Spade_Cooley

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Spade Cooley Spade Cooley Spade Cooley Birth name Also known as Born Origin Died Genre(s) Occupation(s) Donnell Clyde Cooley King of Western Swing December 17, 1910(1910-12-17) Pack Saddle Creek, Oklahoma November 23, 1969 (aged 58) Western Swing Big band leader Actor Television personality Donnell Clyde ’Spade’ Cooley (December 17, 1910 – November 23, 1969) was an American Western Swing musician, big band leader, actor, and television personality. His career ended when he was arrested and convicted for the murder of his second wife, Ella Mae Evans.[1] Show business career One of the groups which played at the Venice Pier Ballroom was run by Jimmy Wakely and they had Spade Cooley on fiddle. Several thousand dancers would turn out on Saturday night to swing and hop. "The hoards of people and jitterbuggers loved him." When Jimmy Wakely got a movie contract at Universal, that had Spade replacing Jimmy as head of the band.[2] To capitalize on the success of the Bob Wills/Tommy Duncan pairing, Cooley hired vocalist Tex Williams who was capable of the mellow deep baritone sounds made popular by Duncan. Cooley’s eighteen-month engagement at Santa Monica’s Venice Pier Ballroom was record-breaking for the early half of the 1940s. His "Shame On You," released on Columbia’s OKeh label, was recorded in December of 1944, and was No. 1 on the country charts for two months.[1] "Shame on You" was the first in an unbroken string of six Top Ten singles including "Detour" and "You Can’t Break My Heart." Cooley appeared in thirty-eight westerns, both in bit parts and as a stand in for cowboy actor Roy Rogers. He also hosted a Los Angeles based syndicated television show from 1949 until 1959. The Hoffman Hayride was so popular that an estimated 75 percent of all televisions in the L.A. area were tuned into the show each Saturday night. In 1950 Cooley had significant roles in several films, and starred in two film shorts: "King of Western Swing" and "Spade Cooley & His Orchestra." After a "Battle of the Bands" with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys at the Venice Pier Ballroom, which Cooley won, he began to promote himself as the "King of Western Swing."[3] Evidently Western swing, not used prior to 1942 for this style of music, was a term thought up by Cooley’s then promoter, Forman Phillips.[4] Following Waylon Jennings’ 1975 #1 hit, "Bob Wills Is Still The King," Wills’s fans transferred the title "King" to Wills. Cooley’s sound was closer to, and isolated in the style of, conventional big band danceoriented pop orchestras. Whereas Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys used far more diverse fusions of multi-genres, through which they popularized, defined, and evolved what is now recognized as true Western Swing. This diversity allowed for Wills to reach wider audiences, as was found in Cain’s Ballroom culture. Cooley’s specialized, ’city sound’ of the period popular culture accounts for his work having been popular with limited mainstream audiences during his 1940s and 1950s heyday, but at the same time not having enjoyed the diverse and continuing popularity of Wills. Murder of Ella Mae Evans In 1961, his wife expressed her wish to be divorced, and a drunken Cooley responded by beating her and stomping on her body until she died. During the trial Cooley suffered a heart attack while he was delivered his prison sentence. After serving eight years of his 1 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Selected Discography. Date 1941 05/03/46 05/03/46 06/06/46 06/06/46 04/25/47 01/31/47 05/09/47 05/29/52 Title Tell Me Why Oklahoma Stomp Steel Guitar Rag Spadella Swingin’ The Devil’s Dream All Aboard For Oklahoma Minuet In Swing You Can’t Take Texas Out Of Me One Sweet Letter From You Label Spade Cooley Westernair 801 Columbia 20573 Columbia 39054 Columbia 37585 Columbia 28253 RCA 20-2552 RCA 20-22181 RCA 20-3547 Decca 28344 Top 40 Hits.