WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Ode To Spade (MP3)

    

Tommy Graham  -  Ode To Spade  (2:14)

If you believe the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture, pioneering western swing band leader Spade Cooley was born on this day in 1910.  Plenty of other web sources list Cooley's birthdate as December 17, 1910, though, and I'm not sure who to believe.  Regardless of exactly when his birthday is, it's a fine day to share with you this tribute 45.

Cooley enjoyed a long and prosperous career in radio, films, television, records and live performances, but remains quite notorious for the fact that he was convicted of murder in the first degree for the extremely brutal slaying of his wife Ella Mae in 1961, following which he received a life sentence. 

Ode To Spade is Tommy Graham's Spade Cooley tribute disc, released shortly after Cooley's fatal heart attack on November 23, 1969 following a performance.  The show, performed during a 72-hour jail furlough, was held at the Oakland Auditorium, now known as the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, which was recently in national news when members of Occupy Oakland attempted to take over the long vacant building and use it for their headquarters.  Graham and Cooley were both inmates at the Vacaville Medical Center, and became friends while incarcerated.

For the most detailed and extensive report on the rise and fall of Spade Cooley, I highly recommend John Marr's Murder Can Be Fun #19, available for a mere $2 plus a modest $1 shipping charge.  The Michael McMahon illustration above appears there, and it can also be found in an issue of Lowest Common Denominator, the former house organ of WFMU.

The Ballad Of Caryl Chessman (MP3s)

     

Ronnie Hawkins  -  The Ballad Of Caryl Chessman (Let Him Live, Let Him Live, Let Him Live)

Hoyle Miller  -  Twelve Years On Death Row

Country Johnny Mathis  -  Caryl Chessman

In July 1948, Caryl Chessman, also known as "The Red Light Bandit," was sentenced to die in the California gas chamber after being convicted on 17 charges of robbery, kidnapping and rape.  Chessman's residence on death row was somewhat anomalous in that his crimes did not involve the taking of a life.  However, the fact that he was convicted of kidnapping with bodily harm enabled the state of California to charge him with the violation of the Federal Kidnapping Act (sometimes referred to as the Little Lindbergh Law), which was regarded as a capital offense.

The Music We Would Be Playing, if We Were Playing Music

Besides being WFMU’s first callerless call-in show, Thunk Tank rarely features music. Every week we go through the new CDs that have come into the station, and find a few we like, and bring them into the studio, and then don’t play them. If we were playing music, though, right now we would be playing a lot of banda, a style of brass-heavy oompah music from the Mexican state of Sinaloa—also home of the pointy boots!

 

But that's tribal music, not banda. Banda instrumentation includes accordions, tubas, sousaphones, slide trombones, clarinets, and a drum with no kick pedal and a manual hi-hat. Diligent viewing of Mun2 TV has convinced Bronwyn that banda songs are mostly about fat pizza delivery guys who get beautiful girls, and young busboys who get beautiful girls, and school janitors with beautiful janitress girlfriends who can’t stop looking at the high school girls.

more videos beneath the fold...

The Tale Of Floyd Collins (MP3)

The Tale Of Floyd Collins come to us from Arkansas native Ronnie Hawkins, who found success and fame after following Conway Twitty's advice and relocating to Canada.

In 1960, Hawkins, a cousin of rockabilly pioneer Dale Hawkins, released this long-after-the fact topical song about the 1925 death of cave explorer Floyd Collins who became trapped 55 feet underground in what is now part of Mammoth Cave National Park just outside of Cave City, Kentucky.  Collins got stuck while exploring and though rescue teams worked around the clock to try to save him, they were ulimately unsuccessful and after 14 hellish days Collins succumbed to exposure, thirst and starvation.

