THE TRAGIC END OF AN INDIAN ARTIST

6/22/1988 - Too young for his leaving, drugs and alcohol to blame, Native American session player guitarist and solo artist, Jesse Edwin Davis III, with fresh needle marks on his arms (along with burned matches and pieces of tin foil scattered about on the floor), perishes on a laundry room floor in the beach community of Venice, California on June 22, 1988 at the age of only 43.

Davis

Davis is born on September 21, 1944 in a U.S. Naval Hospital in Norman, Oklahoma to Jesse Edwin "Bus" Davis II (an artist and graphic designer for the military who spends three years in the Pacific during WWII, known as Asawoya <"Running Wolf">, he is a citizen of the Comanche Nation with Muscogee and Seminole ancestry) and his wife, Vivian Mae Bea Saunkeah (a piano player and teacher, and a full blooded Kiowa, the first to earn a bachelor's degree from Oklahoma State University).  From his mother, Jesse learns to play piano before shifting to guitar under the transforming influence of Elvis Presley (trying to become his childhood hero, Davis will tie a rope around an acoustic Stella guitar he owns and play Elvis tunes as loud as he can in front of a mirror) and Jimmy Reed.  He also becomes a huge fan of Chuck Berry, devouring all of the strutting guitarist's records.  And he polishes his melodic chops by playing along to the horn parts on Count Basie jazz records.  He really becomes proficient at string plucking though when he is fifteen and his grandfather dies.  Honoring Kiowa family tradition, the members of the Davis clan observe a year of mourning that the youth uses to hone his skills on the guitar using the instrument his father is also learning on (a Martin).  Recognizing the talent his son is showing, papa first gets his boy his own Silvertone guitar from Sears & Roebuck, which Davis will eventually just wear out, eventually replacing his old ax when he is sixteen with Fender Telecaster (again purchased by his father).  Sadly, while music fills his youthful heart, Davis also goes forth in life bearing scars of childhood abuse that come from school mates taking Jesse to fist city as often as they can, and by taunting the lad with calls on the playground of "Ching, Ching, China Boy!" believing he is not an Indian, but is actually Chinese (a Davis punch to his tormentors nose ends the confrontation).

Early Davis

Hooked, Davis learns how to play blues from a local blues pianist named Wallace Thompson and broadens his sound by playing locally with as many people as is possible, with his chief work coming from working in high school rock-and-roll bands with Michael Brewer (later the guitarist-songwriter-and singer of the hit duo, Brewer & Shipley), John Ware (later a drummer for Emmylou Harris & Michael Nesmith), John Selk (later a bass player for Donovan), Jerry Fischer (later a vocalist with Blood, Sweat & Tears), and Bill Maxwell (later a drummer for Andrae Crouch).  Only sixteen, Davis goes out on his first tour, thirty cities, playing guitar for American Bandstand performance show hosted by Dick Clark, featuring a future Country Music Hall of Fame singer-songwriter named Harold Lloyd Jenkins, now better known as Conway Twitter (riding the tour bus from show to show, Davis becomes a buddy of drummer Levon Helm, also riding on the bus, it is rumored that Davis is sent home when the driver refuses to stop for a potty break, so the guitarist relieves himself in a bottle, then throws his waste out the window ... a window that is unfortunately closed).  Returning to Oklahoma City from the tour, Davis graduates from Northeast High School in 1962, teaches guitar at a local music store, and briefly studies literature at the University of Oklahoma before dropping out (for the rest of his life, Davis will enjoy quoting folks like Socrates, Plato, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dickens among others). The tour a success, in 1965, Davis makes his recording debut on a Twitty single called "I Don't Want to Cry," and then goes on to put down guitar tracks for two singles by Junior Markham & The Tulsa Review on the obscure Uptown label.  Not sure what his next move should be, like other artists of the times, Davis relocates to Los Angeles.  Living in Marina Del Rey with his girlfriend Patti Daley, and her son Billy (the couple will be together for over a decade, and besides one night stands, Davis will marry twice, to Tantalayo Saenz and Kelly Brady, his wife at the time of his death ... neither relationship produces any children), Davis begins musically networking, using a friendship with drummer Levon Helm of The Band to in turn meet session musician Leon Russell who eventually introduces Davis to bluesman Henry St. Claire Fredericks Jr., better known to the musical world as Taj Mahal.  With their feel as outsiders and love for various types of music (Mahal's father is a jazz pianist and arranger that the legendary Ella Fitzgerald will call "The Genius"), instant bonding takes place between the two men, and forming one of the period's first interracial bands, Davis will play guitar and piano on the first four albums Mahal releases, including the band's debut release featuring Davis performing slide guitar on "Blind Willie" McTell's legendary blues tune, "Statesboro Blues" (the version of the song that will directly lead to Duane Allman becoming a slide guitarist).  It is said that the guitarist also plays uncredited on the Monkees' hit single, the Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart hit single, "The Last Train to Clarksville."  Perhaps.  What is known is that Davis' playing and connection to Taj Mahal opens the door to the young guitarist playing with a host of European rock-and-rollers (around this time, Taj Mahal and Davis both make cameo appearances on the Michael Bloomfield's "Live at Bill Graham's Fillmore West").

