From the Sunday Times (South Africa’s best-selling newspaper), we find the story of James Carter, who recorded the opening chain-gang song in O Brother, Where Art Thou 40 years ago:
The song was recorded on a sweltering day in September 1959 by a convict toiling in a chain gang in one of America’s most brutal prisons, the Mississippi State Penitentiary. More than 40 years later, it became an unlikely hit, on the chart-topping soundtrack album to the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? Then came the extraordinary hunt to find its singer, now a 76-year-old pensioner living in a rundown apartment in east Chicago.
The movie producers handed him his first royalty cheque for US $20,000 and he said “I’m gonna call Michael Jackson up, tell him I’m gonna slow down. Let him catch up on me.”
DarrenBarefoot.com 
I report with regred the death of James Carter:
James Carter; jail song brought fame, fortune — 40 years later
By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times, 12/9/2003
LOS ANGELES — James Carter, who led a Mississippi chain gang in singing a work song that was recorded by a famed musicologist and, more than 40 years later, became part of the top-selling “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack album, has died. He was 77.
Mr. Carter, who had been in poor health and suffered a stroke, died Nov. 26 in a hospital in Oak Park, Ill.
more at http://tinyurl.com/yym1
I remember James Carter. When I was a young girl I would often attend church with my friend Elizabeth. I would love to be reunited with the family. Much love to the family!!! Miss you much. I always think about the church when I sing the song “Lord I want to go, Show me the way, take me by the hand and lead me on. SMILE!!!! Robin Robinson Craig