Ronnie Hawkins  -  The Tale Of Floyd Collins  (3:03)

Elvis To KLF: The Train I Ride Is Sixteen Coaches Long

Life with a three-year-old can find you focusing on on forms and representations of transportation you wouldn't otherwise. Trains, for example, hold a particular resonance with the developing mind that challenge their relative rarity compared to cars and airplanes. We've found ourselves meeting constant demands for all things trains by discovering the online world of obsessive documentarians of all things locomotive. Watching this narration-and-music-free modern footage of old-fashioned steam engines has caused us to consider the sensual impact the advent of train travel would have on the rural blues men who would incorporate the sound of trains into their music and use the eeire whistle of the coming train as a metaphor for all great changes in life, love and death.

Springhill Mine Explosion (MP3)

Jack Kingston  -  Springhill Mine Explosion  (3:01)

On November 1, 1956 disaster struck the Dominion Coal Company's Springhill, Nova Scotia mine when a powerline ignited some coal dust 5,500 feet below the ground, trapping over 100 miners in the deep tunnels below the Earth's surface.  Eighty-eight of the trapped miners were eventually rescued, but 39 workers died in the tragedy.  Google map

JFK - The Greatest Of All (MP3)

 

Lee Roy Abernathy  -  John F. Kennedy The Greatest Of All 

Next week, of course, will mark the anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assasination on November 22, 1963 in Dallas.  Here is one of the many topical tribute songs about the death of the President, this one from my hometown of Atlanta.  Lee Roy Abernathy, who delivers the recitation on this 45, was a prolific gospel artist from Cartersville, Georgia.

Abernathy, who apparently liked cutting topical tunes, also recorded campaign songs for FDR and Eugene Talmadge, Georgia's governor from 1933 to 1937 and again from 1941 to 1943.  And in 1947, Abernathy released The Burning Of The Winecoff Hotel which detailed the nation's deadliest hotel fire ever.

Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for Kennedy's murder inside the Texas Theatre, located at 231 West Jefferson Boulevard in Dallas' Oak Cliff neighborhood.  On the anniversary of Kennedy's death, the theatre will commemorate the occasion by hosting "JFK Day" and playing the same films that were running on the day of the assassination (War Is Hell and Cry Of Battle), along with some other thematic offerings.  More details on the event can be found on the Dallas Observer's Unfair Park blog.

 

The Fairbanks Flood (MP3)

Ted Harris  -  The Fairbanks Flood  (2:10)

In early-mid August 1967, heavier than normal rains caused the Chena and LIttle Chena Rivers to overflow their banks and flood "The Golden Heart City" of Fairbanks, Alaska.

The event was documented by Ted Harris on this 45rpm record.  The photos below were taken by Life magazine photographer Ralph Crane.

     

Gary Gilmore's Last Request (MP3)

The Sundowns  -  Gilmore's Last Request

Today's topical song is all about an extremely highly publicized execution in Utah.  On January 17, 1977 the state of Utah executed convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, marking the first time a prisoner the United States had been executed since 1967, when the state of Colorado put Luis Jose Monge to death.  Monge's death was followed by an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment that gained formal legal backing in 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Furman v. Georgia brought all death penalty sentences to a temporary halt.

Because Gilmore was the first prisoner to be executed after this extended hiatus, his case drew considerable press attention both domestically and internationally.  Adding to the public's fascination with the case was the fact that Gilmore essentially agreed with the verdict and hastened his own death by refusing to appeal his sentence.  Referring to his death sentence, Gilmore said laconically, "It's been sanctioned by the courts and I accept that."

"Gilmore's Last Request" refers to Gilmore's wish to see his death sentence carried out swiftly, a desire from which he never wavered.  Given the choice of death by hanging or firing squad, Gilmore chose the latter.  Reportedly, his last words were "Let's do it."

Although the Sundowns failed to find commercial success with their Gilmore song, over in the UK the Adverts managed to make a pretty sizeable hit of one of their own songs about the case, "Gary Gilmore's Eyes."  Recorded not long after Gilmore's execution, the song refers to the fact that Gilmore was an organ donor and is told from the point of view of the recipient of the murderer's eyes.