[5] Year 1945 1945 1945 1946 1946 1947 Position 1 8 4 2 3 4 Title Shame On You A Pair Of Broken Hearts I’ve Taken All I’m Gonna Take From You Detour You Can’t Break My Heart Crazy ’Cause I Love You Label OKeh 6731 " OKeh 6746 Columbia 36935 " Columbia 37058 founding member of the rock band Drive-By Truckers. Referenced in one of the classic 39 Honeymooners episodes (from Art ’Ed Norton’ Carney to Jackie ’Ralph Kramden’ Gleason): "They wouldn’t-a won that except some guy slipped in a Spade Cooley record." Ry Cooder’s 2008 album ’I, Flathead’ features a reference to Spade Cooley on the track ’Steel Guitar Heaven’ ("There ain’t no bosses up in heaven / I heard Spade Cooley didn’t make the grade"), as well as a track named ’Spayed Kooley’, in which Spayed Kooley is the name of the singer’s dog. sentence, the state of California gave him a temporary furlough in order to play a benefit concert for the Deputy Sheriffs Association of Alameda County at the Paramount Theater in Oakland. After the performance, he suffered a fatal heart attack in the backstage area. Discography In popular culture John Gilmore has written an in-depth portrait of Spade Cooley’s life and tragic end in Shame on You, a segment of Gilmore’s nonfiction work, L.A. Despair. Cooley is a recurring character in James Ellroy’s fiction, including in the story Dick Contino’s Blues, which appeared in issue number 46 of Granta magazine (Winter 1994) and was anthologized in Hollywood Nocturnes. It has been reported that Dennis Quaid plans to make a bio-pic about Cooley. Spade Cooley is the grandfather of Mike Cooley, singer, guitarist, song writer and References [1] ^ Crimelibrary.com [2] L.A. Despair: A Landscape of Crimes & Bad Times. John Gilmore. 2005. Amok Books. Page 313. ISBN 9781878923165 ISBN-10: 1878923161 [3] Komorowski, Spade Cooley, p. 4: "It was around this time [1942] that Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys come out West, and when Cooley fell out with Phillips, the promoter sacked him and hired Bob Wills in his place. A cocksure Cooley 2 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia demanded a ’Battle of The Bands’ before he vacated the Venice Pier, and in a contest held over two weekends, emerged the undisputed winner. He promptly proclaimed himself the ’King of Western Swing’, the first time the term was used to describe this style of music, and it was one that stuck." [4] Logsdon, "The Cowboy’s Bawdy Music," p.137: "The term ’western swing’ was not used until Foreman Phillips, a promoter-disc jockey, used it to describe Spade Cooley in 1942." [5] Whitburn, The Billboard Book of Top 40 Country Hits, p. 89. Spade Cooley • Allmusic • Spade Cooley at the Internet Movie Database • A Swing King Reemerges, LA Times article • Complete Discography • Shame on You • Podcast - the life of Spade Cooley (with song samples) • Spade Cooley at Bakersfield Sound • Space Cooley at B-Westerns • Spade Cooley... rich, famous and a murderer • Spade Cooley at Find A Grave Persondata NAME Cooley, Spade ALTERNATIVE Cooley, Donnell Clyde NAMES SHORT Big band leader, Actor, DESCRIPTION Television personality DATE OF BIRTH PLACE OF BIRTH DATE OF DEATH PLACE OF DEATH December 17, 1910 Pack Saddle Creek, Oklahoma November 23, 1969 Bibliography • Logsdon, Guy. "The Cowboy’s Bawdy Music." The Cowboy: Six-Shooters, Songs, and Sex (pp. 139-138) edited by Charles W. Harris and Buck Rainey. University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8061-1341-3 • Komorowski, Adam. Spade Cooley: Swingin’ The Devil’s Dream. (Proper PVCD 127, 2003) booklet. • Whitburn, Joel. The Billboard Book of Top 40 Country Hits. Billboard Books, 2006. ISBN 0-8230-8291-1 External links • Spade Cooley Biography at CMT.com Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spade_Cooley" Categories: 1910 births, 1969 deaths, Americans convicted of murder, American country musicians, American country singers, Musicians from Oklahoma, Western swing performers, RCA Victor Records artists, Charly Records artists, Deaths from myocardial infarction, People convicted of murder by California, American people who died in prison custody, Prisoners who died in California detention This page was last modified on 19 May 2009, at 19:03 (UTC). All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) 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