Album Review of:
‘LET ME DREAM ON’
by JOHNNY BRAGG

(November 2024, ORG Music ORGM2289,
limited edition vinyl LP)

When it comes to fame, from Rock ‘n’ Roll to Soul, through Hip-Hop into Rap, a Bad Boy image and a mean reputation provides that necessary edge to set the artist ahead of the pack. Although Johnny Bragg maybe took the principle too literally, these are stakes in which the Prisonaires excel. As a seventeen-year-old – born to unmarried parents 18 January 1925 in Nashville, Bragg was convicted of six charges of rape in 1943, for which he was sentenced to 594-years in Nashville’s Tennessee State Penitentiary. Confined to Cell Five on Walk Ten, he always denied the charges, or protested they were falsified, chortling as he admits only to being a ‘bad boy’ and stealing the neighbours’ chickens. We know the statistics surrounding young black inmates in American Deep South prisons, where incarceration was seen as a means of control and intimidation. The truth is long since lost. But if Johnny fought the law, the law won.

Rock ‘n’ Roll and R&B history is populated by a diversity of unique characters. Bragg’s story is one of  the strangest. Yet his story is not quite done. There’s a remarkable album of newly-discovered Johnny Bragg tapes, Let Me Dream On, a time-capsule of lost days which opens up new insights into the talents of the Prisonaires artist who – coincidentally, gave Johnny Ray his greatest hit…

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After Huddie ‘Lead Belly’ Ledbetter’s murder conviction, he sang his own get-out-of-jail-free card when Governor Pat Morris Neff pardoned him in 1925. Chuck Berry was sentenced to three prison years in 1962 for ‘transporting a fourteen-year-old girl across state lines’ although he was released a year later. Sam Cooke sang ‘Chain Gang’, but never actually broke any rocks. Elvis Presley played a singing convict in his 1957 Jailhouse Rock movie. Johnny Cash recorded albums live At Folsom Prison (1968) and At San Quentin (1969), where the convicts cheer as he sings ‘I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.’ And while ‘we all got balls and brains, but some’s got balls and chains,’ none of them lived a life remotely like Johnny Bragg’s.

Whatever the truth of the charged laid against him, Bragg had a sweet tenor voice which he used to great effect while doing time, sometimes singing with a bucket over his head in order to get an echo effect! The Prisonaires were formed when he joined up with two gospel singing inmates, Ed Thurman (tenor) and William Stewart (baritone and guitar) – both serving ninety-nine years for murder, plus two new penitentiary arrivals, John Drue Jr (from Lebanon USA, lead tenor) – three years for larceny, and Marcell Sanders (from Chattanooga, bass voice) – one-to-five for involuntary manslaughter. There was also non-singing inmate Robert S Riley. In 1953, progressive Democrat Governor Frank G Clement, heard the Prisonaires chiming entwining vocal harmonies, and was sufficiently impressed to realise that their talent had the potential to rehabilitate their lost souls. He supportively showcased the Prisonaires at state events at the governor’s mansion. It was there they got to entertain, and meet President Harry S Truman, Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, and other celebrity guests.

Doo-Wop was a street-corner style of harmony music that was equally adapted by teenage Italianate hoodlums under the New York stoops as it was by young black vocal groups. Where instruments were too expensive to afford, they had a Mr Bass man voice holding down the rhythm line, while back-up voices chanted nonsense bop-bop-showaddy-waddies to provide depth as the falsetto lead singer took the melody into the stratosphere. By the mid-1950s Doo-Wop was delivering hits, ‘Sincerely’ by the Moonglows, ‘Earth Angel’ by the Penguins and ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ by the Flamingos. Young Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers became stars with ‘Why Do Fools Fall In Love’, while the racially-integrated Del-Vikings scored heavily with ’Come Go With Me’ and Dion & The Belmonts took it all the way from the Bronx to the top of the charts. For gospel-inclined prison inmates, singing offered a low-cost expressive escape route, with Doo-Wop as the unaccompanied style of choice.

The big-time came a-knocking when WSOK radio producer Joe Calloway was coordinating a news bulletin from the Penitentiary when – at the urging of warden James Edwards, he heard the Prisonaires singing. He arranged for the group to do a radio broadcast that caught the attention of Sam Phillips of Sun Records – the man who discovered Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash. He arranged for the group to be transported, in leg-irons and under armed guard, to the Memphis 706 Union Avenue studios to record.

The single ‘Just Walkin’ In The Rain’ c/w ‘Baby Please’ (8 July 1953, Sun 186) was issued as a 78rpm shellac and also in the newfangled 45rpm format. Robert S Riley is credited as writer of both sides, with Johnny Bragg as co-writer on the A-side, and Joe Hill Louis playing uncredited guitar. The origins of the song supposedly began in the rainy exercise yard, when Bragg quipped ‘here we are just walking in the rain, and wondering what the girls are doing.’ Riley suggested that would make a great song hook-line, and within minutes, Bragg had composed two verses. Unable to read or write, Bragg suggested Riley write the lyrics down in exchange for a songwriter co-credit.

