Ellroy puts Spade Cooley into "Dick Contino's Blues," and I
think he
also appears in the L.A. Quartet. I have an album called
_Spadella:
The Essential Spade Cooley_, and here are some points from
the liner
notes, in case anyone was wondering about him:
He was born Donnell Clyde Cooley in 1910, and his family
moved to
California in 1931. He played the fiddle in a number of
bands, but
didn't hit it big until he got signed by Republic Pictures in
1937
because he looked like Roy Rogers. He played in Rogers' band
for a
while, and things started to get better and better. He was on
the
radio and in movies, and in 1943 he beat Bob Wills in a
battle of the
bands. He crowned himself the King of Western Swing. He got
more
popular, was in more movies, and in 1945 he married a second
time, to
one of his singers, Ella Mae Evans.
Towards the end of the '40s, he was host of a TV show in LA,
"The
Hoffman Hayride." But cowboy movies and western swing were
losing
appeal, and hurtin' cheatin' Nashville music was driving it
off the
charts. He signed with Decca and had another TV show,
playing
straighter music. In the early '50s, he was boozing and had
some
heart attacks. Decca dropped him in 1955, the next year his
TV show
got cancelled, and in 1957 he retired.
He had a good deal of money from real estate investments, but
he drank
more and got very jealous of his wife; he thought she was
having an
affair with Roy Rogers. In March 1961 he filed for divorce,
and on 3
April, in front of his daughter, he strangled and stomped
Ella Mae to
death. He got life, but would have been out on parole in
1970. In
late 1969, he was let out for three days to do a concert. He
played
it, got a standing ovation, walked off the stage and dropped
dead.
Bill
--
William Denton | Toronto, Canada | http://www.vex.net/~buff/ | Caveat lector.
"Let's keep the party polite."
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