Part 2 of St Louis folklore and ghosts from the research of Devil At The Confluence.

In the book, Devil At The Confluence, the stories behind the songs from St Louis are revealed. But not all stories had surviving songs for them and so for this week of Halloween there will be a story from the leftover research of the book. This story concerns a haunting event that occurred around the time of the "Frankie And Johnny" incident in old St Louis.

The Bloody Third

The Third District police station in the 1890s was famous for being the headquarters of law and order in the most dangerous area of St Louis: The Bloody Third. The district encompassed Kerry Patch, Wild Cat Chute and the saloon playgrounds for the roustabouts known as Robber's Roost and The Bucket Of Blood. The characters of the bad part of town included members of the notorious gangs like the Limehouse gang. In the later 1800s the old station building had seen many murderers and criminals of all sorts within its doors and the walls had stories that could make a serial killer squeamish. But one story was beyond all of the rest and was discussed only once and afterwards denied by everyone as bunk.

Station Clerk Officer Daly, reported that many nights after midnight the sound of rushing water could be heard followed by a rumbling sound that would rattle the old windows. The sound of water flooding the building was especially frightening for the incarcerated locked in their cells and the policemen on duty inside of the barred and secured quarters.

Strange voices and blood-curdling moans accompanying a dragging sound along the asphalt flooring would echo in the halls. Clerk Daley had confided this to a reporter. Other officers had heard the noises but scoffed away the idea that the station was haunted.  But that was only what they would say on the record.

Daley had let slip the details of a story that was never discussed in the open. A story of a vow of vengeance that was made by one of the meanest criminals in the city. A notorious street tough who had spent more nights inside of a cell than he had spent outside of one. He had been brought in drunk and belligerent a couple of months before and locked up for the night. But this was not typical of the repeat offender, this time was without the usual tooth-and-nail combat with the arresting officers.

"Some day, maybe after I'm dead, I'll get revenge." he said as he was thrown into the cell ending his spree that night that typically would have involved someone getting carved up by his razor. The following morning when the turnkey came to awaken him, he was dead. And it was that following night that the noises began. 

Other than the clerk's off-record conversation, no mention of these incidents were ever made. The station house was sold years later and no further reports of noises were made by the new tenants.

Devil At The Confluence is available from all the better St Louis bookstores including The Central West End and Downtown locations of Left Bank Books.

Antique St Louis folklore and ghosts from the research of Devil At The Confluence.

The early blues music of America was primarily a folk music in that it was musical folklore. In the book Devil At The Confluence the stories and places behind the songs from St Louis are revealed. But not all stories had surviving songs for them and so for this week of Halloween this blog will publish a series of the folklore stories from the leftover research of the book.

The blues were called the Devil's music mainly by the folks who didn't like the music. And that made the folks who played it, enjoy it even more - knowing it was bothersome to the older generation or to the people who felt that it was beneath them. In St Louis, the taboo themes of ghosts, violence, death and other subjects were sometimes the subjects for songs.

These first posts are not songs but are St Louis legends concerning graveyards.

LOUIS JORDAN'S GRAVE

This story can only be qualified as trivia even though it concerns one of the biggest names in pre-rock and roll music. It was not included in the book because Louis Jordan is not a St Louisan and his career was after World War II, but it is a fact that his grave is in St Louis.

Louis Jordan was born in Arkansas in 1908.  He was married five times and his fifth wife, Martha, was a showgirl from St Louis who he had met in New York when she was performing at a club there. Louis had performed in St Louis many times and was friends with many of the local musicians. In 1966 Louis and Martha were married and lived at his home in Los Angeles. He died in 1975, and his body was brought to St Louis to be buried in Martha's family grave in the county.

The quiet graveyard is outside of the city limits, marked with a nameless stone and fulfills Louis' promise made in 1941:

"I'm gonna move way out on the outskirts of town. I don't want nobody, oooh, always hangin' around."

STAGGERLEE'S GRAVEYARD DEAL

In his research of folklore of St Louis, Judge Nathan Young recorded the unwritten tale of Staggerlee who had traded his soul to the Devil in exchange for gambling luck. It happened very late one night when a young man named Lee Shelton walked past the old graveyard at Grand and Laclede Avenue. He had lost all of his money in a crap game and was disappointed with his life of bad luck.

