Ach der lieber!
As I am (apparently) a picky car guy, that still doesn’t make it a '57 Biscayne.
Not if it has dual headlights.
Exactly
So why is it The Night Chicago Died? The song clearly states that there was a riot between cops and gangsters. Paper Lace was an English band who thought they were making a cool song about Chicagoland but they only knew about it from movies.
Curses, foiled again!
Blame that on Schulz then. He’s the guy who made Snoopy fantasize about being a WWI flying ace. So, it’s all canon. So there.
Another error! They only used machine guns on WWI planes.
The part about hearing a hundred cops were dead isn’t what I was talking about.
It’s the entire premise that there was such a “war” in the first place. There wasn’t and it makes the song fit the OP perfectly.
It’s always a tad askew when a song is written by someone about someplace they’ve never been.
Remember “Illegal Alien” by Genesis? Why in the world would British musicians do a song about that? I always found that weird.
I just listened to the Joan Baez version, and she sings, “the Robert E. Lee.” That must be why I, too, thought the Robert E. Lee was a ship or maybe a train.
As for the significance of May 10th, it was the date Jefferson Davis was captured, and
On that same day, President Andrew Johnson announced that armed resistance in the South had come to an end. From the day Richmond had fell (Confederates abandoned the town on April 2 and Federals occupied it on the 3rd) up until May 10, the various organized Confederate forces continued to surrender. By May 10, most if not all had accepted their paroles. On a side note, William Quantrill was fatally wounded on the 10th and died on June 6. So something big did happen on the 10th. Unfortunately, it got confused in the telling, with the author confusing the fall of Richmond with the official end of the war. [bolding mine] [source]
The late, great Robbie Robertson was Canadian, and as he said, Canadian schools didn’t really cover the Civil War. He did do some research, but a few historical inaccuracies are maybe understandable.
Not as many as Lonnie Donegan did in his version, which was a major hit when I was a kid in the UK. For some reason, Donegan replaced Jackson with Pakenham in his version, so that the winning general appeared to be the British one. I have no idea why he did this, especially since he mentioned that the British lost several times, both in the preamble and during the song. Donegan certainly didn’t change it out of pro-British sentiment.
Actually, the Johnny Horton’s recording of “The Battle of New Orleans” was a cover. The song was written (and originally recorded) by Jimmie Driftwood. Johnny’s version is a stripped down version (several verses and mild expletives removed).
The full lyrics to Jimmie Driftwood’s version can be found here: The Battle of New Orleans - By Jimmy Driftwood
Only fish live in South Toronto.
Robbie Robertson’s mom was Mohawk-Cayuga and his dad, as he eventually discovered, was a Jew. Maybe it’s not surprising that he had feelings about loss and its legacies. He also wrote Acadian Driftwood, a song about Britain’s expulsion of French settlers from Atlantic Canada.
In his autobiography, Levon Helm wrote that he and Robbie worked up the Dixie song together. Sure, he was bitter about not being credited. But it seems normal that a white guy from Arkansas who sang lead on the track would at least have had something to do with it.
Only fish live in South Toronto.
Robbie Robertson’s mom was Mohawk-Cayuga and his dad, as he eventually discovered, was a Jew. Maybe it’s not surprising that he had feelings about loss and its legacies. He also wrote Acadian Driftwood, a song about Britain’s expulsion of French settlers from Atlantic Canada.
In his autobiography, Levon Helm wrote that he and Robbie worked up the Dixie song together. Sure, he was bitter about not being credited. But it seems normal that a white guy from Arkansas who sang lead on the track would at least have had something to do with it.
Though that was meant as a joke based on the band’s real life issues with US immigration trying to get a visa. Though let’s just say it hasn’t aged well.
Mississippi riverboat. See post #57. This is just a guess, but someone upthread said that Baez never saw the lyrics, she just got them from listening to The Band’s version. She was a folksinger, though, so might have heard of the Robert E. Lee’s 1870 New Orleans to St. Louis race with another steamboat, the Natchez, and thought that the " ‘Quick, come see/There goes the Robert E. Lee!’ " line referred to the famous race.
I just relistened. She also sings “'till so much cavalry came”. No wonder I have such a different version in my head! I, like Joan, learned it by listening to her version. It’s like a game of telephone, except on the radio.
I say, it’s a joke son.
Thank you- very interesting!
That’s because in North Ontario, they get eaten by Big Birds. It’s a grand conspiracy masterminded by the Children’s Television Workshop and Neil Young to bring about equality for the letter “Zed”.