As I was looking for the possible origins of the creepy murder ballad sung by Johnny Cash – Delia’s Gone – I found this interesting forum where it seems one fellow may have found the origin.
Delia, age 14, was working as a scrub girl in the home of Willie West, on Harrison Street, across the street from Delia’s home with her mother at 113 Ann Street. About four months earlier, Delia and Moses, also 14 but nearly 15, had started seeing one another. At the party late Christmas Eve night, around 10:30-11:00 or so, they were quarreling. Cooney appears to have been teasing Delia, claiming that she was his “wife,” and talking about their sexual relationship. Delia replied that he was a lying son-of-a-bitch and that she was a lady. Willie West threatened to kick Cooney out of the house if he didn’t behave. After that, there was no more fussing, but as the party was breaking up, and as Cooney was leaving, he took a 0.39-cal pistol and shot Delia in the left groin area. Willie West chased him out into the street and held him while police were called. Cooney said that he shot Delia because she called him a son of a bitch, and that he would do it again under the same conditions, but he offered to pay for Delia’s doctor. Delia was taken across the street to her mother’s house, where she was attended by a doctor, perhaps the same one that signed her death certificate, J. W. Ward. The doctor told newspaper reporters that she would not live, and at around 3 a.m. Christmas morning, 1900, Delia died. According to her death certificate, she was buring in Laurel Grove Cemetery, Savannah, but a recent inventory of tombstones in that cemetery does not contain a record of a marker for Delia Green.
Click on the link above to go directly to the forum thread where you can read more about some of the artists that recorded this music and about the search for Delia.
Tags: music
I’m not a country music fan but I am a Johnny Cash fan. It seems like anything he sings is the standard for that song as far as I am concerned. I hadn’t heard his “Delia.” I always thought that was an old English folk ballad. Thanks for the history.