Approaching the cemetery gate, a voice from out of the darkness asked, "What's your touble?"

Startled but not frightened, Staggerlee looked up at the figure of a man in a stetson hat just inside of the graveyard. The hat was very expensive looking and Staggerlee assumed the man to be wealthy. Stag was a natural born gambler and a hustler and was always looking for an easy mark. "I've got one more silver dollar left and I was looking for a game. I'm on a losing streak so if you have some dice this may be your lucky night." 

"Perhaps." The dark shadow replied, "Or it could be a very lucky night for you."

The figure in the graveyard was the Devil of course, and the game turned out to be the legendary Faustian bargain for Staggerlee's soul. Ironically, the site where folklore says that Staggerlee surrendered his mortal soul and his moral integrity in exchange for unlimited good luck and worldly pleasures is now the property of St Louis University.

There were no notes from Mr Young's research, but the corner in the early 1900s was a ballpark for the St Louis Terriers baseball team. It seemed far-fetched that there was ever a graveyard there, but records exist showing that in the mid-1800s the ground had been a small German Methodist cemetery.

Devil At The Confluence is available from all the better St Louis bookstores and the Missouri History Museum as well as BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups.

The book Devil At The Confluence profiles the musicians of St Louis and the songs they wrote about events in St Louis. Blues music's peak of popularity was the late 1920s and 1930s, and in the late summer and early fall of 1927, St Louis and its musicians had plenty of reasons to sing the blues.

On August 1, 1927 the Mississippi river flood crest reached the confluence of the Mississippi at St. Louis and pushed the river to a new record crest. The flood and the hardships caused by it inspired Charley Patton, Memphis Minnie and Blind Lemon Jefferson to make music about the event. St Louis bluesman Lonnie Johnson recorded “South Bound Water” within days of the flood, and later he recorded “Backwater Blues” and “Broken Levee Blues.” Bessie Mae Smith made “High Water Blues” as her response to the flood that year.

On the last days of September of that year a tornado struck St. Louis killing nearly a hundred people in the few minutes that it tore through the city and Johnson again recorded a song about the disaster within a week afterwards. 

“St. Louis Cyclone Blues”

"I was sitting in my kitchen, looking way out across the sky, I was sitting in my kitchen, looking way out across the sky. I thought the world was ending. I started in to cry.

The wind was howling, the buildings beginning to fall, wind was howling, the buildings begin to fall. I seen that mean old twister coming, just like a cannonball.

The world was black as midnight, I never heard such a noise before, world was black as midnight, I never heard such a noise before. Sounded like a million lions, when they turn loose their roar.

Oh, people was screaming, and running every which away, people was screaming, and running every which away. Lord have mercy on our poor people! I fell down on my knees, I started in to pray.

The shack where we were living, she reeled and rocked but never fell, the shack where we were living, she reeled and rocked but never fell. Lord, Have mercy, how the cyclone spared us, nobody but the Lord can tell."

Four songs were released about the event including Reverend J. M. Gates' sermon titled “God’s Wrath In The St. Louis Cyclone,” Elzadie Robinson, who did a version of Lonnie’s “St. Louis Cyclone Blues” and St Louis' Luella Miller who described the plight of the survivors in her song, “Tornado Groan.”

“Lightning flashing, wind rambled round my door. Lightning flashing, wind rambled round my door.

Ever since that time, I haven’t seen my house no more.

It ruined my clothes, blowed my bed away. It ruined my clothes, blowed my bed away.

I ain’t got no place to lay my worried head.”

Thousands turned out for the Veiled Prophet parade in October of 1927 despite it being postponed because of the tragedy. One float was constructed to represent the city of St Louis rising from the ruins.

(Photo from usgennet.org)

Duncan and Brady

There was an enthusiastic crowd at the Big Read event over the weekend and beautiful weather. I noted that the Virginia Publishing booth at the fair was less than a block from the site of Harry Duncan's hanging at the St Louis County courthouse over a hundred years ago. 

