"On November 22, 1997, there was a party at 635 Logan Street, Steubenville, Ohio. Hubbard attended this party. At the party were several members of the gang known as the Crips. It is contested whether Hubbard is a member of the Crips. During that evening, Wise God Allah, a.k.a. Grier Montgomery, was walking down the street outside of the party. Wise God Allah was known to be a member of the rival gang the Bloods. Hubbard and up to nine other men began shooting at Wise God Allah. One of the shots hit Wise God Allah. The gunshot wound was fatal."*
"
On one record I did called 'Wise' that didn't make the album the Supreme Clientele—I couldn't use it, they took it off
**—I cried writing it. I wrote it on the beach. And I cried. And it started raining when I was crying. It was in Miami. I cried writing it, and then when I went to go record it, it had some tears coming to my eyes too, recording it, because I had to zone out, I couldn't really do it in front of everybody. I don't like to record in front of a lot of people especially when I'm writing emotional stuff." - Ghostface Killah [
audio interview]
[more inside]
posted by jng
on Apr 30, 2011 -
12 comments
The Streets of Laredo: The Cowboy's Lament was originally written as the Irish drover balled
Bard of Armaugh (or
Armagh), which later mutated into
A Handful of Laurel, about a young man dying of syphilis in a London hospital, musing back on his days in the alehouses and whorehouses. Immigrants settling in the Appalachians brought their own version,
The Unfortunate Rake, sung as early as 1790, about a young soldier dying of mercury poisoning, a result of treatment for venereal disease, who requests a military funeral - a slight but important evolution from the previous version. The current lyrics are most popularly attributed to cowboy
Frances Henry "Frank" Maynard, who copyrighted them in 1879. While various
versions of the song were popular in the US before Maynard took pen to paper and needle to wax cylinder (under such titles as
Locke Hospital,
St. James Infirmary Blues,
Tom Sherman's Bar and
Way Down in Lodorra), his version is the one with which we are most familiar today.
beat the drum slowly, play the fife lowly / sound the death march as you carry me along / cover my body in sweet-smelling posies / for I'm the young (rake, soldier, man, girl, lass, etc)
cut down in (his/her)
prime (or
and I know I've done wrong)
The song has been recorded by pretty much every country, western and folk-identified musical artist since recording music became practical, although the most popular versions must be those by
Arlo Guthrie (who once said it was "the saddest song I know," and who sings it on his album
Son of the Wind) and
Johnny Cash (who added
a few verses to his 1965 version, improving the song a bit and making it more emotionally complex).
Roger McGuinn's creative commons-licensed version is one of my personal favorites, as is Bobby Sutliff's
version.
posted by luriete
on Aug 3, 2005 -
27 comments
