Guest
The song backtracks to a dark end of a street corner in 1963-Dealey Plaza in Dallas,Texas—scene of the greatest crime of the 20th century, then fast-forwards ten miles northwest and several decades later - in1992 - to a broad stage in the Texas Stadium in Irving followed by a studio session in Nashville with some of the greatest musicians in America. I describe the stadium gig in the chapter “A Boy and His Guitar“ from my memoir “Blue Guitar Highway“. It goes like this: “I have played hundreds of gigs, on hundreds of stages, from four empty beer cases in the corner of a saloon with a hanging light bulb to Texas Stadium engulfed in a hundred thousand watts of light and sound, where the encore included forty performers and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.“ In the September of 1992 I found myself at a place called Moondog Studio in Nashville, the city called, among other things, the “buckle of the Bible Belt.“ I had met Bucky Baxter briefly in 1988 when he was playing pedal steel in Steve Earle and the Dukes on tour at the time, opening for Bob Dylan at a gig in St. Paul. My band, the Paul Metsa Group, had played before Steve Earle on the second stage. A few years later Dylan hired Bucky Baxter to be in his touring band. Around that time Dylan had another gig in the Twin Cities. On the advice of a cab driver, Bucky had a night off and wanted to find “the hottest band in town.“ He drove Baxter to the Five Corners Saloon on the West Bank in Minneapolis where my group held a weekly gig, and we met again. After Bucky heard a set, he offered to record a four song demo for me at the studio he co-owned with Garry Tallent, long time bass player for Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band. So there I was. I had four songs ready, including my song Jack Ruby. I had written it about a year earlier and it encapsulated my take on the JFK assassination. Like millions of other Americans, I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live television. In a way, it was the first “reality“ TV show. Over the years, I did research and read dozen books on the subject of the various JFK conspiracy theories. I also always thought the name Jack Ruby had a certain poetic sound to it. I knew there was a song in there somewhere. One morning while I was reading the newspaper I saw an article about Jack Ruby's brother was selling the now deceased Jack Ruby's Cavanaugh hat, the one pictured in the infamous black and white photos of him shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. Then the chorus just dropped from the sky, “Jack Ruby, Jack Ruby in a Cavanaugh hat, whoever taught you to shoot a pistol like that, you snuck in the basement and stood in the back, Jack Ruby, Jack Ruby in a Cavanaugh hat.“ I grabbed a set of chord changes, spread about a dozen books about the various conspiracies around the floor, worked through the night, and 12 hours later I had the song. We recorded it that week in Nashville, recorded 4 more songs a month later, and released it on my “Whistling Past the Graveyard“ on my label Raven Records in 1992. I recently featured it on my compilation record “Blues, Ballads, and Broadsides: Songs from the Blue Guitar Highway“ ( 2012).