In that casual way Bragg had authored one of the best-selling singles of the decade, when white Fifties crooner Johnnie Ray covered the song. Ray’s ‘Just Walkin’ In The Rain’ was an American Billboard no.2 hit, but was no.1 on the UK chart for seven weeks from 17 November 1956, above Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’ and Bill Haley & The Comets ‘Rip It Up’. By contrast with the ‘Nabob of Sob’s’ histrionic whistle-along styling, the Prisonaires original is more yearningly wistful, with simple guitar and Johnny’s remarkable high into-last-verse falsetto. But although the Prisonaires single eventually sold 250,000 copies, Ray’s version sold over eight times that!

Granted day passes that their success justified, the five-piece toured throughout Tennessee for promotional shows and TV. The follow-up single has in-house producer Ike Turner adding bass and piano to ‘My God Is Real’ (written by Kenneth Morris) c/w ‘Softly And Tenderly’ (Will L Thompson) issued in August as Sun 189 with Johnny taking lead vocals. The label uniquely includes the words ‘Confined to Tennessee State Prison’, on a coupling of a sweet bell-like religious ballad, and a B-side with rolling boogie piano, handclap propulsion and a gospel fervour of interacting voices. Like music, faith could be a means of escaping adversity. But while sacred music was a lucrative market in the deep South, even those of us of a more atheistic disposition could not fail to be moved by Bragg’s evident faith. ‘A Prisoner’s Prayer’ c/w ‘I Know’ (Sun 191) followed in November. It relates how, as the lights go out in Cell Block Twenty-Three, he looks at the sky and aches for god to find a place for him when he dies, flipped with a guitar-strum ballad of separation with a whistled refrain.

Over into July 1954 Bragg co-wrote – with Stewart, both sides of the secular ‘There Is Love In You’ c/w ‘What’ll You Do Next’ (Sun 207), with a label that more explicitly states that it was ‘recorded in the Tennessee State Prison’. It’s a slow love song with soaring falsetto touches, coupled with a more jumpy novelty song, a brief 1:30-minutes about him catching his girl kissing another man, he gives her a second chance… but the next step is up to her. To give some sense of scale, Sun 209, issued that same month, was ‘That’s All Right’ c/w ‘Blue Moon Of Kentucky’ by Elvis Presley with Scotty & Bill – after which the world would never be quite the same again. Elvis knew, and admired the Prisonaires. There was a considerable gap before the next Prisonaires single, ‘I Wish’ c/w ‘All Alone And Lonely’, although recorded in 1953 this tender Doo-Wop love ballad exploiting the group’s full vocal range, was only issued in 1976 (Sun 511). There would be further releases salvaged from the Sun archives.

During a brief window of freedom when Governor Clement commuted Bragg’s sentence, he formed a new group including Hal Hebb, Willy Wilson, Al Brooks and Henry ‘Dishrag’ Jones, who were initially called the Sunbeams. They were rechristened the Solotones, then the Marigolds in time for the rocking ‘Rollin’ Stone’ c/w ‘Why Don’t You’ on Excello records (45-2057), it had a denser more jostling sound than before, similar to the then-current Drifters or Coasters records, with novelty deep-bass voice interjections. Although it was not the same song as the Muddy Waters track from which the Rolling Stones took their name, it became a respected and collectable single that hit No.8 on the US R&B chart. Bragg headed five Marigolds releases across 1955 and into 1956, he wrote their ‘Pork And Beans’ c/w ‘Front Page Blues’ (45-2060), until the last single – issued as by Johnny Bragg & The Marigolds, coupled two Bragg/R Riley songs, ‘It’s You Darling It’s You’ c/w ‘Juke Box Rock And Roll’ (45-2091) veering closer to the new Rock ‘n’ Roll sound with honking sax and boogie piano. When Bragg was promptly returned to prison on allegedly trumped-up robbery and parole violation charges, he put together a new Prisonaires, but they never recorded further material.

Johnny Bragg served hard time in and out of the jailhouse until 1977 when, upon eventual release, he worked in a cemetery. By 1979 the Prisonaires were being rediscovered by a new generation of record buyers, Charly Records issued Five Beats Behind Bars (CR30176), followed by a more comprehensive anthology Just Walkin’ In The Rain from the German Bear Family Records (1990, BCD1523AH) which gathered more of their material alongside some previously unissued songs. Bragg’s original Prisonaires partners did not survive to enjoy this late ripple of appreciation. William Stewart died of a drug overdose in a rundown Florida motel in 1959. Marcel Sanders died in the late 1960s. Ed Thurman was killed in an accident in 1973. And John Drue Jr died of cancer in December 1977 in Lebanon, Tennessee.

