ROANOKE, Va. — Jamal Jahal Nubi and Cornelius Cade are sitting at a dining room table and remembering the old days. The soul music they used to create. The friends they once knew. The album they recorded as inmates in prison.
Nubi and Cade were in a 10-member group named the Edge of Daybreak, which composed an album while they were convicts at the Powhatan Correctional Center in State Farm, Virginia. The musicians were all serving sentences of six to 60 years on charges including armed robbery and assault.
Originally released in 1979, “Eyes of Love” achieved moderate success at the time: A few local media outlets covered it, and the now-defunct TV news series “PM Magazine” produced a segment about the band called “Cellblock Rock.” The band was a novelty: Sure, other musicians have recorded live albums from prison, but how many groups had recorded full studio albums from behind bars?
For more than 35 years, “Eyes of Love” toiled in relative obscurity. But now the Chicago-based Numero Group, which specializes in resurfacing notable and overlooked pieces of history, is reissuing “Eyes of Love” to a new generation of listeners, shedding a bright light on a group of guys who wanted to make the best of bad times.
Nubi, who is now 64, entered the Powhatan prison in 1976 and faced a 35-year term. (He served 7 ½ years.) One day on the yard, Nubi kept hearing what sounded like live instruments coming from a nearby practice room. There, he bumped into musicians Edward Tucker and William Crawley, who, along with Cade, formed the group Cosmic Conception. They covered the Isley Brothers, Slave and Earth, Wind &Fire.
“Guys used to flock in there to hear us,” recalled Cade, a guitarist and songwriter. “Every time we cranked up, man. We just loved the stuff that we played, and we played it well.”
Cade, now 69, entered Powhatan in 1976 for his role in a hotel robbery. Once inside, Cade bought a guitar from the prison-approved Music Emporium in Bethesda, Maryland. James Carrington, convicted on assault charges, joined Cade, Nubi and the others, bringing a Fender Rhodes electric piano and a synthesizer to the setup. Carrington had a mail-order connection with Bohannon’s Records in Richmond and established a friendship with shop owner Milton Hogue.
The band, now known as the Edge of Daybreak, with bassist McEvoy Robinson, percussionist Willie Williams and vocalist Harry Coleman in the lineup, began writing original songs. Carrington contacted Hogue about the idea of financing an album. He agreed to do so after seeing the band rehearse.
On a budget of $3,000, the Edge of Daybreak had limited time and resources to get an album recorded. Of course, the inmates couldn’t go to the studio like regular musicians; extra precautions had to be taken to make “Eyes of Love” a reality. Prison personnel inspected Alpha Audio in Richmond and deemed it too risky to secure. Eight prison guards would have had to travel with the band.
On Sept. 14, 1979, Alpha Audio officials brought a mixing console and tape machine to the Powhatan prison. The Edge of Daybreak had five hours to record the album’s eight songs in a vacant recreation room. Without overdub equipment and no time to polish, the band had to get everything right the first time.
“It was a little hectic, but the guys had it together,” said Alpha Audio owner Eric Johnson. “They were highly motivated. They were locked up in prison, and this was their thing.”
Johnson said prison personnel weren’t helpful. The album’s last song, the sensual “Our Love,” was recorded as prison guards hurried the band to finish. The musicians were rushed back to their respective cells as soon as the track concluded.
By the fall of 1980, Virginia outlets began to run stories about the Edge of Daybreak and attention quickly turned to a possible sophomore album. But Carrington was transferred to the nearby Deep Meadow Correctional Center, and Cade was moved to the Powhatan center’s North Housing Unit. With band members now in separate facilities, Edge of Daybreak disbanded.
Upon his release, Nubi returned home to Roanoke and formed a new collective — the Business of Sweet Success, or B.O.S.S. for short. Carrington and Cade also formed a group, called Rise, and released a funk single. Yet it wasn’t quite like the Edge of Daybreak, which, for a brief moment in time, rose above those prison walls and transcended its dark circumstances.
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