Wayne Kramer, late guitarist of rock band MC5, also leaves legacy of bringing music to prisons

LOS ANGELES — The tributes that poured in following the death of Wayne Kramer last week came from musicians praising the MC5 guitarist’s contributions to rock music, as well as prison reform advocates praising his legacy of bringing music to incarcerated people.

Kramer, who died Feb. 2 from pancreatic cancer at age 75, influenced generations of artists with his screaming guitar chords on hardcore anthems like 1969’s “Kick Out the Jams.”

Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello said that MC5, with an uncompromising sound that fused music with political action, “basically invented punk rock.”

Not long after the band broke up in 1972, Kramer was arrested for drug abuse and spent two years in prison. Determined to get his life on track while maintaining his activism, Kramer co-founded Jail Guitar Doors USA, based on a British charity that provided prisoners with musical instruments. Kramer’s nonprofit is named after a Clash song that references his struggles: “Let Me Tell You About Wayne and His Cocaine Deals.”

Kramer recruited famous friends like Morello, Slash and Perry Farrell to perform concerts in prisons in California and his home state of Michigan, where he left guitars behind.

Gradually, he began spending one-on-one time with inmates, helping them create their own songs and “watching the creative light turn on in their heads,” says Jason Heath, a close friend and executive director of Jail Guitar Doors USA.

“Working with prisoners was cathartic for him because music saved his life while he was inside,” Heath said this week.

“Creativity is the solution to the challenges we face,” Kramer told Mojo magazine in December.

His group eventually distributed thousands of instruments and created a songwriting mentorship program that expanded to lockups nationwide. The work was cited in research by Larry Brewster, a professor at the University of San Francisco, which found that introducing art to inmates led to fewer disciplinary actions, higher self-esteem, better emotional health and less recidivism.

“He invited people to tell their stories through music, that was Wayne’s gift,” said Elida Ledesma, executive director of the California-based nonprofit Arts for Healing and Justice Network. “He knew that everyone was worthy of respect and dignity.”

In recent years, Jail Guitar Doors USA has established a nonprofit partner, the Community Arts Programming and Outreach Center. The Hollywood headquarters features a recording studio and teaches multimedia production to young people who have recently been released and are trying to start their lives over. A federally approved apprenticeship program for former inmates offers a 2.5-year curriculum for audio recording and a shorter curriculum for film editing.

One of the young students, 24-year-old Joseph Jimenez, said it never occurred to him that he could become a filmmaker after spending more than five years in juvenile detention centers and other correctional facilities. One day he went to the center with one of the residents of his terraced house.

“They gave me a camera and I just started learning,” Jimenez said.

He recently shot and produced a music video for a rap song written, performed and recorded by him and fellow students. He said the program instilled in him an ambition he didn’t know he possessed.

“Now I want to have my own production company,” Jimenez said. “I want to make independent films.”

Jack Bowers, who led the arts project at California’s Soledad prison for 25 years, credits Kramer with helping restore funding for cultural programs in state prisons. During a budget crisis in 2003, the state cut all funding for the arts within California’s corrections system. Nine years later, a group of nonprofits, including Jail Guitar Doors, began lobbying for restoration. Kramer eventually gave testimony before a joint arts committee, along with actor Tim Robbins and others.

“Wayne just gave a moving speech about how important it was to have music and art in prisons,” said Bowers, who is now a mentor at the William James Association Prison Arts Project. “Being in prison, he understood it from the point of view of someone who was in it. His voice had enormous weight.”

At that meeting, the program was reinstated, Bowers said. The state provided $1 million in 2014, and the prison arts budget has since increased to $8 million, he said.

Heath said the next steps for the Community Arts Programming and Outreach Center include providing on-site housing for the paid students where they can focus on the work to avoid the temptation of repetitive behaviors that have gotten them into trouble.

‘We can register the young people while they are still in prison. Then when they are released, they go straight to the house, where they have a place to live, and straight to the center, where they have a job,” he said. “That puts them on the right track.”

Jimenez, the young student, admits that as a hip-hop fan he didn’t realize that Kramer, the unassuming man who mentored people and ran the program at the center, was a rock star.

“I Googled him and it blew my mind,” Jimenez said. “He was so cool and so down to earth with the work he did with us. He is a legend.”