The convict and the singer

Almost daily, the telephone rings at Carly Simon's farm on Martha's Vineyard. The recorded voice begins: ''This call is from a federal prison."

It's John, her godson, calling to check in with ''Mama C."

''I look forward so much to those calls," she says. ''We talk about our day, we talk about books, we talk about our songs, we talk about my family, we talk about pain. I confide in him. He's become practically my best friend."

John Forte would seem an unlikely best friend to the well-known singer/songwriter. He's a black convict from Brooklyn serving 14 years in prison for drug trafficking. At 30, he is half Simon's age. He's a rap artist with dreadlocks that hang practically down to his waist. In the past several years, the two have formed an ineffable bond born of their music and mutual affection and strengthened by her determination to help get him out of prison. When he was arrested and allowed one phone call, it was to Simon.

''I loved him before this happened, and our friendship has really blossomed into a very, very deep love since all of this has happened," she says. ''John has become sort of my full-time responsibility. I feel like I just want to defend him in every possible way. It's endlessly frustrating to me, because I want him out [of prison] now."

They met in 1997 through Simon's son, Ben Taylor. Friends in the music world had introduced the two men. There was an instant connection between the guy from Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood who never knew his father and the son of James Taylor who came from the monied worlds of Martha's Vineyard and Manhattan. Ben brought John home to the Vineyard for a weekend, and he stayed all summer.

''Ben kept saying, 'Wait till you meet John, wait till you meet John.' And he was a force to be reckoned with," says Simon. That summer of 1997, Forte brought his keyboard, and he and Simon would get together daily to critique each other's lyrics and chords.

''She was incredibly welcoming," says Forte. ''It was like I'd known her forever."

On July 12, 2000, Simon's manager reached her on the road with the urgent message that Forte, who had been arrested on drug charges, needed her. ''Oh my God . . . I remember leaving the car and going out on the grass and crying, I was so upset," she recalls. Two weeks later, she appeared at the bail hearing in US District Court in Newark, where she put up $250,000 toward his bail; the judge had originally asked for her Vineyard farm. (He also asked for her autograph.)

Since that day five years ago, Carly Simon has made Forte and his case her cause. ''Every day, I do something on it," she says. She has buttonholed old political friends, sought out new ones, written letters, and set up a link on her website where she sells ''Free Forte" merchandise to benefit his legal fund. She has hired an attorney for Forte's third appeal; the first two have failed. She has sent him books, visited him in prison, and offers advice and cheer almost daily. A notoriously private person who rarely tours because of paralyzing stage fright, she will speak to just about anyone who will listen about John being imprisoned.

Forte's case has become her mission, which is abolishing mandatory minimum sentences that have landed many young men and women -- mostly minority, many first-time, nonviolent offenders -- in prisons for lengthy terms. ''Black kids in America are expendable; everyone knows it. It's not a great political issue, so you have to be activist," she says, noting that some murderers don't serve for as long as some drug offenders under mandatory minimum sentences.

Since Forte was arrested, tried, and convicted of hiring drug couriers, Simon has called on old political friends such as Senator Edward Kennedy and made unlikely new ones like Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah. ''I tried lots of Democrats. I realized I was singing to the choir," she says. You can hear the shrug in Simon's throaty voice.

She went to Washington and met with Bob Dole, who by then was no longer a US senator, to discuss representing Forte. (She thought he cost too much.) She wrote President Bush about the evils of mandatory minimum sentences and got back a form letter. Then she found Hatch, a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He got Forte transferred from a federal prison in Pennsylvania to Fort Dix, N.J., only a half-hour from his mother's home. Hatch, a songwriter himself, also arranged for Forte to have his guitar in prison.

''Orrin Hatch was great," says Simon, who is known for such '70s hits as ''You're So Vain," and ''Anticipation." Still, she bemoans the lack of political support to overturn what she considers the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws, passed in New York state in 1973 and copied throughout the country. The laws require judges to give convicted drug offenders sentences of mandatory lengths regardless of their background, role in the offense, or threat to society. Critics such as Simon say the sentences are excessive and that instead of deterring kingpins, as the laws intended, they have ensnared small-time dealers, couriers, and users. Indeed, the drug dealer who hired Forte was not charged in the case; he became a government informant.

''John is a low-level offender, if you call him an offender at all," says Simon. ''The punishment does not fit the crime." She points to a recent letter in The New York Times written by Clay Rockefeller and 37 other ''direct descendants" of the late governor Nelson Rockefeller. The letter says that the laws have been ''extremely costly and have not produced the desired result," and that governor Rockefeller himself would doubtless agree that mandatory minimums must end. Simon says she hopes to meet with Clay Rockefeller soon to discuss strategy.

She says Forte is brilliant but naive. ''Yes, John did something stupid; he should have had a very small slap on the wrist," says Simon. ''But this is like putting Jackie Robinson in prison when he could be playing in Ebbets Field. John should be out singing and dancing and teaching and leading."

The Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Dix lies 70 miles down the New Jersey Turnpike from New York and a million miles away from the successful music career that John Forte had once tasted. Inmate No. 88840-079 appears in a sterile visiting room, wearing prison-issue green pants and shirt, with black boots. ''Florene" -- his mother's name -- is tattooed on the inside of his right wrist. ''Loved" -- ''because I am," he says with a smile -- is inked on the same forearm. The room, with its metal tables and chairs and vending machines, is a far cry from the Manhattan club life Forte once enjoyed.

