John Wilkes Booth
I read a post tonight in General Discussion: Just saw Lincoln.... ((((Spoiler Alert))): He got shot and killed.
I was born in 1952.
In 1955, Jim Bishop wrote a book entitled The Day Lincoln Was Shot that chronicled the activities of the President and his assassin on the days leading up to the event. The book must have been an offering in some book club, because from memories beginning in the days when I was old enough to read, I remember picking out that title on the book shelf at the end of the hall. Sometime after another Presidential assassination, when I was 14 or 17, I read the book. It told a very complex story.
Much later in life (after 1988) I encountered the song 'John Wilkes Booth' performed by Tony Rice. Rice had commissioned Mary Chapin Carpenter to write the song because of his "continued interest and fascination with the Abraham Lincoln assassination". The two principle characters are contrasted in the song, bound together by a conspiracy theory:
Tired old man when he won the war,
And he dreamed at night of his death by the hand
Of a bitter world and a faceless man
And he saw his body in a ghastly dream,
Draped in black while his widow screamed.
Two silver dollars on his eyelids lay.
Abraham Lincoln has died today.
Son of an actor in Maryland,
Bound for fortune on a gas-lit stage,
Bound to die at a tender age.
Washington to Baltimore,
He played the bills and he slept with whores,
And he burned inside with a hatred deep
For the man who caused the south to weep.
The only recorded versions of the song that I know about are by Tony Rice. The first is a live recording, with some great accompanying artists, including superb dobro player Rob Icces. The lyrics are a bit garbled. The second is the recorded version from the Tony Rice album Native American (so no live action, but clear lyrics).
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