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A Prairie Home Companion Segment 7 for June 21, 2014
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CEMETERY MEDLEY

The old ethnic neighborhoods - German, Irish, Polish,

Czech, Swedish, Lithuanian, aren't what they used to be.

The attempt to be separate and distinct doesn't work for

long in the city; like and unlike live on top of each other.

On the South Side, on East 67th Street, is Oak Woods

cemetery where you'll find Cap Anson, Hall of Fame

ballplayer, 27 years with the Chicago White Stockings

back when this first became a hit song: TAKE ME OUT

TO THE BALL GAME. And Charles Johnson, 1909-

2006, a pitcher and outfielder in the Negro Leagues, who

hounded Major League Baseball to accept black

ballplayers ---- he didn't get in but he helped Jackie

Robinson and Willie Mays get in and he went to work as

a railroad porter. The opera singer Jessie Davis of Morris,

Illinois, 1859-1905, who had a fine career in Chicago and

New York in Il Trovatore and The Huguenots and also

made this song popular:

OH PROMISE ME

The cartoonist Billy DeBeck (1890-1942) who drew the

very popular comic strip ---- Barney Google, and his Googoo-

googly eyes and Walter Eckersall, 1887-1930, who

perfected the drop-kick punt while playing for University

of Chicago during their 56-game winning streak, 1904-

1906, a lot of great black gospel singers are buried like

Pops Staples, and Albertina Walker and Inez Andrews

who sang:

HOLD ON TO GOD'S UNCHANGING HAND

..... and Thomas Dorsey, 1899-1993, who wrote "Peace

In The Valley" and after his wife and infant daughter died

in childbirth in Chicago he wrote

TAKE MY HAND PRECIOUS LORD

And there are 6000 Confederate soldiers who died in

Union prisoner of war camps here.

DIXIE

Edwin Excell, 1851-1921, is there who wrote:

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS

And Enrico Fermi, who split the atom and produced the

first nuclear chain reaction. And Elisha Hoffman, 1839-

1929, a Presbyterian minister who wrote 2000 hymns

including "Leaning On The Everlasting Arms".

The jazz pianist Little Brother Montgomery. The

bluesman Junior Wells. The murderer Richard Loeb.

Jesse Owens who in the 1935 Olympics set new world

records in the 220-yard dash, the 220-yard low hurdles,

and the broad jump. The Rueckheim Brothers who

invented Crackerjacks. Big Bill Thompson the crooked

mayor during the Al Capone era. And Jake "Greasy

Thumb" Guzik, Al Capone's bagman and treasurer, who

died of a heart attack at the age of 69 in his apartment on

the south Side. And Mayor Harold Washington.

PEACE IN THE VALLEY