Stevie Wonder and James Brown Put This Prison Funk Band on the Map

Filed
1:00 p.m. EDT

03.29.2026

The Energy of Legal professional performed reveals with superstars, went to trade events, and wore outdoors garments — all underneath the watch of armed guards.

This essay is a part of Redemption Songs, a limited-run e-newsletter that spotlights one track every week by incarcerated artists. Enroll now to get a brand new track every Sunday afternoon till September:

Stevie Surprise and James Brown Put This Jail Funk Band on the Map

Hear in case you like: Sly and the Household Stone, Ohio Gamers, Heatwave, and Stevie Surprise

The Seventies have been a golden age for music made in American prisons. Throughout that decade, the composer, singer and guitarist Ike White launched an album from his California jail that earned him comparisons to Jimi Hendrix. The Escorts launched hit data from their New Jersey jail that will later be sampled by Public Enemy and J Dilla. Following the success of Johnny Money’s 1968 album “At Folsom Jail,” tons of different stars put out their very own dwell jail LPs, from Eddie Palmieri to B.B. King to Willie Mae “Huge Mama” Thornton.

However one stellar jail band of the Seventies has been largely forgotten, which is shocking once you be taught simply how good they sounded, how well-known they have been at their peak, and what jail officers allow them to do.

In 1971, Robert Johnson was appointed the primary Black superintendent of Graterford Jail, north of Philadelphia. In line with a 2018 thesis by incarcerated pupil Marco Maldonado, Johnson used funding from former president Lyndon B. Johnson’s Nice Society initiative to spice up academic applications, together with one centered on music. A bunch of lifers organized a band referred to as The Energy of Legal professional, which quickly caught the eye of the music trade.

James Brown, their Polydor labelmate, helped shepherd the 1974 launch of their album, “From The Inside…,” which can assist clarify the high-gloss, horn-heavy funk preparations. It was additionally recorded at The Hit Manufacturing unit, a significant studio in Manhattan, and Alice Cooper donated devices.

The Energy of Legal professional performed live shows throughout the northeast — escorted to and from venues by armed guard — and as soon as opened for Stevie Surprise.

This story may need pale into historical past. However just a few years in the past an aged, unhoused man named Charles McDowell walked into the Philadelphia file retailer Brewerytown Beats, on the lookout for a replica of the “From The Inside…” He revealed to the shop’s proprietor, Max Ochester, that he had performed bass within the band. McDowell later handed away, however Ochester tracked down the previous lead singer, Ron Aikens, singing road karaoke for ideas outdoors of Philadelphia Metropolis Corridor.

Aikens advised me in an interview that the band had been allowed to spend whole nights away from the jail attending trade events, sporting free-world garments. Once they returned, he recalled, different prisoners referred to as them “idiots” for not utilizing the chance to flee.

No less than one member took the bait. On the Stevie Surprise gig, Aikens recollects McDowell, the bass participant, fled the venue and remained on the lam for just a few months till he was caught. However even with the occasional scandal, the band was good PR for the state: “We have been ambassadors for the jail system,” Aikens mentioned. “If one thing was going incorrect, they’d roll us out to indicate what fantastic issues they have been doing.”

Aikens was launched in 1976, and struggled to construct a music profession. He ended up working as a janitor. The band continued into the Eighties, however as jail populations exploded and rehabilitative applications dwindled — the phrase “nothing works” got here into vogue amongst jail officers — Pennsylvania stopped letting them out to carry out.

Ochester, the file retailer proprietor, re-released a few of The Energy of Legal professional’s early materials, together with the track we’re that includes, “Altering Man.” It sounds much less polished than the complete album, however I like listening to these males within the midst of growing their sound. Aikens seems again on the band’s temporary star flip as proof of how prisons was extra centered on serving to folks enhance themselves. “When guys come out lately, they don’t have anything to be ok with,” he advised me. However within the Seventies, “there have been alternatives to indicate folks that though we have been in jail, we had some value, and someone believed in us.”

LINER NOTES

Band: The Energy of Legal professional | Music: “Altering Man” | 12 months: 1973 | Location: Graterford Jail, Pennsylvania | Guitar: Brother J.X. Smith Bass and Vocals: Charles McDowell | Percussion: Gilberto Albizu | Saxophone: Marion Wilson | Drums: Otis J. Graham | Keyboards: William Smith | Flute: Dwight Williams