  

More recently, the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, fronted by Jon Langford of the Mekons and the Waco Brothers, recorded a version of Gary Gilmore's Eyes in a rockin' country vein for The Executioner's Last Songs, a 2002 release on the Bloodshot label.

The Fate Of Mary Jo Kopechne (MP3)

   

Reuben Ware  -  The Fate Of Mary Jo Kopechne  (3:51)

Today marks the 42nd anniversary of the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.  On July 18, 1969, Kopechne left a party with Senator Ted Kennedy who piloted  his Oldsmobile 88 off the side of a nearby bridge and into the water below.  He managed to escape, but Kopechne drowned in the car.  In an act of indefensible cowardice, Kennedy fled the scene and did not get around  contacting the police until 10AM the next morning.

A couple of years back, I posted two other songs about the incident at the Chappaquidick bridge.

Southern California Earthquake (1971) - MP3

    

Jimmy Bryant  -  Southern California Earthquake

Jimmy Bryant's Southern California Earthquake tells the story of the February 9, 1971 San Fernando earthquake, also commonly known as the Sylmar earthquake due to the fact that the city of Sylmar was the location of some of the quake's most intense damage.

What makes this release a bit more interesting than most topical records detailing various disasters is that it was written and recorded by one country music's most spectacular guitarists ever, Jimmy Bryant.  Bryant made a name for himself playing guitar in various country and hillbilly bands on the Los Angeles bar circuit in the early 1950s.  This led to his status as a sought-after session musician, one who cut some of his most memorable work playing alongside the great steel guitarist Speedy West.

As for the Sylmar earthquake, it was, as are most earthquakes in heavily populated areas, a complete disaster.  Sixty-five people lost their lives, but hundreds of thousands of residents of the San Fernando Valley suffered the disruption of electricity, telephone service, gas, and water.  According to one source, one-third of all buildings in the San Fernando Valley were damaged by the quake and thirty schools were so badly damaged they had to be demolished and rebuilt.

The documentary video below, sadly plagued by egregious re-enactment scenes, memorably describes the quake as "shaking most of Southern California like an angry parent shaking a screaming child." Now there's a phrase I'll wager you won't hear again any time soon.

A Tribute To Stringbean (MP3s)

       

If David Akeman (better known as Stringbean) and his wife Estelle hadn't been brutally murdered in November 1973, Hee-Haw's laconic banjo-playing funnyman would be celebrating his 96th birthday on Friday, June 17.  Upon returning home from one of Stringbean's regular appearances on the Grand Ole Opry, the couple was confronted by a pair of money hungry losers at their modest home in Ridgetop, Tennessee, about 20 miles north of Nashville.  The criminals in question, two ne'er-do-well cousins named Doug and John Brown, had heard rumors about Stringbean's having a large stash of greenbacks hidden in his house. Kliph Nesteroff beat me to this story by several years, so I highly recommend his extremely detailed piece on Stringbean elsewhere on Beware Of The Blog.

The cash eventually surfaced in 1996 over two decades after the tragic murders, when $20,000, almost completely shredded by time and rodents, was found behind a brick in the home's chimney. 

Bobby Land - Banjo Man (A Tribute To Stringbean) (3:03)

Gary Revel - Little Did We Know (The Ballad Of Stringbean) (3:29)

Sam Bush  -  The Ballad Of Stringbean And Estelle  (4:45)  The story of the Akemans' demise continues to resonate.  This Sam Bush song was released in 2009.

Stringbean  -  Big Ball In Nashville  (1:48)

Big Ball In Nashville, String's banjo-flavored version of the western swing standard Big Ball In Cowtown, was released on the Starday label in the mid 1960s.  I'd scan the 45's label for you, but I can't seem to remember exactly where I put the record.

