speaker 10 (29:44):
She was so proud.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
Oh my god, you'd have thought I was Steven wonder
Us on that. She was so proud of that album.
Every damn one of her friends that came get out,
she played.
Speaker 10 (29:56):
That damn ma'am.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Looking back now, Cupcake insists there was a lot Eric
and Michael or any other producers could have gotten.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
Oh my goodness, we could have made thousands of songs,
but we just didn't have there. We couldn't get out
to do it. We were inmates. We weren't supposed to
have all then, but we did it.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Marty Key is one of the rare album collectors that
managed to snag an original copy of Eyes of Love.
He actually knew James Carrington and he told me just
how monumental.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
This achievement was.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
The Edge Daybreak was like kind of the highest, like,
you know, they were the high echelon, you know, sort
of group. Like just finding that record was like, wow,
that's like the one that's the best sole record out
of Richmond, the best soul record, I think so by far.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Nobody really knows how many of those original copies are
still in circulation. The majority are said to have been
destroyed in a flood in the basement of one of
the record shops James Caring operated after prison. The album
made a small splash when it came out. A news
crew came to Powatan to do a feature on the band.
(31:11):
The Richmond Times Dispatch also published an article about the
record they called Cupcake Quote, the band's standout soul tenor
falsetto Neil was a budding funk guitar virtuoso, and it
ended with a provocative line from Milton Hoak, the record
store owner, said, hopefully, the next time we can arrange
(31:31):
the technically sophisticated recording the group deserves. When I met
with Neil a few years back, he told me he'd
been doing some odd jobs, like helping neighbors fix up
their cars during the COVID lockdowns. He worked at an
(31:52):
Amazon warehouse so he could make some money to fix
up his own car, but music was still his passion.
He was writing songs and making cassette demos, the same
kind he recorded in the prison yard more than forty
years earlier.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
But I got a lot of song I got about
forty fifty songs.
Speaker 8 (32:08):
Do you have backups of your music?
Speaker 4 (32:10):
I got cassettes, cassettes I got, I got shoe bus.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
I was expecting to take a trip into his past,
his life and his music during and after prison, But
he'd been writing and practicing songs not just for himself
but for other popular recording artists he had yet to meet.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
And I got the song for carry on the Wood.
Girls have a hard times, girls.
Speaker 6 (32:38):
Have a hot time.
Speaker 8 (32:41):
Be Let me tell you I can write for anybody. Well,
you said Whitesnake earlier, and I was surprised by that.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
Yes, sir, see that while I'm telling you not, I
do stuff that people don't even think about doing and
don't have no idea.
Speaker 7 (32:59):
Say wow, that's what they're gonna say when you hear.
Speaker 8 (33:03):
Have a lough time.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Receiveing.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
I realized for Neil and the rest of the band,
this isn't a past tense story. They want another shot,
and the way they see it, there's not that much
standing in their way.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Let's see who.
Speaker 7 (33:28):
I was ready to do another album, which amorrow on them,
because I wrote two more songs for each one of them.
When I got him now, I.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Wrote him at home, When were you gonna do the album?
Speaker 7 (33:37):
Well, we can't get together because slide we down in
a row.
Speaker 10 (33:42):
Note.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
He gonna have to come up and spend.
Speaker 7 (33:44):
A few weeks, you know, And if he can do that,
we can put them songs together in a day one day.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Jamal lives about three hours away from Meal and Cupcake.
So the only thing that's preventing that right now is
Jamal being able to get here to Richmond to record
with you in Cupcake.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
That's it. Is it a full album or is it
just all album?
Speaker 11 (34:07):
Man?
Speaker 7 (34:07):
I told you about fifty six. The song fifty or
sixty fifty six is ready to go finished. I was
saying every one of them right now, I know I
can make meetings of dollars, man, I just know it.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
This is when I became part of the events i'd
merely set out to report. They agreed to let me
help tell their story. On the one hand, it's about
a collective triumph artists creating something beautiful in one of
the darkest places imaginable. But there were other aspects, deeply personal,
sometimes painful. Their experiences said something about the nature of
(34:48):
corrections in the nineteen seventies. That's something I wanted to
dig into more. But what surprised me the most of
all was that this story isn't over for them. I
expected to be looking back into the nineteen seventies, but
they still have their eyes on the future. Another album,
maybe more. I told them I'd help them try to
(35:10):
find a way to get into a recording studio. I
had no idea how it was going to turn out,
and looking back now, I had no idea how farth
this thing would go.
Speaker 7 (35:22):
You see, but we can rob that motail right there.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
I said, no, man, I ain't come up here for that.
Speaker 6 (35:27):
Two also standing in the hallway be saide my sister
and my son put the hand on the gun telling
me I'm on the rest for rob.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Don't think I.
Speaker 5 (35:34):
Did stupid was an introduction to crack.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
I couldn't do without it. The guitar was put in
the closet for twenty three years.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
That feeling, that vibe, those guys who met in that prison,
pouring their heart and soul into that tape, you can't
really capture digitally.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
This is what I would suggest you guys coming out here.
We go through the songs. We picked the best five.
Thank you. Ovasing to now.
Speaker 6 (36:02):
I feel like I'm stepping into my desk. Even though
all this hold them before my eyes, you still as
a dream.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
That's this season on Soul Incarcerated.
Speaker 9 (36:14):
If you want to hear more of Edged day Breaks music,
their new EP, New Horizon, is available on all digital platforms.
Speaker 11 (36:22):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Sole Incarcerated was written and hosted by me Jamie Petris,
co hosted and produced by Dorian Missi. Story edited by
Yasmine Kahan, and sound designed by Bill Moss and Isaac Lee.
Executive producers are Mcamie Lynn, Jesse Katz, and Warren Ostergard.
Additional interviews provided by Alex Lambert from the short film
(36:48):
Edge of Daybreak by Alex Lambert. Special thanks to everyone
who helped us research this story. To Marv Hyman, Bill Crawley,
and Sanethia Lewis. To the author, Dale Broomfield, attorneys David
Baugh and Mara Meltzer Cohen. To doctor Heather Thompson and
Lisha McCarney for lending insights on American carceral history. Thanks
(37:09):
to the entire staff of the Library of Virginia and
to Ben Himmelfarb from the Henrico County Public Library. To
the vocal coaches kJ Rose and Elise tugnak A and
Ese Jennifer and Sonia, Michael Greenwald and Elaine Fontaine Bryant.
Thanks to the team at silver Lining Entertained One Story
Up Productions, the Numeral Group, the crew at Sunset Sound,
(37:32):
and In Your Ear Studios, Alex Lambert, Lucas Benkin, Will
Bethel and Marty Keith. Thanks to all of the band's friends,
family members and associates who took the time to talk
to me for this story, and most of all, to
the Edge of Daybreak Harry Coleman, Jamal Newby and Neil
Cade for sharing.
Speaker 11 (37:51):
It with me.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
The red to b M later
Host
Jamie Pietras
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