"Don't Shoot Me, I'm a Lawyer!": The Lyrics

God bless the intertubes.  Five years ago I put up a post recounting the story of a vengeance killing in the lobby of a hotel in Shelbyville, Kentucky, in 1937, preserved in legend only by the response of bystander who got his moment in history by coining the immortal response:

Don't Shoot Me, I'm a Lawyer!

I learned the story along about 1961 in the most agreeable possible manner: in the form of a ballad scratched out almost on the spot by a memorialist with an eye to posterity.  Better, I heard about it from the most agreeable possible source: the author himself, George Hendon, a gentleman of the old school. witty and learned, the best possible company (actually a lawyer himself, at least by the time I met him, though he wore his professional identity lightly).  

Anyway, I lamented five years ago that I couldn't find the ballad anywhere on the web.  Ah, but a couple of weeks ago when I got a message from a certain "Uncledoc," who said that he remembered the song and would be happy to share.  An exchange of emails disclosed that "Uncledoc" was in fact a real doctor, practicing in Calhoun, Kentucky, on the Green River just a hop, skip and a jump from Madisonville.  Uncledoc let slip that he doesn't mind being confused with "Uncle Dave" Macon, last of the pre-radio country vocalists. He said that why yes, he would indeed be glad to share, and that if we could get together on a phone like, he would be happy to sing it to me.

We did, and he did: "just let me put the phone down here," he said.  Whereupon he not only sang the song but accompanied himself on the banjo.  It is my great disappointment that I can't provide an audio version here, but I do offer this transcription of the lyrics:

The harvest moon was shining on the streets of Shelbyville
The night that General Denhardt met his fate.
The Garr boys was a-gunnin', they were out to shoot to kill
And death and General Henry had a date.

Sad the end of soldier Henry, His military records clean
Now he lies beneath the sod, his soul has flown to God
But his body's in Bowling Green.

Pretty Verna Garr was lying, a-mouldering in her grave
in LaGrange 16 miles away,
And folks for miles around thought the general shot her down
Because she would not let him have his way.

Little did the general fear as he sipped his foaming beer
with lawyer Otte up from Louisville
That before the night had fled he'd be lying cold and dead
with Verna's secret locked within him still.

As the general reached the doorway of the old Armstrong Hotel
He stumbled and fell upon his face.
Roy Garr strode up beside him, smokin' pistol in his hand
And with one shot passed on to God the case.

“Don't shoot me I'm a lawyer!” cried attorney Rodes K. Myers
Down on his knees a-beggin' for his life.
His earnest words were heeded by doctor E.J. Garr
Who spared him for his kiddies and his wife

Now ladies don't you fear: if you've got a brother dear
That someday you may meet poor Verna's fate.
With lovin' ones around you to protect your womanhood
And the laws are what they are in this here state.

Seems to me there is a line missing in the second verse but Uncledoc says he thinks not (he says it is a chorus, not bound by the format for verses).  I told him it was a rotten shame that this wasn't on Youtube.  He said yes, well, he didn't know how to do that sort of thing, but that others have in fact posted some of his other stuff.  So to get a sense of what the lawyer song might sound like, listen here:

Here's a memorial plaque for the shooting, and for the old Armstrong Hotel.  FWIW, I've read a coule of summaries of the case and the general sure as hell sounds guilty to me.

Money and Politics: Aw Right Awready!

I've had more than enough remonstrances about my late discussion of money and politics--and awright awready, I know that money has been "the mother's milk of politics" for longer than I can remember. What about Harding (in a satchel, Mr. Doheney?)? Grant? Come to think of it, how about those sturdy Roman republicans (small-r) who scratched and clawed for high office at Rome so they could get the opportunity to go pillage a province?

In particular the Kentucky memorialists bring me back to the 1963 Kentucky gubernatorial campaign, between A. B. (“Happy”) Chandler and Edward T. ("Ned") Breathitt. Happy was one of the last of the old-time stem-winder country pols, but oddly enough it was Breathitt, the forgettable and colorless technocrat, who got to claim the most memorable mot of he season. Okay, not Breathitt; rather, the mmorable d Prichard, who served as Breathitt’s Karl Rove. Prichard himself was at least as colorful as Chandler. Apparently Chandler had a son-in-law, one James J. Lewis, whose job was to work the campaign fuunding sources. The chronicler takes up the story:

This was surely no novelty in Kentucky, but the charge took on a comic character when Prichard shouted that Chandler was riding the state insisting that people “fill the sack for Jimmy Jack!” It became one of those campaign gimmicks which … could be counted on for a laugh, and the Breathitt speakers never missed a chance to “Fill the sack for Jimmy Jack!” … It was part demagoguery, part buffoonery, part hyperbole … it was also … effective.

--John Ed Pearce, Divide and Dissent: Kentucky Politics, 1930-1963 213 (available (here))

Footnote: It doesn’t seem to be in Pearce’s book, but as I recall, there was a minor candidate in the same race whose slogan was “Put the jam on the lower shelf, where the little guy can reach it!” We just don’t make voters like that any more.