Spanish Johnny

[Lin Evans]

http://www.lin-evans.org/johnny/spanishjohnny.zip

http://www.lin-evans.org/johnny/spanishjohnnymac.zip

Slight modification ..... now a bit under 9 megs..

About 9 meg

Lin

[tom95521]

Nice slideshow. Hard life. I would not want to be shot and hung at the same time (actually neither)! I also like the Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings version. Nobody can sing like Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.

Tom

[Lin Evans]

Hi Tom,

Yep, a hard life in those days. If you look carefully at the images you'll notice that the cowboys on the frame immediately preceding the one of the four on horseback where the mandolin appears are rangers - there are two "stars" from the badges apparent in the image. I had to comb the archives at the Library of Congress collection to get suitable images to match the lyrics and construct some of them from several. This show is not everyone's cup of tea for certain, but having had relatives in the cattle ranching business back in the late 1800's through the 1950's it rings a bell for me. I listened to my grand-dad tell stories from his life on the trails between Texas and New Mexico in the old days and stories his pop told him. The poem indeed reflects a mosaic of truths from frontier justice. Lots of situations arose where it simply wasn't possible to get to a place where a judge and courthouse and jury were available and frontier justice was meted out by the available cowboys and ranchers as they deemed fair.

The original transcription to music from Willa's poem was done by the old folk singer and superb guitarist Paul Siebel. I hear Paul sing this back in the early 60's. He never recorded the song, but a young David Bromberg was his assistant in those days and David was the first to actually record the song. EmmyLou and Waylon did the duet, but I didn't like their rendition nearly as much as David's which was much closer to what Paul did. I love EmmyLou and Waylon was great too, but on their rendition it's more like just going through the motions - not her best work IMHO. Paul just up and quit the music business. He's still alive and living on the east coast while mostly playing with his sail boat these days from what I hear. He modified the words a bit from Willa's poem for the lyrics. Willa used the Spanish Johnny character in her famous novel "The Song of The Lark."

Best regards,

Lin

[cagney123]

Terrific show. My cup of tea for sure. Not the usual "Look what I can do with a camera" kind of show, but a heartfelt bit of history. And the music rendition was perfect...not a showboat singer showcase, but a kind tune for

a long ago bit of history.

On a different note, hanging was an awful way to put somebody down. It can take over 20 minutes for a healthy guy to stop kicking...when pulled up from the ground like we see in the picture. Many a bad guy begged for the lynch mob to drop him over a bridge or build a gallows to snap his neck once he knew he was in for it. Of course that can go south too. I read one fella's last words were "Let er rip"...and they did just that but the drop managed to pull his head off.

Great images to go with the song. Nicely done.

Jeff

[Lin Evans]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks!!

Sometimes a ballad or a poem compels me to make a show like this. It's a shame that children today rarely understand or even know our own history. If seeing old real photos in context with a mosaic historical ballad can help generate a bit of interest in history, pehaps the future may somehow be affected for the better - at least I hope so.

Yes, it was a hard way to die - especially if there was no gallows. Many hangings were conducted by compelling the condemned to stand on horseback then swatting the horse. This small drop was almost never sufficient to snap the neck, but indeed a lingering and slow death from strangulation. It seems we had a fascination with hanging when a single bullet would have sufficed. I recall seeing even a supposedly rogue elephant named Mary which had killed a human handler hung from a crane in Tennessee. Strange thing the human mind....

Best regards,

Lin