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CNN Live Today
Grammy Winner's Rough Life Leads to Music, Movie
Aired April 19, 2002 - 11:24 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: If you are at the Grammy Awards, we hear stories of how artists dreamed of when the moment they would hear that the world was recognizing their work. But this year, one winner says he never dreamed that his hard-knock life would lead to music and to a movie. He is the 76-year-old man. He went from chain gang to Grammy fame, and Jeff Flock has this story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The sounds of the chain gang in this opening scene from the movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" didn't come from Hollywood. They came from here: State Penitentiary, Lambert, Mississippi, September 1959.
JAMES CARTER, GRAMMY WINNER: Yes, that's me.
FLOCK (on camera): Does that sound like you?
J. CARTER: Yes.
FLOCK: You sound like you've got some anger in that voice.
J. CARTER: Might have, might have had. I ain't got it now.
FLOCK (voice-over): No more anger for the 76-year-old James Carter, but the 23-year-old Carter had plenty, 10 years smashing rocks and cutting logs in chains for crimes he claims he didn't commit.
J. CARTER: It was tough.
FLOCK: He barely remembered the day a man traveling the rural south with a tape recorder asked inmates to sing into his microphone. Carter led them in the work song called "Po' Lazarus."
J. CARTER: After it was over, that was what it was, over.
FLOCK: Forty years later, the recording touches movie producers, Joel and Ethan Cohen, and it winds up in their film. The soundtrack is a smash. It opens with "Po' Lazarus," by James Carter & prisoners.
(on camera): The problem is nobody knew where James Carter was. A search of the Mississippi penal records and social security files finally led them here to Chicago and the Holy Temple Community Church of God. (voice-over): That's where the Reverend Rose Lee Carter, is pastor.
(on camera): You thought it might have been a scam.
J. CARTER: Yes. I had got caught up in some scams in Chicago.
FLOCK (voice-over): James Carter's wife couldn't believe that someone wanted to send them a check for thousands of dollars in royalties for the multi-million selling album.
ROSE CARTER, WIFE OF JAMES CARTER: I didn't raise my kids on welfare.
FLOCK: But the proud woman, who stood by James through a decade of prison and 56 years of marriage, believed it when they got the check and wound up in L.A. for the Grammys, where the soundtrack won album of the year.
(on camera): That was you. These guys were you, right?
J. CARTER: Right.
FLOCK (voice-over): We sat and watched part of the film that before he got the call, Carter had never seen.
J. CARTER: That's the only way I feel that this came up to be a program, because God fixes things.
FLOCK: "God fixes things," he says.
(on camera): You think this is the work of God to how this happened.
J. CARTER: Right. I really do.
FLOCK: Did you know the Lord back in those days?
J. CARTER: No, but he knew me.
FLOCK (voice-over): And now, the whole world knows James Carter too.
J. CARTER: That's the way it is.
FLOCK: I am Jeff Flock, CNN in Chicago.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: Good story, Jeff Flock -- thank you for that.
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