Above: a recent picture of Stringbean's home.

The Grand Island Tornado (MP3)

   

Bob Ayres  -  Grand Island Tornado

Friday will mark the thirty-first anniversary of the Grand Island Tornado outbreak, which pummeled the town of Grand Island, Nebraska on the night of June 3, 1980.  Although the tornadoes in Grand Island were not as extraordinarily lethal as some of those seen in the U.S. recently, they nevertheless wrecked large parts of the town and claimed five lives, while injuring an additional 200 people.

Shortly afterwards, Bob Ayres headed into the recording studio and laid down this lugubrious ballad to offer some first-hand documentation of the tragic event.

Tragedy At The Sunshine Mine (MP3)

Frank Starr  -  Tragedy At The Sunshine Mine  (4:45)

On May 2, 1972 a fire of undetermined origin swept through the nation's richest silver mine, the Sunshine Mine, located a few miles southeast of Kellogg, Idaho, resulting in the worst mining tragedy in the history of the state.  The disaster claimed 91 lives, all of whom died from smoke inhalation or carbon monoxide poisoning.

The tragic event was memorialized on a 45 rpm record by Frank Starr (aka Andy Starr), a country / rockabilly singer who made a pretty big splash in the late 1950s with some fiery sides like Rockin' Rollin' Stone,  I Wanna Go South,  Dig Them Squeaky Shoes, She's A Goin' Jessie, and Give Me A Woman.

The Great Tornado (MP3)

Sue Simpson  -  The Great Tornado 

On May 15, 1968 a series of powerful tornadoes battered Jonesboro, Arkansas and several surrounding communities. The tornado outbreak actually consisted of a series of tornadoes across several states that resulted in 72 fatalities, 45 of them in Arkansas alone.  Of the 45 Arkansas deaths, 36 of them were in Jonesboro, a city about 70 miles northwest of Memphis.

Sue Simpson's song about the devastating storms may well sound chillingly familiar to people in the southeast, where tornadoes last week did almost incalculable financial damage and claimed at least 339 deaths, a figure that will likely climb because hundreds of people are still missing.

Keep America Beautiful, Get A Haircut! Part 5

 

Paul Wilson  -  Hippie Invasion  (3:41)  Paul Wilson's Hippie Invasion was a local Georgia record, released in the aftermath of the second Atlanta International Pop Festival in July 1970.  Despite its name, the festival was actually held a little south of Macon in Byron, Georgia at a now abandoned racetrack called the Middle Georgia Raceway.  Longhaired youngsters from all over the nation showed up for the three day festival to catch live sets by B.B. King, Procul Harum, the Allman Brothers, Captain Beefheart, Ravi Shankar, Jethro Tull, Blood Rock and Jimi Hendrix among others.  None of this impressed Paul Wilson, who responded with this tirade against the counterculture.  What he lacked in musical talent, he made up for with acrimony.

Johnny Selph  -  A Georgia Country Boy's Dream  (2:11)  This one details the misadventures of a guy who spots what he thinks is a captivating young lady and hatches an impromptu plan that he figures will leave him with a bride, a cook and a new cotton picker.  The only hitch is that the gal of his dreams is actually a dude with long hair.  Johnny would've been better off spending his time and money with an optometrist, I think.

Marvin Rainwater  -  The Haircut  (2:37)  Marvin's problem?  His kid refuses to get a haircut, so Marvin rounds up one of his pals and they hatch a plan give the kid a G.I. buzz cut.  Let's just say, things don't exactly go according to plan.

     

Here are links to previous dispatches in this ongoing series:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Santa's A Hippie.

Buffalo Creek Disaster (MP3)

   

Jean Crowder  -  Buffalo Creek Disaster  (2:32)

Saturday will mark the 39th anniversary of the deadly Buffalo Creek flood that swept through 17 small towns in West Virginia on February 26, 1972.  All told, 125 people perished in the flood.  If any of this sounds vaguely familiar to BOTB readers, it's not impossible to imagine that you recall another 45 I blogged on this horrible event a little over a year ago.

