[78-L] Bad news on record

[Michael Biel]

From: "Taylor Bowie" <bowiebks at isomedia.com>
>> keep 'em coming, folks. If you think it's getting to
>> boring for everyone else, please write to me off line.

No, a good disaster is never boring.  A car chase is never boring (if
you consider what the Los Angeles TV stations believe).  A celebrity
death is never boring, if you consider that Michael Jackson is STILL
dead, but the story won't lie down. Gracie Fields song.  Even FRANCO is
still dead!  

How about a disaster song written and performed BEFORE the disaster. 
Remember that old Smothers Bros song routine about Tommy falling into a
vat of chocolate and how he was saved by yelling "FIRE!!" because nobody
would have helped him if he yelled "CHOCOLATE!!"  It always got big
laughs.  Well, I just saw a news story about a New Jersey man who was
killed today when the agitator blade of a big vat of boiling chocolate
knocked him in and his co-workers couldn't save him in time.  I swear to
you that MSNBC used the headline "Death By Chocolate".

>> Well, actually I look for songs about any horrible event 

The 2000 Presidential Election???  Leah reports that there is a song
called "Fuzzy Math" about it.  

>> This includes more obscure things like Ohio Prison Fire,

BODIES!  BODIES EVERYWHERE!!  Great record!  Charlotte and Bob Miller. 
The prisoners got roasted in their cells.  Sounds like a song cue!

>> Has anyone ever seen a record of a song mourning the death
>> of President Harding? 

Keep Cool With Coolidge????

>> Or about the Hartford Circus Fire or Boston Cocoanut Grove fire?
>> I'm guessing the latter two might have been covered in some country or
>> religious song but don't know of any.

In Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati there is the Beverly Hills Supper Club
fire which killed 164 in the 70s.  Probably have some songs about it
too.

>> How about the Hindenburg crash?  I have the Herb Morrison radio
>> account on a Melotone but are there any songs about it on record? 

Great question.  I'll ask a friend of mine who was a close friend of
Morrison if he knows of any.  

>> My latest disaster song is The Burning of the Winecoff Hotel
>> by Leroy Abernathy on the White Church label, c. 1946-47. Taylor

"The Yellow Tomb" by Howard Vokes  It is about a school bus which fell
into a creek and overturned in 1957 in Floyd County near me in Eastern
Kentucky, and once again the anniversary of it two years ago brought out
all the memories of the parents and siblings who lost kin.  Vokes
recorded it on a whole album of disaster songs on Starday "Tragedy &
Disaster in Country Songs.", and finding it was one of the first
assignments I was given by a folk song collector colleague of mine when
I moved to Kentucky in 78. (I found two, so I have it myself.) Looking
on the web to remember Vokes name shows that there were a whole slew of
songs about the accident.   http://wfmu.org/onthedownload.php/album/6776

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com