    Northeast High School

The Twitty Tour

Davis With Taj Mahal

Blown away seeing Taj Mahal and his band play a set at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go, Mick Jagger invites the group of Americans to come to Great Britain to be guest stars in a concert film the Rolling Stones are putting together to promote their latest album, "Beggars Banquet."  Known as "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus," along with Taj Mahal performing "Ain't That a Lot of Love," the December 1968 concert features Jethro Tull (the only footage ever shot of the group with future Black Sabbath guitarist, Tony Iommi, as the band's guitarist, a role he'd have for a whole two weeks), The Who, Marianne Faithful, The Dirty Mac (a temporary band put together just for the event featuring John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, the soon-to-be drummer for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Mitch Mitchell, Israeli violin virtuoso Ivry Gitlis, and heinous croaking of Yoko Ono), and The Rolling Stones (with band founder Brian Jones performing with the group for the last time, and long time collaborator, piano player Nicky Hopkins playing live with the band for the first time).  And as is often the case with folks hearing Davis play for the first time, the Europeans fall in love with the Oklahoma Indian with chops and other playing opportunities quickly open up for Jesse after his brilliant "Circus" playing.  First up is the recording of Davis' first solo album at London's Olympic Sound Studio in 1970.  Titled simply "Jesse Davis," the album, featuring Leon Russell on piano, Eric Clapton on guitar, Alan White of Yes drumming, and backing vocals from Gram Parsons, Merry Clayton, and Nikki Barclay, doesn't become a best seller, but does gain the guitarists even more fans (the cover of the album features Jesse in Native American attire and was created by Davis Sr.).

With John & Yoko

First Solo Album

Lots of work requests to choose from, in 1971, Davis plays guitar and produces former Byrds member Gene Clark's second solo album, White Light.  Additionally, the guitarist puts down guitar tracks for Marc Benno's "Minnows" album, plays jazz guitar on keyboardist Ben Sidran's "Feel Your Grove" record and tenor saxophone player Charles Lloyd's "Warm Waters" (along with two more production credits), plays electric guitar, banjo, and bottleneck guitar on Oklahoma songwriter Roger Tillson's "Album," plays on four tracks of the album, "Leon Russell and the Shelter People," and is back with Russell and Benno for the pair's "Asylum Choir II," while also sharing guitar duties on Buffy Sainte-Marie's "She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina" with Neil Young and Ry Cooder.  He plays on four tracks of legendary bluesman Albert King's "Lovejoy" album, trades riffs with B.B. King and Joe Walsh on King's album, "L.A. Midnight," lends his slide services to bluesman John Lee Hooker on the guitarist's "Endless Boogie" record, plays electric guitar on Bob Dylan's "Watching the River Flow," and once more hooks up with Taj Mahal and his band for guitar work on "Happy to Be Like I Am" and "Oh! Susanna."  The highlight of Davis' work in 1971 though is being invited by George Harrison to play in the band backing up the artists performing at the August 1st benefit concert that takes place at Madison Square Gardens, "The Concert for Bangladesh" (it will later be released as a best selling triple album).