The flood was caused by the failure of what is known as a coal slurry impoundment dam, which is essentially a colossal (mostly) liquid garbage dump built to contain the impurities that are left over as a result of the coal mining process. 

Buffalo Creek Disaster pulls no punches in its grim description of the horrors experienced by those caught downstream of the dam.  The flood's destructive powers are illuminated by Crowder's blunt but powerful lyrics telling of displaced families, drownings, orphaned children and the screams of people who knew their deaths were imminent.

In 1975, a documentary filmmaker from Kentucky, Mimi PIckering, released The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act Of Man.  Thirty years later, this film's cultural significance was recognized when it was named to the National Film Registry.  This coming Tuesday (March 1), Pickering will present The Buffalo Creek Flood on the campus of Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.  More details can be found here.

Saga Of The South Platte River (Denver Flood Of '65) - MP3

      

Butch La Rita  -  Saga Of The South Platte River (Denver Flood Of '65)  (2:21)

In June 1965, several days of extraordinarily heavy rains in the Denver area resulted in massive flooding along the South Platte River.  Hundreds of homes and businesses were completely destroyed as were most of Denver's bridges over the river.  In all, the damages exceed $500 million dollars.  Butch La Rita was there and gives us a graphic first-hand account of the devastion that was left in the flood's wake.

Casualty counts vary, depending on the source.  In a 1999 article, the Rocky Mountain News reported that the flood took six lives, while a 2007 article in the Denver Post attributed "more than two dozen" deaths to the flood.  Wikipedia puts the total at 28.

Following the destruction, the South Platte River was dammed to help prevent future floods.  The project, completed in 1975, resulted in Chatfield Lake in southwest Denver, part of Chatfield State Park.

The images below appear courtesy of the Denver Public Library.

     

Silver Bridge Disaster - Part 3 (MP3s)

   

Barnett Brothers  -  Tragedy Of The Silver Bridge  (3:11)

Jim Wayne  -  When The Silver Bridge Went Down  (2:43)

Last week, we took note of the deadliest hotel fire in U.S. history and today we mark the anniversary of the collapse of the Silver Bridge, the worst highway bridge disaster in American history according to the back of the postcard above. 

It was on this day in 1967 that the Silver Bridge buckled and fell into the icy waters of the Ohio River, a disaster which claimed 46 lives.  The collapse of the bridge inspired a surprising number of songs commemorating the event, including the two featured today. 

Those of you with long memories will perhaps recall that we've previously posted six songs about this deadly tragedy here on Beware Of The Blog.

   

The Burning Of The Winecoff Hotel (MP3)

    

Lee Roy Abernathy  -  The Burning Of The Winecoff Hotel 

Today marks the 64th anniversary of the deadly Winecoff Hotel fire in downtown Atlanta on December 7, 1946.  All told, 119 people lost their lives in the fire.  It was, at the time, the deadliest hotel fire ever.  It remained the world's deadliest hotel fire until Christmas Day 1971, when 163 people perished in a blaze that overtook the Hotel Taeyokale, in Seoul, South Korea.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, gospel singer Lee Roy Abernathy, a native of nearby Bartow County, memorialized the event on this 78rpm record.  Abernathy himself narrowly escaped the peril of the fire.  He had a permanent room at the Winecoff, but made a last minute decision to head for his north Georgia hometown after a friend came through with a few gallons' worth of gas coupons at a time when post World War II rationing was still in effect.  Abernathy went on to enjoy a long and successful career as a gospel musician and studio owner, eventually earning induction into the Georgia Music Hall Of Fame (1989) and the Southern Gospel Music Hall Of Fame in 1996.

The Winecoff Hotel still stands, though it's now known as the Ellis, a swanky boutique style hotel that opened in 2007.