On September 6,1901, President William McKinley, barely six months into his second term, had just finished a speech in Buffalo, New York, and waa standing in the receiving line, when Leon Czolgosz, a young anarchist drew an Iver Johnson pistol, and shot the President in the abdomen. Inspite of what the songs say, McKinley was not taken to Washington, but to a hospital in Buffalo. There he developed peritonitis, and on Septemberl4, he died, leaving Vice President Theodore Roosevelt (or as Senator Mark Hanna called him That Damn Cowboy) to become President. The song about the assassination became widespread at the height of the paranoia about radicals with funny sounding foreign names. This version is by Ernest Stoneman (1893-1968) of Galax, Virginia, fiddler Kahle Brewer. (1904-89), and Stoneman's brother-in-law Bolen Frost (1904-89).
Ernest V. Stonemanand his Dixie Mountaineers: Ernest Stoneman, vocal, harmonica, guitar; Kahle Brewer, fiddle; Bolen Frost, banjo.
New York NY 4/25/28 Edison52299
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