Davis

In Concert With Harrison, bassist Klaus Voormann,

And Clapton 

And 1972 is more of the same.  Making magic with his finger picking, Davis puts down the electric guitar solo that turns "Doctor, My Eyes" into Jackson Browne's first hit single (it will reach #8 on Billboard's Hot 100).  On songwriter Jim Pulte's "Out The Window," Davis produces, engineers (at Sunset Sound Recorders), plays electric guitar, acoustic guitar, banjo, sings backup, and contributes the song "Reno Street Incident" to the festivities.  He plays guitar on the Steve Miller Band's "Heal Your Heart" and plays on two tracks of Marc Benno's "Ambush" album (slide on "Hall Street Drive"), and joins guitarists Mel Brown, David Cohen, Charlie Grimes, John Lee Hooker, Luther Tucker, and Lightin' Hopkins on Hopkins' "It's A Sin To Be Rich" (recorded in 1972, due to legal issues the tune is not released to the public until 1992).  The highlight of the year for Davis though is the recording and release of the artist's most acclaimed solo album, "Ululu."  Featuring a core band of Davis on guitar, Dr. John on keyboards, Donald "Duck" Dunn on bass, and Jim Keltner on drums, the album mixes new songs by Davis with covers of songs by Merle Haggard, George Harrison, The Band, and Leon Russell, before concluding with the Taj Mahal and Davis tune, "Further on Down the Road" (a hit that Eric Clapton will one day cover).

Steve Miller

Ululu Album Cover

Adding to his musical resume, Davis plays guitar and sings backup on Brian Ferry's "These Foolish Things," is one of the guitarists on singer Rod Taylor's "Asylum" album, plays on Arlo Guthrie's "The Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys," and releases his third solo album, "Keep Me Comin'" (at the time, Davis will list his three favorite guitars as being his Telecaster, Stratocaster, and Gibson SG with a collection of axes that also includes another Telecaster with a humbucker pickup, a Fender Malibu, a Martin acoustic, a Yamaha 12-string, and a metal-bodied Dobro, depending on his instrument of choice, he uses Ernie Ball Super Slinkys or Rock 'N' Roll Regulars as his strings, strums with Fender Heavy pick, and prefers a Fender Vibro Champ amplifier for studio work, likes a Neumann 87 condenser as a favorite mic, and when onstage, likes an Acoustic 155 for large venues and four 10" J.B. Lansing speakers for smaller, more intimate settings).  And beginning in 1974, his collaborations with various former Beatles continues with Davis lending his strumming to John Lennon's "Walls and Bridges" (1974), Lennon's "Rock 'n' Roll" (1975 ... in which the pair play rock classics by Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Sam Cooke, Link Wray, and Little Richard), playing on the Lennon produced Harry Nilsson album "Pussy Cats" (an alcohol and drug fueled mess from 1974 ... Davis also plays on Nilsson's 1975 album, "Duit On Mon Dei"), plays electric guitar on five tracks of George Harrison's last solo album for Apple Records, 1975's "Extra Texture (Read All About It)," and plays on two Ringo Starr solo albums, "Goodnight Vienna" (1974) and "Ringo's Rotogravure" (1976).  And there is work with Gene Clark (on the former Byrd's fourth solo album, "No Other"), The Pointer Sisters, The Attitudes (a band of session players featuring David Foster on keyboards and Danny Kortchmar on guitar), Brewer & Shipley's "ST11261," Mac Davis, guitarist Bert Jansch, folk singer Tom Jans, Canadian singer Valdy, Cher, Keith Moon (on his only solo album, 1975's "Two Sides of the Moon"), Dion, Jackie DeShannon, The 5th Dimension, Eric Mercury, and the David Bromberg Band.