With the turn of the century, and the Thug-life ‘Get Rich Or Die Trying’ ethos ratcheting the Bad Boy image and the mean reputation to new extremes, Bragg and his daughter Misti, were invited to guest at an 8 June 2000 Memphis pre-screening of the A&E-TV special Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n Roll. With longtime lawyer friend Don Hildebrand’s help, the Tennessee State Penitentiary opened its forbidding gates for the first time since The Green Mile (1999) movie had been filmed there, in order for Bragg to do an interview and walking tour. Standing on the ramp outside his former cell, he burst into a spontaneous a-cappella ‘Just Walkin’ in the Rain’. When he finished by closing the entire third verse in a falsetto flourish, there was spontaneous applause led by Ike Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Sam Phillips himself.

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Johnny Bragg was 79 when he died in August 2004. But his story was not quite told. There was a rich trove of previously unreleased songwriting demos, band rehearsals, and live recordings that – fortunately, Bragg had preserved on tape during the 1960s and 1970s. For years, the recordings lay dormant and unheard in a Nashville garden-shed, only to be unearthed and assembled to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s acclaimed exhibit Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues. Those lost cuts have finally been released, and are now available for the first time in any format.

For the album Let Me Dream On, there’s no attempt to sequence the tracks into chronological order. Maybe the tapes weren’t documented? ‘It Isn’t Right’ rides a jazzy sixties organ groove, in contrast to the much earlier ‘Rock It, Shake It’ which celebrates the bop that never stops with full rocking Louis Jordan-style band, ‘the whole country’s rocking to the Rock ‘n’ Roll beat… everybody’s getting hip to the jive’ – it’s a hit that never happened. ‘Let’s Rock, Let’s Roll’ takes the same hip-cat jamboree route, with pumping piano and even a Little Richard howl. While opening track ‘Take Away The Heartache (Let Me Love Again)’ retains the Doo-Wop back-up voices but updates into the pleading testifying Soul style, ‘love is a mystery, that no-one can solve’ he emotes most effectively. ‘Hurt And Lonely’ hits the depth of a love hang-over with anguished cries of pain. Love ballad ‘It’s Been A Beautiful World (Since I Met You)’ has a 1950s echoey resonance, that contrasts the sharp clarity of ‘I’ve Got To Start Trying’, which runs the  innocent lyric ‘I can’t pretend I’m gay, I just don’t feel that way.’ The more nimble strum of ‘She’s Mine’ digs the personality, kindness and goodness of his plain-looking woman. Then ‘Is It True, Darlin’? ascends into Ben E King dramatics with dut-dut-dud-doo Drifters-style vocal support that could easily have lifted it into the charts. As a lost gem, it sparkles!

Sung over a rich piano backing ‘I’ll Never Forget You’ is obviously a rehearsal tape, as he announces the title first. ‘If It’s Over’ – with churchy organ, begins with a throat-clearing cough. Whereas ‘I Saw It Coming’ is a demo sung over just finger-clicks, which invests the track with a raw tactile authenticity as though he’s singing it here, live in the room. ‘You Know It Ain’t Right’ sounds to be a spontaneous rehearsal as he urges the other voices ‘do this, c’mon, alright’ then drops into a scat-singing passage, to end in scattered applause. Title-track ‘If This Is A Dream (Let Me Dream On)’ is sung unaccompanied with such peerless deep-Soul clarity that gives it a touchingly vulnerable intimacy. Johnny Bragg endured a troubled life. For a moment, on this track, it’s as though we glimpse an inner core purity that the world could never erode. Always a spiritual man, the album closes with ‘How Great Thou Art’ – a song that Elvis used to title his second sacred LP. And Johnny Bragg unleashes the full soul-shivering power of his voice in gospel intensity as never before. If his god truly saves sinners, this is Johnny Bragg’s moment of salvation.

The album Let Me Dream On is a time capsule of classic Nashville R&B, and also a slab of Rock history.

Side One:

1. ‘Take Away The Heartache (Let Me Love Again)’
2. ‘She’s Mine’
3. ‘Is It True, Darlin’?’
4. ‘I’ll Never Forget You’
5. ‘I Saw It Coming’
6. ‘If This Is A Dream (Let Me Dream On)’
7. ‘It Isn’t Right’
8. ‘Rock It, Shake It’

Side Two:

1. ‘Hurt And Lonely’
2. ‘I’ve Got To Stop Trying’
3. ‘It’s Been A Beautiful World (Since I Found You)’
4. ‘Let’s Rock, Let’s Roll’
5. ‘If It’s Over’
6. ‘You Know It Ain’t Right’
7. ‘How Great Thou Art’

BY ANDREW DARLINGTON