The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #42441   Message #1862836
Posted By: Artful Codger
18-Oct-06 - 10:39 PM
Thread Name: Songs about truly pissed-off people
Subject: RE: Songs about truly pissed-off people
"Abe Carmen", in Peter Bellamy's second version, packs a good bit of bile.

And there's Eubie Blake's "Hit the Road": a woman's instructions in no uncertain terms to her philandering husband.

"LONG LANKIN" was clearly pissed off when he did a slice-and-dice on his neighbor's young wife and baby.

A propos of gleeful bloodfests, in the version I learned of "With Her Head", "Gadzooks, she's gonna tell him off for having spilt her gore."

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WARNING: THREAD CREEP
The poem Abby quoted by "Black Bart, the Po8" (Charles Boles aka. Bolton) is genuine, but her comments echoed a couple common myths. Despite his self-chosen sobriquet, he was not really in the habit of leaving poems at his hold-ups. Over his entire eight year career as a stage robber, in which he is credited for at least 27 known robberies and attempts, he left poems at only his fourth and fifth heists; then he abandoned the affectation. His entire poetic corpus consists of just twelve lines. He once said that he contemplated leaving another poem at his last hold-up, but he may have been gilding the lily.

How pissed off he was is also a matter of conjecture. The poems seem intentionally designed to throw off the scent. He wrote the lines in different handwriting styles, and the doggerel and swearing helped create an impression of a man quite different from his San Francisco alter ego, an urbane mining executive (as he pretended to be) of sober habits. He couldn't hide his natural persona completely, though - he was unusually courteous when conducting hold-ups, and abstained from robbing stage passengers.

Furthermore, below that famous first poem, he added this note: "Driver, give my respects to our old friend, the other driver; but I really had a notion to hang my old disguise hat on his weather eye." There's more twinkle than spitfire in his tone.

His second poem is probably closer to the truth than the first:
"Here I lay me down to sleep
To wait the coming morrow
Perhaps success, perhaps defeat,
And everlasting sorrow.
Let come what will I'll try it on
My condition can't be worse;
But if there's money in the box
Tis munny in my purse."

Upon Bolton's release, a newsman asked him if he intended to write more verse. With characteristic wit, he replied something like, "Young man, didn't you hear me say I would commit no more crimes?"

His first poem has indeed been incorporated into songs. One example, "El Corrido de Bartolo Negro" appears in Katie Lee's Ten Thousand Goddam Cattle - though both the song and Lee's commentary are rife with errors. (Lee also quotes the poems in a curious composite form, with the first embedded in the middle of the second, the way they once appeared in a circular about the robberies and which was soon copied.)