By Randal C. Hill
In England, Mitch Murray and Peter Callander were pop-music creators responsible for several best-selling singles. But these partners didn’t have their facts straight with “The Night Chicago Died,” which breathlessly—and erroneously—told of a Chicago gun battle with Al Capone’s gang, and a heroic cop who miraculously survived an ordeal that killed 100 officers. (Gangs sometimes had shootouts with each other but not with the law, and no gunfight ever involved 100 cops.)
“The Night Chicago Died” was unlike any other successful 45 record. Rather than being offered an instrumental lead-in followed by a vocal, we were instead snapped to attention by a throbbing drumbeat, a shrieking synthesizer that simulated wailing police sirens, and a passionate spoken introduction by Paper Lace lead singer Phil Wright:
Daddy was a cop // On the east side of Chicago
Back in the USA // Back in the bad old days
Paper Lace was formed in 1967 in Nottingham, the home of the Robin Hood legend and at one time the cloth- and paper lace-making capital of the world (hence the band’s name). The band’s gloriously catchy (but highly inaccurate) hit was originally conceived to be a UK-only release before Mercury Records honchos in America decided that it had hit potential here—which it did, reaching the peak of the Billboard charts.
Related: Musical Blast to the Past: ABBA’s Hit “Waterloo”
Songfacts.com is a website dedicated to behind-the-scenes information about popular recordings. It was there that Mitch Murray, one-half of the team behind “The Night Chicago Died,” emailed a note that read, “As co-writer of this song, I feel qualified to settle some of the questions involving ‘The Night Chicago Died.’ My writing partner, Peter Callander, and I are both British, and we had never been to Chicago at the time we wrote the song. Having been brought up on a tasty diet of American gangster movies, the term ‘east side’ usually meant the seamy side of a city. Of course, looking back, it was used about New York, not Chicago. We were obviously a little careless with our research.”
Obviously, Mitch. Just be careful next time.
