Brady (A)
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 16/07/2020

Day 122 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series

I'm messing' around with the sound preparing for a streaming show for a county library system, but not happy with the sound yet.

Sandburg wrote in his introduction to The American Songbag that 100 or more of the songs in his book had never been published (or recorded). This is one of the most famous ones, often known in its various incarnations as Duncan and Brady.

Sandburg writes: "A Nebraska-born woman, now practicing law in Chicago, gives us one verse and a tune from  St. Louis. It is a tale of wicked people, a bad man so bad that even after death he went "struttin'  in hell with his Stetson hat." Geraldine Smith, attorney-at-law in Chicago, heard it from Omaha  railroad men."

Sandburg first published this in 1927. The song is often titled "Duncan and Brady",  Wikipedia  writes: "Brady" is a traditional murder ballad about the shooting of a policeman, Brady, by a bartender, Duncan. The song's lyrics stemmed from actual events, involving the shooting of James Brady in the Charles Starkes Saloon in St. Louis, Missouri. Harry Duncan was convicted of the murder, and later executed." Although this is debated by scholars.

"Originally recorded by Wilmer Watts & his Lonely Eagles in 1929, it has been recorded numerous times, most famously by Lead Belly, also by Judy Henske, Dave Van Ronk, The Johnson Mountain Boys, New Riders of the Purple Sage,David Nelson Band, and Bob Dylan." (wikipedia)