In fact, it was 120 years and two days ago when Harry Duncan shot and killed Officer James Brady in St. Louis. The story is in the book, Devil At The Confluence and I discussed it with a number of the people who came to get a copy. The tale of the incident developed into a song and became an early country, or hillbilly standard. Here is the first recording of it: 

"Been On The Job Too Long" by Wilmer Watts and the Lonely Eagles 

from 1930 [at Juneberry78s.com]

Over the years there have been many songs that were created in St Louis and many of them became international standards. It's important to notice that some of the songs became jazz titles or blues or Tin Pan Alley classics or, like the ballad of Duncan and Brady, folk/country classics. St. Louis' music cannot be categorized within a single style or genre because St Louis has always been the city of confluence. 

Devil At The Confluence is available at

LEFT BANK BOOKS

SUBTERRANEAN BOOKS

BORDERS

THE ILLUSTRATED ART MUSEUM

THE ARCHIVE

CHESTERFIELD ARTS

VIRGINIA PUBLISHING

and Amazon.

The 2010 Big Read

Devil At The Confluence author Kevin Belford will be at the Virginia Publishing table this weekend at the St Louis Big Read festival in Clayton. Mo., October 9 from 9am to 4pm. The book festival is a free event with author readings, panel discussions, book signings, workshops, storytelling, and hands-on activities. Joining the Big Read will be the Greater St. Louis Book Fair with new and used books for sale. 

The Big Read takes place on N. Central Ave. between Forsyth Blvd. and Maryland Ave. in Downtown Clayton, MO.

http://www.bigreadfestival.com/

The Riverfront Times Best of St Louis awards the Best Book by a Local Author to Devil at the Confluence by Kevin Belford.

Best Book by a Local Author - Devil at the Confluence by Kevin Belford.

"Maybe St. Louis will finally get its due as the music town that it always was. And if you aren't aware that St. Louis was an influential music city, you're not alone. Our city's musical history has not been well documented — until now. Last year Kevin Belford published Devil at the Confluence, a masterfully illustrated and documented book about the history of St. Louis blues. A graphic artist by trade, Belford lovingly lays out each beautiful printed page like a work of art. The book is dense with anecdotes and history about the bluesmen and -women who made St. Louis their home. If you have the slightest interest in our city's musical legacy, get a copy of Devil at the Confluence — it is quite possibly one of the most beautiful history books you'll ever find."

Nat Hentoff gets the St Louis blues.

Mr. Nat Hentoff is one of the founding fathers of jazz scholarship. He is a pioneer of jazz history, appreciation and journalism. (And for those stubborn "The blues aren't jazz" folks, Hentoff recorded sessions with Otis Spann, Memphis Slim and Lightnin’ Hopkins. So he's got major blues cred as well.) Hentoff knows all about, and is a part of, American jazz and blues music history. He was there. He was on the front lines as a correspondent. Starting out as associate editor of Down Beat magazine in the 1950s, he has published many books on jazz, biographies and novels, as well as a career of journalism and critique at the Washington Post, the Village Voice, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the New Republic, Commonweal, the Atlantic and more than 25 years on staff at the New Yorker. 

When I began to dig up information on the original St Louis blues musicians, I found that many area artists were not included in the story of American music. In their time their music was very popular and their styles were influential but of the few names from the city that did get mentioned, they were not listed as St Louisans. The history of St Louis' arts had not been documented. The facts about the St Louis artists weren't available to music writers and fans and so the American music story was told without identifying them or their city.

Artists from places like New Orleans, Memphis, or Chicago were written about and categorized by the cities they lived in and those cities were credited with the art that their resident creatives made.

So that's what made me realize that a book had to be made. St Louis, the artists and the cultural achievements - and the familial bond between all of them - were unrecognized and unrepresented in history.

And now comes Mr Hentoff's insightful review of Devil At The Confluence in October's JazzTimes magazine where he says, "Never before have I learned so much about St. Louis’ powerful and influential role in the blues and American music." 

Thank you, sir. It's both wonderful and amusing that he appreciates the book Devil At The Confluence as an heirloom that he is thinking of putting in his will, but most importantly, his appreciation is affirmation of what I realized about St Louis and why I created a book. 

And it is something that St Louisans (and many visitors) understand: the cultural arts of the area are a part of a strong legacy that is vibrantly alive today with progressive creativity.

So often St Louisans wonder why the amazing talent that we have appreciated for generations and can be found in all corners of the city every day isn't recognized in the national arena.

Well, the book answers that question - it's because of the Devil at the Confluence.

And now, thanks to Mr Hentoff, that just might change.