![]() ![]() For this he pled guilty to second-degree murder and part of his sentence included six months of solitary confinement. In 1975, an inmate named Leon Irby drove a welding rod through his attacker’s eye and into his brain, purportedly to defend himself from an attempted rape. Teaching in a maximum-security prison was not without its challenges. ![]() (Image courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society) Dave Bultman (right) with one of the WCI’s county & western groups. In additional to Upheaval’s nine-piece soul band, which regularly headlined inmate concerts (referred to as “banquets”), there were also blues trios, jazz quartets, Latin ensembles, rock bands, and country & western groups. The wide variety of ethnicities and heritages represented at the WCI was reflected in the diversity of sounds. They painted the walls of the music facility with psychedelic colors and patterns, chords, and portraits of jazz greats, transforming it into the most inviting part of the entire prison. They sound like something.” Increased demand for the course meant that prisoners were soon required to take musical aptitude tests, and if they passed, they would have to wait for a spot to open. Their competence ranged from crude ability to those who, in Bultman’s estimation, could “compete with the best professionals.” His pride is palpable in a 1974 interview her gave to the Madison-based Capital Times, “These guys are good. The members of Upheaval took this requirement a step further, demanding that all band members be able to play at least one instrument, vocalists included.Įventually, Bultman was managing 100 students a day, and outsourcing some of the teaching to the more accomplished inmates while he helped others rehearse. Given his academic background, he was not especially interested in wasting time defusing aggression or babysitting idle minds he wanted to teach composition and arrangement because he knew that inmates who sought studio work on the outside would need to be musically literate. Through a combination of insurance money collected after the fire and some reshuffling of taxpayer dollars, the WCI built a new music facility with numerous soundproofed practice rooms and a variety of quality instruments, including a Fender Rhodes piano and a Gibson ES-335 guitar.īultman required prisoners to write about what they’d learned from his music theory class if they wished to remain in his course and have access to instruments. The prison had lacked a music director for nearly a year, and Bultman’s predecessor reportedly had a fairly narrow preference for marching band music. Back then, the music options available to inmates were dismal-a fire in January 1971 had reduced resources and space to a corner of the gymnasium. In his memoir, Crowbar Tech, he recalls that he saw an advertisement for the position in the local paper and figured if he wasn’t cut out for it he could always return to the classroom. Bultman left his teaching job at a nearby high school in Oshkosh to become director of the WCI’s music program in June of 1973. The common denominator behind Upheaval was Dave Bultman, although if asked, he would likely downplay his contribution. Their origins have never been documented until now. The musicians who composed, performed, and recorded it 50 years ago called themselves “Upheaval,” and they were all inmates at the Waupun Correctional Institution (WCI) in Wisconsin, a maximum-security facility then known as the Wisconsin State Prison. It is said that only 25 copies of this percussive masterpiece were ever pressed. Only a very select few will know that it is also the title of one of the most sought-after 45s in existence-a five-and-a-half-minute horn-laden soul epic. To most people, the words “Paradise Lost” will conjure repressed memories of 10th grade English and compulsory subjection to literary poetry. ![]()
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