Keep Me Comin'

Fender Vibro Champ

Laughing With Lennon

Unfortunately, Davis' world begins disintegrating in 1975 when he begins playing and hanging out with The Faces (Ian McLagan on keyboards, Ronnie Lane on bass and vocals, Kenney Jones on drums and percussion, Ronnie Wood on guitar) and Rod Stewart.  A dabbler with drinking and drugs previously, asked to tour with The Faces and Stewart to supplement the playing of Wood (who is in the process of becoming a Rolling Stone), as a "Sixth Face" just as the band is coming apart, and participating with the creation of two solo albums by Stewart, "Atlantic Crossings" and "A Night on the Town" (where Davis gets to trade chops with Pete Carr, Steve Cropper, Fred Tackett, Jimmy Johnson, Billy Peak, Joe Walsh, and David Lindley) comes away from his association with the British rockers as a drunk and a strung out heroin addict.  For awhile, there is still session work for Davis and the guitarist performs with Dunn & Rubini on the duo's "Diggin' It" album, singer David Blue, vocalist Long John Baldry, blues stylist Tracy Nelson, musician Geoff Muldaur, pop star David Cassidy, Grammy award winning artist Neil Diamond (on the singer's 1976 "Beautiful Noise" record), Donovan, Van Dyke Parks, Leonard Cohen, on the Blue Collar soundtrack with Captain Beefheart and Jack Nitzsche, Ben Sidran, Emmylou Harris, as part of the band backing up Rodney Crowell, Rosanne Cash, Charlie Daniels, Emmylou Harris, and Levon Helm on the concept album "The Legend of Jesse James," Brian Cadd, and cowboy crooner Guthrie Thomas.  And there is the magic of playing on one more hit record with Eric Clapton (along with Ron Wood, Bob Dylan, and members of The Band), "No Reason to Cry," where Davis supplies the slide guitar on Clapton's first Top-40 single in two years, the hit "Hello Old Friend."

With Rod Stewart

With Ron Wood

With Peter Asher, Linda Ronstadt, And Ron Wood

Work drying up as his addictions grow, Davis spends the last decade of his life checking into and checking out of rehab facilities, moves to Hawaii in 1977 (where the sea, sand, and sky do little to negate the guitarist's chemical needs), and stops playing guitar from 1980 into 1985.  Physically cleaned up for the moment, in 1981 he is back to California and in 1985 he forms The Graffiti Band with Santee Sioux activist and poet John Trudell (the guitarist also serves as a drug and alcohol counselor at the American Indian Free Clinic in Long Beach, California).  Sold exclusively through mail-order as a cassette (Bob Dylan will play the record during intermissions at his concerts and will proclaim the work to be the "album of the year," produced by Davis and Rick Eckstein, and executive produced by Jackson Browne), the pair put out two albums, "A.K.A. Graffiti Man" (1986) and "Heart Jump Bouquet" (1987).  Comeback in full swing, Davis suffers a stroke in 1986 that paralyzes his picking hand, but dedicated to playing, he teaches his fingers to move again and appears on up-and-coming guitarists Scott Colby's "Slide of Hand" album (1987) and strums away on a Christmas tune for Warner Brothers Records 1988 holiday album "Winter Wonderland," playing on a tune called "Santa Claus Is Getting Down."  And there is one final night of musical magic in the spring of 1987 for Davis and his friends to savor when performing with The Graffiti Band and Taj Mahal at the Palomino Club in North Hollywood, California, the guitarist is joined on stage by three members of the audience, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, and John Fogerty.  Unrehearsed, the musicians play a special set of songs that includes Fogerty's "Proud Mary," Dylan's "Watching the River Flow," "Gone, Gone, Gone" by The Everly Brothers, the Buddy Holly hit "Peggy Sue" (written by Jerry Allison and Norman Petty), and the Carl Perkins' classics, "Matchbox," "Honey Don't," and "Blue Suede Shoes."         