On a recent sunny morning, Forte is open, reflective, and upbeat. If he feels depressed or angry about 10 more years in prison, it does not show. ''I'm always hopeful, always," he says, conceding that ''it's acquired, perhaps out of necessity." He blames himself for his downfall. ''I don't think I got smart until I got here."

How a Grammy-winning producer ended up with a stiff prison sentence is the stuff of movies. But then, so is Forte's entire life. A bright kid from blighted Brownsville, he taught himself at age 8 to play the violin on a borrowed instrument. In the eighth grade, he was called into the guidance counselor's office and told he should consider another school. ''I thought he was talking about reform school. I said, 'I'm a good kid. I don't need to go away.' " Then the counselor handed him some brochures for Phillips Exeter Academy, the exclusive prep school in New Hampshire whose motto is ''finis origine pendet": ''the end depends on the beginning."

Forte looked at the color photos of the track and the pool and was sold. At age 14, he went on scholarship to Exeter, one of 60 black students out of 1,000. It was both an academic and culture shock. But he grew to appreciate the place, did well in class, ran track, and wrestled. When he graduated, he went to New York University, intending to major in music business. But he couldn't afford it and soon dropped out, going to work for several hip-hop artists.

Those were heady days in the mid-1990s, when John Forte was a musical comer, writing, performing, and producing tracks on the Fugees' Grammy-winning album, ''The Score," as well as Wyclef Jean's solo album ''The Carnival." He rapped on a Michael Jackson CD and produced music for Public Enemy. Several times, he visited Simon's farm, where he and Ben sang backup vocals for Carly's album ''The Bedroom Tapes." He also sang backup on her tour. In 1999, he recorded his first album, ''Poly Sci." When it failed to sell, he was dropped by Columbia Records. He needed money. And that is where his real troubles began.

An acquaintance in a club where he was an occasional DJ asked him to recruit two women to transport a package for him; in turn, Forte -- who says he thought the package contained money -- would be paid. In July 2000, the women were busted at the Houston airport with 30 pounds of liquid cocaine. They led police to Forte, who adamantly maintained his innocence, turning down a plea bargain because he felt certain he could win at trial, which took place in September 2001.

Carly Simon was to appear as a character witness, but press accounts said that illness kept her away. Her husband, James Hart, testified instead, telling how the family met Forte. ''He was significant and special and we felt it right away," Hart testified, according to the Houston Chronicle. ''It was sort of like an instant family."

Today, Simon says that it was not illness, but advice, that kept her away from Houston. ''I had heard from a friend of mine who's a very famous lawyer that it would be bad for John if I went there, that it would actually make the Texans angry," she says. Indeed, in her closing statement, the prosecutor told the jury: ''These New Yorkers think they can come down here with their money and their celebrity and fool us hicks."

Forte was acquitted of conspiracy but convicted of drug trafficking. Under mandatory minimums, he received a 14-year sentence. He was 26 years old and had never even received a parking ticket.

In his younger days, when he first met Ben Taylor, Forte acknowledges, he knew little about either Carly Simon or James Taylor. ''It wasn't until Ben actually started to play their stuff for me that I said, 'Oh man, this is so cool.' "

Forte taught Simon how to rap, she taught him how to sing. ''He was a much better student than I was," she says, laughing. On his second album, ''I, John," Simon sings a solo backup on one song, what she calls ''playing Keith Richards to his Mick Jagger." Ben Taylor also sings backup on another song.

On ''I, John," which came out soon after he was convicted, Forte does his own vocals, encouraged by Simon, who told him he needed to start singing. The album was a critical success -- The New York Times called it ''a beautiful, reflective set of songs" -- but a commercial flop.

Had Forte not gone to prison, Simon is convinced he could have done great things through his music. ''On 'I, John,' when he says he doesn't talk about guns, he doesn't talk about sex, he means that," she says. ''He could change the face of rap so it was less violent." A song he wrote for Simon, ''You're More Beautiful Now," will be on Ben Taylor's album, due out in September. Taylor, who says he considers Forte his brother, is also including a song he wrote about Forte's prison stay, ''Digest." (''I've been forced to digest this wasteful emptiness . . . I know life goes on regardless but nothing's been the same since you've been gone.")

Though most godparents are named at birth, ''Mama C" did not come into John Forte's life until he was in his 20s. ''I'm his godmother," she says firmly. ''It wasn't designated at his birth but has become something because the care and concern are so obvious and the connection is so great." Her daughter, Sally Taylor, is also close to Forte, as is her husband, a writer and businessman, who wrote a poem about Forte.

''He's a great gift," says Hart. ''He's one of the magical people you know. Our whole family has adopted him."

Forte's mother, Florene, who lives in North Brunswick, N.J., and raised John and his sister by herself, is grateful for the support from his famous godmother. ''Oh, Carly is such a sweetheart, she has been wonderful. She told me she will never give up until he is out, and I believe her. Of course, she's a public figure, and her words will go much further than mine."

Meanwhile, Simon continues to speak out against mandatory minimums. ''There has to be a consortium of politicians who agree to do the same thing at the same time . . . or I'll chain myself to the gate at the White House." She gives a small laugh.

Forte says he's trying to make the most of prison life. He's in a prison band that plays for other inmates and an adjacent military base. He works nights in maintenance, and during the day he teaches guitar and music appreciation to other inmates. He has proposed teaching another course, called ''Reading Between the Lines," noting that many inmates don't read the newspapers or follow current events. He has been asked to put together a class teaching life skills to inmates being released. He is writing and playing music and reads voraciously, including ''Brideshead Revisited," sent to him by Simon.

And of course, he calls Mama C.