"Delia" gained national prominence as "Delia's Gone" after the Bahaman Blind Blake (Blake Alphonso Higgs) recorded it in the 1950s. Almost every pop group of the "great folk scare" recorded it. Further, it crossed over into country and rock. Johnny Cash recorded it twice, once in about 1960 and once in 1993. Bob Dylan recorded it in 1992. In field recordings, it goes well back into the '20s and '30s, and it was recorded by jazz band leader Jimmy Gordon at that time. In published collections, you find versions in the collections of Odum and Johnson (1925 and earlier) and White (1928). It is no doubt older, dating to about 1900. White's informant said he learned it between 1900 and 1904.

As far as I know right now, the tag "Delia's" (or "Delia") "gone, one more round, Delia's gone" was strictly Caribbean before its introduction to the U.S. in the 1950s. Earlier in the U.S., the tag lines were "One more rounder gone," "All I done had done gone," "Poor gal, she gone," "She's dead, she's dead and gone," "All the friends I ever had are gone," etc.

John Cowley pointed out to me that Robert Winslow Gordon had reported to the Library of Congress in 1928 that he had tracked the "Cooney Killed Delia" song to its source in Yamacraw, a black neighborhood of Savannah, GA (see Good Friends and Bad Enemies, by Debora Kodish). Gordon never published anything on this, and I have no idea where his papers on this subject might be. It appears that the Library of Congress doesn't have them (from what they tell me), but I haven't yet been there or to the University of Oregon, where there are more Gordon papers, to check things out personally. Gordon said that he had interviewed and photographed Delia's mother and the detective that had investigated the case and that he had collected 28 different versions of the song and copied 50 pages of court records. I've not seen any of this, unless some of the court records I've found (fewer pages) overlap with Gordon's.

John Cowley suggested that, living in Georgia, I might be in a position to track Delia down again, so I started casually looking at versions in accessible sources. When I found the lines, "Nineteen hundred, Nineteen hundred and one, Death of po' Delia, Has jes' now begun," I went immediately to the library to scan the year 1901 in Savannah newspapers on microfilm. Two hours later, in mid-March, 1901, I was looking at an article stating that Moses Houston would go on trial tomorrow for the murder of Delia Green last Christmas Eve. I found other articles, one of them calling Moses "'Coony' Houston," and later the clemency file of Moses Houston in the Georgia State Archives. That file contains a summary, nearly a verbatim transcript, of testimony at Moses' trail. By the way, "Houston" is pronounced "howss'tun" in south Georgia, not "hews'tun."

Delia, age 14, was working as a scrub girl in the home of Willie West, on Harrison Street, across the street from Delia's home with her mother at 113 Ann Street. About four months earlier, Delia and Moses, also 14 but nearly 15, had started seeing one another. At the party late Christmas Eve night, around 10:30-11:00 or so, they were quarreling. Cooney appears to have been teasing Delia, claiming that she was his "wife," and talking about their sexual relationship. Delia replied that he was a lying son-of-a-bitch and that she was a lady. Willie West threatened to kick Cooney out of the house if he didn't behave. After that, there was no more fussing, but as the party was breaking up, and as Cooney was leaving, he took a 0.39-cal pistol and shot Delia in the left groin area. Willie West chased him out into the street and held him while police were called. Cooney said that he shot Delia because she called him a son of a bitch, and that he would do it again under the same conditions, but he offered to pay for Delia's doctor. Delia was taken across the street to her mother's house, where she was attended by a doctor, perhaps the same one that signed her death certificate, J. W. Ward. The doctor told newspaper reporters that she would not live, and at around 3 a.m. Christmas morning, 1900, Delia died. According to her death certificate, she was buring in Laurel Grove Cemetery, Savannah, but a recent inventory of tombstones in that cemetery does not contain a record of a marker for Delia Green.

Mose, as he came to be called in later life, was convicted of murder with a recommendation for mercy, due to his youth. He was sentenced to life at hard labor in the state penitentiary. He was probably eligible for parole after 7 years, but he served 13. He was paroled in 1913 by Governor John Marshall Slaton, the same governor whose commutation of Leo Frank's death sentence in the Mary Phagan case was followed by Frank's lynching by a mob and an end to Slaton's political career.

I know nothing of Mose's later life. I would like to find living relatives of Mose Houston and Delia Green, but so far I have not tracked any down.

John Garst