Album

On Stage At The Palomino

Backstage

Seemingly about to turn his life around after getting out of rehab once more on June 16th, and delighted that he and his band have been booked into a gig at San Juan Capistrano's musical venue, The Coach House, Davis instead goes right back to injecting himself with junk, and on Wednesday, 6/22/1988, he is found collapsed in a Venice laundry room with a fresh needle mark on his arm and drug paraphernalia scattered about on the floor, victim of a self-induced heroin overdose at the age of 43.  Ruled yet another "death by misadventure" for a member of the Los Angeles entertainment community, Davis has his body flown back to Oklahoma City for a Comanche funeral and is buried in the city's Memorial Park Cemetery (Section 18, Lot 37, ID 57247854).  In 2002, the guitarist is posthumously inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame (with pianist & composer Dave Brubeck and singer Patti Page), in 2011 he is posthumously inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame, and in 2018, he is posthumously inducted into the Native American Music Institute Hall of Fame.  And if there is any justice, one day he will also become a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame located in Cleveland, Ohio (summing up his career, Davis will state, "I ain't an Okie from Muskogee, but rather a red-dirt boogie brother, all the time.").  Rest in Peace, Jesse ... and thank you for the amazing music you gifted the world with during your brief stay here (Davis can still be heard on a myriad of musical CDs, can be seen in the documentary "Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World," along with the musical filmed events already mentioned, and his tale is being told in a forthcoming book by Native American scholar Douglas K. Miller).

Resting Place

Davis

         

  

           

     

 

THE MURDER OF OSA MARIE GORDON

6/3/1983 - Giving in to the voices in his head as he suffers from undiagnosed schizophrenia (his doctors unfortunately believe he is just one more drunken and drug addled rock-and-roller), legendary (Eric Clapton will call him "the best drummer in rock-n-roll" as will Ringo Starr) 37-year-old Los Angeles drummer and Grammy winner (for co-writing Layla), James "Jim" Beck Gordon, murders his mother, 72-year-old Osa Marie Gordon.

Gordon

Jim Gordon is born in New Jersey on July 14, 1945, becoming a part of the family of his accountant father John Shields Gordon, and his wife, Osa Marie (Beck) Gordon, a pediatric nurse (he also has an older brother named after his father, John).  By the close of WWII however, the family has moved out west seeking better opportunities and as a toddler, Jim grows up in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.  A typical family of the time, the parents buy a small house in Sherman Oaks where the boys are taught the manners of saying "Please" and "Thank You" (and answering the phone by stating, "Gordon residence"), mow the lawn, polish their father's shoes, and play little league baseball on a team managed by their father (who will battle the demons of alcoholism throughout the course of his life).  From early in his life, Gordon begins a love affair with pounding skins and cymbals, creating his first drum kit out of garbage cans when he is only six-years-old and "debuting" to his parents and brother in his room as an eight-year-old.  Hearing something in the youngster's power pounding, instead of putting down their son's preoccupation with drumming and throwing away his garbage can kit, Gordon's parents enroll him in music lessons and buy him a rudimentary professional set of drums when he is twelve (popular with his peers, Jim will be elected class president of his junior high, plays with the Burbank Symphony, tours Europe one summer, performs with a youth band in the annual Tournament of Roses Parade, and with a fake I.D., takes drumming jobs at local weddings, bar mitzvahs, and works the small clubs of Hollywood and West Los Angeles as a member of Frankie Knight and the Jesters ... and setting the stage for the tragedy that is to take place, he begins to hear voices talking to him inside his head!).  Practicing and playing over and over and over for hours (he will eventually score a room of his own that his parents add on to their original house), by the age of 17, Jim graduates from Ulysses S. Grant High School in 1963, proficient enough with his kit that he receives a musical scholarship to attend U.C.L.A. (he is thinking of becoming a music teacher) and good enough that his services are requested by the Everly Brothers.  Money the motivator, Jim decides to go out on the road (to London) with the harmony singing and hit making brothers from Tennessee.

