"Riot In Cell Block #9" is a classic and pervasive R&B song composed by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. The best known version is The Robins' song from 1954, which hit #1 in the R&B charts.
In this song, a man is serving his sentence in federal prison for armed robbery. At 4:00 AM on July 2, 1953, he wakes up to a rather alarming disturbance: a jail riot! It started in cell block #4 and continued through the prison hall from cell to cell. The jailhouse warden, armed with a gun, threatens to electrocute all the prisoners if the riot doesn't stop soon, but one of them, Scarface Jones, retaliates by carrying dynamite. Forty-seven hours later, 3:00 AM on July 4, 1953, the prison security let loose tear gas on the inmates and they return to their cells.
The song has been covered by many cross-genre artists such as The Grateful Dead, The Beach Boys, Wanda Jackson, Johnny Winter, Dr. Feelgood, The Blues Brothers, Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen, Johnny Cash, The Coasters, and Flat Duo Jets.
It was also translated and performed in French by Michel Pagliaro as "Emeute dans la prison" (riot in the prison). In his version it was July 13, 1968 at 4:00am and originated in cell block #3. It was later covered by Eric Lapointe.
Famous quotes containing the words riot in, riot, cell, block and/or number:
“Riot in Algeria, in Cyprus, in Alabama;
Aged in wrong, the empires are declining,
And China gathers, soundlessly, like evidence.
What shall I say to the young on such a morning?—
Mind is the one salvation?—also grammar?—
No; my little ones lean not toward revolt.”
—William Dewitt Snodgrass (b. 1926)
“The bowl will ensnare and enchant
men who crouch by the hearth
till they want
but the riot of stars in the night;
those who dwell far inland
will seek ships.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem.... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”
—Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)
“There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves ... beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others ... and at the same time attesting facts, performed in such a public manner, and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to render the detection unavoidable.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)