CHARLES GITEAU

Created on 01/03/2007
Latest update on 17/11/2023

Artist: Kelly Harrell & the Virginia String Band
Author: Kelly Harrell
Label: Victor
Year: 1927

With fiddler Posey Rorer who was also part of Charlie Poole's North Carolina Ramblers. Harrell didn't play an instrument so he always needed a band, which cost him his contract with Victor when the Depression set in. Ralph Peer registered Charles Giteau under Kelly's name since he'd learned the tune to be much older than the Garfield murder, while no one else claimed authorship.

Covers:

1928:

Bascom Lamar Lunsford

2002:

Kossoy Sisters

2006:

Meindert Talma & The Negroes [as Charles Guiteau]

Charles Guiteau was President James Garfield's murderer in 1881. He was an ex member of the Oneida Community, a religious sect advocating free love. He was expulgated for following those rules all too strictly. Afterwards he failed starting a newspaper based upon the Oneida canon (The Daily Theocrat), obtained a law licence and started an unsuccessful law-firm in Chicago. A religious book he wrote (The Truth) seemed entirely plagiarized from the work of Oneida founder John Noyes and then he wrote a speech supporting presidential candidate James Garfield. Guiteau was convinced said speech won Garfield the 1880 election, so he started stalking the President, fishing embarrassingly for ambassadorship in Europe. When he finally was asked never to show up again, in or around the White House, he cracked. Bought himself a revolver, a special silver one (to look good when stalled in the museum they would obviously open after the murder), got his shoes shined, ordered a cab to send him to prison once his fatal deed committed and shot the President twice. Guiteau was convicted and hanged in 1882, in his wake a delighted parade of papparazzi, playwrites, songsmiths and even Harry Houdini. One of the latter's better tricks was to escape from Charles Guiteau's former prison cell. No wonder Kelly Harrell's wasn't the only song re-telling this succulent murder case; Johnny Cash's Mister Garfield ('65) was another one.

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