Friday

                        Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“Our troubles began as a result of a short sighted immigration policy on the part of the Native Americans.”

                                           George Carlin

Back in 1941 the Library of Congress sent a man named Alan Lomax on a search for original folk music. He ended up near Clarksdale, Mississippi and heard a musician named McKinley Morganfield. This man was raised in a shack in the middle of a cotton field that was part of the Stovall Plantation. In 1941 the musician was either 26, 27 or 28 dependent upon which document you looked at. The musician was raised by his grandmother who called him “Muddy” because he loved to play in nearby muddy Deer Creek. He eventually took the name Muddy Water and then Waters. When Lomax heard Muddy perform along with other musicians like Son House and Robert Johnson he knew he had found an totally different genre of music and it became Delta Blues...Muddy's star began to rise. He moved to Chicago in 1943 and established a prodigious breeding ground for other blues musicians. He died in 1983 at the age of 70...give or take. Near every rock and roll and blues musician acknowledge that he is the father of present day rock and roll. Just before he died he said “The Rolling Stones stole my music but made me famous.” Mick Jagger among many, many others pay homage to this great man. He had 6 Grammy awards and is in three Hall of Fame including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Mick Jagger said “It will be a long time before another musician comes along that will have the effect on music that Muddy Waters did.”

This Date in History June 10

1864 Earlier US General William T. Sherman had begun an attack leaving Chattanooga, Tennessee headed for the Georgia coast. The problem with this was that the further he went from his supply bases at Chattanooga and Nashville the longer and more vulnerable his supply lines became. This was especially dangerous with CSA General Nathan Bedford Forrest in the area. Forrest was an exceptional cavalry leader and probably one of the top three or four this country ever produced. Anyway, Sherman sent US General Sturgis out of Memphis, Tennessee with an army of 5,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry to protect his supply lines. Forrest found out about the Sturgis expedition and lined up his troops on a railroad between Corinth and Tupelo to wait and see which direction Sturgis would be headed. It was Tupelo. Forrest carefully chose the point of interception as being a small place in a thick forest known as Brice’s Crossroad. Forrest prepared an ambush of the leading Yankee cavalry units knowing their infantry would come running. About 10:00AM his plan worked to perfection. The ambush was launched on the cavalry amid high humidity and temperatures in the high nineties and the Yankee infantry came running from about five miles away and arrived on scene totally exhausted. At this point Forrest had no problem routing Sturgis’ army even though he was outnumbered better than two to one. Forrest was never able to totally stop the supply line to Sherman but this engagement was his finest hour.

1692 On this date in the village of Salem in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a woman named Bridget Bishop was hanged as a witch. She was the first of several that met their fate in such a fashion for practicing witchcraft. This whole debacle began when a Presbyterian minister named Samuel Parris had a daughter and a niece that began having fits and other mysterious maladies. The good minister took the girls to a doctor who diagnosed their illnesses as being possessed by demons and everything went downhill from there. Upon hearing this Minister Parris went immediately to two of his slaves that he had bought in the West Indies and tried to beat them into admitting they were devil worshipers and they were the cause of the illness with his niece and daughter. It didn’t work. No matter how much he beat them, they would not admit to demon worship. That’s right folks; I said a Presbyterian minister that had slaves and believed in devil worship was a spiritual leader in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Anyway, it became neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend or any one else that had an axe to grind against another. And accusations flew. They established a court to try those people accused of witchcraft. That court was governed by Chief Justice William Stoughton. After several people were ordered hanged and executed the governor of Massachusetts stepped in and put a stop to this bullshit. This just goes to show you that the public can be coerced into believing anything no matter how ridiculous. It had happened before this time and after this time and it will happen yet again, depend on it.

1885 We have all heard the tales of Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday among others in conjunction with the settling of the American west. But there were other heroes and here is a small essay of one of them name Billy Daniels. Daniels gained his reputation because of the so-called “Bisbee Massacre”. What happened here was a gang of five led by Dan “Big Dan” Dowd rode into Bisbee, Arizona to rob the General store where they believed a payroll of $7,000 existed. He was early. The payroll had not yet arrived so he robbed what was there totaling between $700 and $3,000. For reasons unknown Big Dan and his gang indiscriminately murdered 8 people including a four year old boy and a woman. The newspapers called it the “Bisbee Massacre”. There was an immediate posse formed to look for these murderers but their trail was lost and they escaped and were forgotten all except for Billy Daniels, he did not forget. Daniels tracked down each and every member of the gang and put them in the Bisbee jail until all were captured and a gallows for five was erected. All of Big Dan’s gang was hanged at the same time. A few weeks later Billy Daniels and two others were tracking yet another outlaw through a narrow canyon in the Mule Mountains in Arizona when they walked into an Apache ambush. Daniel’s horse was killed immediately and fell pinning him to the ground. Daniels fought with his rifle as best he could but the wild-eyed Apaches swept down and killed him. The other two were able to escape and returned with a posse the next day and found Daniels very badly mutilated corpse and as you might suspect, the posse was unable to track down the Apaches.

Born today:

1904 Austrian composer Frederick Loewe. After hearing of the death of his lyricist Alan Jay Lerner he said “I guess we will be writing again with him up there. I just hope they have a well tuned piano.”

1922 US actress Judy Garland. She said “I was born at the age of 12 on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer back lot.” Judy was a dynamite entertainer but her life was rife with drugs and unhappiness. What a tragic life, worthy of everyone reading about.

1928 US illustrator Maurice Sendak. He said “There has to be more to life than having everything.” I don’t know what to say to that, Maurice.

        Thanks for listening  I can hardly wait until tomorrow