A+E's Soul Incarcerated podcast is the story of Edge of Daybreak, the best ‘70s soul band you’ve probably never heard about. They recorded their lone masterpiec...
Before they were wards of the state, Neal, Jamal, and Cupcake were twenty-somethings criss-crossing the south in traveling cover bands. That was before felony convictions for armed robbery landed them at Powhatan on extraordinarily long sentences. Having grown up under segregation, they now found themselves in a disproportionately Black national prison population–one that would double in size before the last of them got out.The prison music program gave them incentive to start writing songs of their own. But where, under such dark circumstances, did they draw inspiration to start putting pen to paper? Jamal reveals some painful family secrets, Neal talks about love lost to prison, and Cupcake talks about love found behind bars.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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38:04
The Band of the State Correctional System
The Powhatan Correctional Center was a hellish place: overcrowded, underfunded, and known for its rampant violence. So how were Neal, Jamal, and Cupcake able to create and perform such soulful, life-affirming music? As America’s prison population began to skyrocket in the late 1970s, the musicians explain how the prison band room gave them the will to make it through their sentences. This is where Edge of Daybreak is born.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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42:25
An Unusual Musical Happening
Harry “Cupcake” Coleman was 29 years old and staring down a 50-year sentence at thePowhatan 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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38:10
Introducing: Soul Incarcerated
The Edge of Daybreak was a prison soul ensemble who recorded their first and only album in 1979 when they were incarcerated as young men. In this podcast series, the group’s surviving members try to mount their comeback. Soul Incarcerated tracks their struggles and triumphs along the way. It’s a It’s a story about the liberating power of music, the American justice system, and ultimately…second chances. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
A+E's Soul Incarcerated podcast is the story of Edge of Daybreak, the best ‘70s soul band you’ve probably never heard about. They recorded their lone masterpiece, Eyes of Love, when they were locked up at a rural Virginia penitentiary at the height of America’s prison boom. Journalist Jamie Pietras traces the story of young musicians who grow up under segregation, face convictions for armed robbery, and find each other through a prison music program. Pietras puts the group’s music into context and helps navigate their attempt at a comeback more than 40 years later.