Climbing Up The Ranks

The Everlys

Spotted by Joey Paige, the bass player for the Everly Brothers, at a Sunset Strip club as the boys are preparing a summer tour of England, Jim auditions for the backing band's drumming job and gets the assignment (also on the tour will be Little Richard and Bo Diddley).  The 1963 tour a success (Jim will also be on-board for another tour with the Everlys the next year), Gordon returns to Los Angeles and continues to seek work slamming a beat for anyone in need of his drumming services, attends music classes at Los Angeles Valley College, and hangs out with famous backup players in the industry at the A&B Corned Beef Restaurant.  Soaking it all in, a year later, as the protégé of 35-year-old session legend Hal Blaine, Gordon is ready to become the #1 drummer in the City of Angels.

Blaine

Learning his craft in Chicago, Blaine plays with Count Basie's jazz band, tours with Patti Page and Tommy Sands, and backs up Nancy Sinatra when she plays Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, before moving to Los Angeles and becoming a core member of The Wrecking Crew, a close-knit group of session players that includes guitarists Glen Campbell and Tommy Tedesco, bassists Carole Kaye and Joe Osborn, and keyboardists Leon Russell and Don Randi.  Booked with more session work than he can handle (at one point in his career, Blaine will be the drummer on six consecutive Grammy Award Records of the Year (for Herb Alpert, Frank Sinatra, The 5th Dimension and Simon & Garfunkel) as he plays on a myriad of hits (39 that reach #1 on Billboard's Hot 100) that includes Johnny Angel, He's A Rebel, Surf City, I Get Around, Everybody Loves Somebody, This Diamond Ring, Help Me Rhonda, Mr. Tambourine Man, I Got You Babe, The Eve Of Destruction, These Boots Are Made For Walking, Monday, Monday, Strangers In The Night, Poor Side Of Town, Good Vibrations, and Windy.  Busy, busy, busy, he begins mentioning Gordon when he doesn't have any time openings on his schedule.  A muscular drummer of intense energy at 6'3" and over 200 pounds in weight, handsome with a full head of curly blonde hair, Jim (for his All-American looks and seemingly vanilla personality, he is sarcastically nicknamed "Skippy" by his musical peers), quickly becomes known for the "Big Gordon Beat" and his being a "living metronome" and having a "knack for hitting the sweet spot," and with Gordon scheduled, the artist and producer always get Jim's kit too, not noises from whatever equipment is available at the studio.  Soon, Gordon is handling two or three recording sessions a day (sometimes playing six or seven days a week and receiving double pay, he also frequently plays Los Angeles gigs during the day, before making his way to Las Vegas to play late night shows) as recording money begins to fill his coffers (every penny kept track of thanks to his upbringing in the home of an accountant).  The good life, in 1964 Jim marries an attractive dancer he has known for years named Jill (a personal favorite of his mother), with music being a further bond in the relationship as they both score jobs working for the ABC prime-time musical variety series, Shindig.  Flush with lucre, they seemingly begin living their American dream, purchasing a Mercedes 220S sports car and buying a two-bedroom Spanish-style house in North Hollywood.  Close to where Gordon's parents are living, the couple dines at his folks' home frequently (the union will only last five years and produce a daughter named Amy).  A golden period for the drummer, Jim plays drums and orange juice cups on the classic Brian Wilson Beach Boys album, Pet Sounds, handles the drums on Byrds' guitarist Gene Clark's solo debut album, Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers, lends his talent to five of the eleven songs on the album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, and is the beat behind Mason Williams' hit instrumental, Classical Gas).  But after awhile, Gordon becomes bored with session work, and he is still listening to the voices in his head.

