Jailhouse Rock - Boz Scaggs Shakes San Quentin

Rolling Stone - February 17, 1983

San Quentin 1983

"I've got a good mind to give up living," sang Boz Scaggs last month as he chugged through an hour of Chicago-style blues at San Quentin prison during the institution's sixty-fifth annual Show of Stars. "I have mixed emotions about what it's all about to come inside," said a nervous Scaggs moments before his first penitentiary performance. "I can come and go and they can't."

Indeed, tensions were high at the jail. Said Bread & Roses head Mimi Farina, who organised the show, "I'm always conscious of the fact that we have three racial factions to please." And though the four-hour show took place without incident, a feeling of brotherly love was distinctly absent among the convincts. "I'm into white music myself," said one inmate. "I don't like that African shit."

Scaggs was joined for the show by Cesar's Latin All Star Band and the soul group Mae. But the hit of the day was a belly dancer named Jamie Miller. As one inmate put it, "She showed the most skin."

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