American Pastimes features the classic folk tale of Duncan & Brady

This week American Pastimes features the true but fabled tale of “Duncan & Brady”. In October 1880, Patrolman James Brady was shot and killed while responding to a barroom brawl at the Charles Starkes Saloon in the red-light district of St. Louis, Missouri. Harry Duncan, a boot-black, porter and actor/singer, was arrested and convicted of the crime. The killing escalated racial tensions within the city and violence erupted. Sentenced to hang, Duncan fought the decision with a series of appeals that took the case all the way to the United States Supreme Court. His attorney, Walter Moran Farmer presented his case before the Court. It was the first time that an African-American attorney argued a case before the Supreme Court. The appeal was denied and Duncan was executed by hanging in July 1894. Up until the end Duncan continued to claim that saloon owner Starkes was the killer.

Probably within weeks of the shooting, local musicians were singing about the news event, and the folkloric evolution of the tale began. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that initial versions of the song placed the story in the context of ongoing police harassment of African-Americans in a southern city. But as the song found its way to different communities and musicians, it took on new features, specifics, and meaning. With each rendition Duncan’s occupation shifted; from bartender to gambler to grocery owner to lineman. For the most part, Brady always remained a police officer (with the “shinin’ star”), and in its most popular widespread versions, the song remained a simple matter of good riddance to a corrupt cop. This is evident in the versions collected in the south by Dorothy Scarborough for her 1925 book On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs, and in Nebraska by Carl Sandburg for his 1927 book American Songbag:

“Duncan and his brother was playin’ pool
When in comes Brady actin’ the fool.”

Sandburg’s version ends by asking:

“Brady Brady where you at?
“Struttin’ in hell with his Stetson hat.”

The earliest known recording of the story was made in 1929 by Wilmer Watts & the Lonely Eagles. Not much is known about Watts other than he was from the North Carolina Piedmont region. Some of his other songs, such as ‘Cotton Mill Blues’, suggest that he worked the cotton mills. His version of ‘Been on the Job Too Long’ reverses the names and roles: Duncan is the sheriff and Brady a working man; a lineman (possibly a reference to electric or telephone lines, or railroad, but more likely in this context a mill worker) who “had been on the job too long” and gets killed by the sheriff. Watts may have been subtly commenting on local labor troubles which were common in the Piedmont during the early 20th century as mill owners used the local police to fight the union organizers.

The policeman though, in most versions remains the unsympathetic character, even in death. His bad nature is often reinforced by the response of other secondary characters to his death. Music collector Paul Clayton recorded this verse:

“Brady, Brady, was a big fat man;
The doctor caught a hold of Sheriff Brady's hand,
Felt for the pulse and then he said,
I believe to my soul Sheriff Brady is dead.
Been on the job too long.”

Even Mrs. Brady’s reaction is presented with ambivalence, while at the same time presenting her as a sympathetic character. When told of her husband’s demise in some versions:

“She up and started singing his mourning song.
Runnin’ round town, and crying up and down
In an old Mother Hubbard and a blue night-gown
SHE’D been on the job too long.”

In yet another version, Mrs. Brady takes the news of his death with tepid calmness and remarks to their children, "We’ll all draw a pension when your daddy dies." In that version it’s only the prostitutes who react with real emotion to his demise:

"Shufflin' up the street
In they sweet little shimmies
And they black-stockin' feet.
Been OFF the job too long.”

Brady's premature retirement at the hands of Duncan had allowed the working girls to return to their livelihood.

There are quite literally hundreds of recorded versions of this story. As accurate recollections of a historic event, the vast majority fail. But as reflections of the human experience and lessons in the social conditions throughout America in the late 19th and early 20th century, they more than succeed.

American Pastimes features versions performed by Leadybelly, the Johnson Mountain Boys, Martin Simpson, and Dave Van Ronk.

Photo: Wilmer Watts.

For more detailed information: John Russell David's Ph.D. dissertation "Tragedy in Ragtime: Black Folktales from St. Louis" (St. Louis University, 1976); the Mudcat Cafe folk music website (mudcat.org); and http://www.mywire.com/a/African-American-National-Biography-HarryDuncan.