The Lit Salon: An Evening Colin Asher, Author of The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music

The Lit Salon at Barrington Hall presented by The Mount, Edith Wharton Cultural Center

Curated by Michelle Young (The Art Spy)

LONGLISTED FOR NATIONAL BOOK AWARD * NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S PICK * BESTSELLER INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS CAUCUS

In American popular music, we often glorify rebellious artists and “outlaws.” But in THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL: The Secret Prison History of American Music, Colin Asher tells a deeper story about the criminal justice system’s impact on our musicians, explored through compelling portraits of five artists whose careers span the twentieth century.

Opening with folk and blues artist Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, who was made to perform wearing prison clothes, Asher traces the intertwined histories of music and incarceration, from Southern prison farms of the Jim Crow era, through the heroin-driven mid-century drug wars that villainized a generation of jazz artists, and to our present era of mass incarceration.

Asher shows how the suggestion of criminality has often benefited white artists, while prosecutions often hurt Black musicians. Comparing the divergent trajectories of jazz pianist Elmo Hope with country singer Johnny Cash, Asher examines how violent and discriminatory policing stifled Hope’s career and led to the creation of his album Sounds from Rikers Island (1963), while forgiveness and lenience brought us Cash’s masterpiece At San Quentin (1969).

With keen musical analysis and sociological insight, THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL examines key themes in culture and criminal justice. An urgent book about the ways music can affirm an individual’s sense of humanity in dehumanizing circumstances, THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL writes the history of prisons into American music—a story as important as it is overlooked.

“The Midnight Special’ offers an unconventional cultural history. . . It’s a fog-piercing down-bound train of a book, better than it had to be. . . Asher is a calm and sophisticated storyteller who picks you up and sets you back down in places you didn’t anticipate. Like a good film director, he knows how to stagger his material . . . Taken together, the profiles in ‘The Midnight Special’ amount to a multilayered indictment of America’s prison system, the largest in the world.” —New York Times Book Review

“A fresh new take on American music . . . These stories show how the aura of imprisonment enhances the public perception of an artist and his music.” —Wall Street Journal

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Colin Asher is the author of the critically acclaimed Never a Lovely So Real. His work has been featured in the Believer, the Baffler, the New Republic, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

ABOUT THE GEORGE OLDZIEY 

George Oldziey is an award-winning composer, orchestrator, arranger, and musician whose professional career began at age 13. A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, he studied trumpet with distinguished musicians including William Vacchiano and Mel Broiles before turning his focus to composition. As an in-house composer for Electronic Arts’ Origin Systems, he created music for iconic video game series including Wing Commander, Ultima, and Crusader. His extensive film credits include Spy Kids, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Sin City, The Grinch, and We Can Be Heroes. He also arranged Mon Laferte’s Latin Grammy-winning album Norma.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Michelle Young is an award-winning journalist and author. Her latest book, The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of World War II Resistance Hero Rose Valland was named a Best Book of 2025 by the New York Public Library, Library Journal, and Hyperallergic, and the 2026 Massachusetts Book Award Honoree. The book is also a finalist for the Marfield Prize—The National Award for Arts Writing—the Lambda Literary Prize, and the Massachusetts Book Award, and was longlisted for the 2025 American Library of Paris Book Award.

This event is in collaboration with The Mount, Edith Wharton Cultural Center

About The Mount, Edith Wharton Cultural Center: Inspired by Edith Wharton's life and work, The Mount brings together history, literature, and nature to spark ideas, creativity, connections, and cultural experiences. Located in Lenox, Massachusetts, The Mount was the country estate Wharton designed and built in 1902, and today serves as a museum and cultural center offering author talks, writer residencies, jazz events, art exhibitions, and family programs. | edithwharton.org