Tags
#1 single, 1970s, Al Capone syndicate, Chicago police, fictional, Gold record, Mitch Murray, Music, One Hit Wonder, Paper Lace, Peter Callander, Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, shootout
The Night Chicago Died (Phillips/Mercury, 1974)
The Night Chicago Died is a song by the British group Paper Lace, written by Peter Callander and Mitch Murray. The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for one week in 1974, reached number 3 in the UK charts, and number 2 in Canada. It is about a fictional shoot-out between the Chicago Police and members of the Al Capone Syndicate. The narrator retells his mother’s anguish while awaiting news of the fate of her husband, a Chicago policeman. The Night Chicago Died was Paper Lace’s follow up single to Billy Don’t Be a Hero, a #1 hit in the U.K. but virtually unheard in the U.S. where Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods’ cover reached #1. Callander and Murray wrote both songs. The U.S. single received a Gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America, signifying sales of at least half a million copies. Though the song’s story is set in the United States, Paper Lace were unable to perform the song live in the U.S. at the height of its popularity because of contractual issues.
The “accuracy” of this song is an interesting note in “history.” The Night Chicago Died is about a shoot-out between the Chicago Police and gangsters tied to Al Capone. It was inspired by the real-life Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, although that involved Capone’s men killing seven of Bugsy Moran’s gang members and had nothing to do with the police. No confrontation large enough to leave around one hundred police deaths ever happened. The song’s events supposedly take place “on the East Side of Chicago”. Chicago has three commonly referred-to regions: the North Side, the West Side and the South Side. There is no East Side, as Lake Michigan is immediately east of Downtown Chicago. While there is an area of Chicago known as “East Side”, it is a neighborhood on the Far South Side on the Illinois/Indiana state line. East Side is also several miles away from where Capone lived on Prairie Avenue in Chicago. Furthermore, in the 1920s, East Side was known for being a quiet, residential, and predominantly Eastern European neighborhood—a sharp contrast from the site of the bloodbath described in the song. Songwriters Peter Callender and Mitch Murray said in interviews (most notably on Beat Club shortly after the song’s smash success) that they had never been to Chicago before that time, and that their knowledge of the city and that period of its history had been based on gangster films. (Callender defended his interpretation of Chicago’s geography by saying, “There’s an East Side of everywhere!”)
As reported by History.com: “…in England there were at least a few young men that didn’t have all the facts straight, and in the 1970s their pop group from Nottingham turned their romantic misunderstanding of American history into a historically dubious yet gloriously catchy hit record. Though it was never intended for the American market, Paper Lace’s “The Night Chicago Died” crossed the Atlantic and became a #1 hit on the U.S. pop charts…”
Paper Lace sent the song to the mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, who greatly disliked it. A member of Daley’s staff is quoted as saying that Paper Lace should “jump in the Chicago River, placing your heads under water three times and surfacing twice. Pray tell us, are you nuts?”