Sandburg's American Songbag (1927), says a Nebraska-born woman, practicing law in Chicago, gave 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, another Chicago attorney, heard it from Omaha railroad men. A second text came from the R.W. Gordon collection. Sandburg say, "the snarl of the underworld, the hazards of those street corners and alleys 'where any moment may be your next,' are in the brawling of this Brady reminiscence."
-Joe Offer-