Session Work

Seeking to be front-and-center of his own musical stardom, Gordon forms his own group and records a debut album, but the record flops and the band soon breaks up.  Becoming close to Leon Russell and Rita Coolidge (for a time, Rita is Gordon's girlfriend), Gordon begins backing up the work of the white soul duo, Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett.  Touring as a member of Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, Gordon adds his drumming to a superstar lineup that gigs with two unemployed guitarists, Eric Clapton and George Harrison.  A sold-out smash tour that critics and audiences both enjoy, the initial success of the band peters out however when engagements completed, most of the band leaves the Bramletts to participate in the Mad Dogs and Englishmen Tour of Leon Russell and Joe Cocker ... a madness that includes massive amounts of drinking, drug taking (speed, MDA, cocaine, acid, pot, mescaline, and heroin), and lots of hookups with the opposite sex.  Seemingly a superman who can take more of anything than anyone else (for awhile, it helps silence the voices in his head) while not losing his musical chops, Gordon allows a glimpse into his growing madness when for no reason at all, he asks Coolidge to step out of a party taking place in room at New York's Warwick Hotel, and when she does, delivers a one-punch blow to the singers head that knocks her off her feet and gives her a huge black eye (close previously with Gordon buying her a fox-fur coat and the two spending all their free time together discussing music and writing songs, while questioning which is the worst piano player, the blow ends the relationship and the two never speak to each other again).  Tour completed, George Harrison calls Gordon and asks him to play drums and musically collaborate with Eric Clapton and Phil Spector on the ex-Beatles first solo record, All Things Must Pass.  Settling in to a flat in Chelsea and racing about London in a Ferrari, when the record is complete, Clapton asks Gordon if he'd like to be a part of a new band he is forming, and so it is that Jim becomes the percussionist for a group that includes Clapton, Bobby Whitlock (vocals and keyboards), Carl Radle (bass), and calls itself, Derek and the Dominos.  As a Domino, Gordon cowrites with Clapton, the guitarist's ode (with a major contribution from new buddy Duane Allman's slide guitar) to his friend George Harrison's wife, Patti Boyd Harrison, "Layla," freely lifting the song's famous piano ending from a song he wrote the year before called "Time" with his then girlfriend, Coolidge, the song goes on to become a "rock standard" with platinum certification.

The Bramletts

Coolidge

In The Studio - L to R - Allman, Gordon, Clapton, Radle,

And Whitlock 

After a single tour, and massive amounts of drugs, Derek and the Dominos break up with its members fighting about money, artistic direction, and who plays well stoned (Gordon has now moved from snorting heroin to mainlining the drug).  Still considered one of the best drummers in rock-and-roll, liking what he hears when Gordon sits in with the Plastic Ono Band for a 1969 London concert benefiting UNICEF, John Lennon hires Jim for his solo album, Imagine.  That project complete, Gordon takes over the drumming as Traffic records The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, which he then follows up by going out on the road with the group in support of the album (somehow he also finds time to play on Harry Nilsson's Grammy winning album, Nilsson Schmilsson).  Then it is back to London where Gordon holds down the drumming for studio sessions produced by Richard Perry, including Carly Simon's smash hit, You're So Vain.  The hectic schedule Gordon puts himself through finally grows to be too much, and when the drummer gets so loaded that he totals his beloved Ferrari on a rain-soaked British road, he decides it is time to pull up stakes and move back to Los Angeles.  Despite the notable changes that have taken place with the introduction of drugs into Gordon's personality, his services are still in demand as the music business booms in California during the decade of the 1970s (taking into account his two great periods of session drumming and band participation, Gordon works with a who's-who of musical giants of the time and entertainment legends that includes Duane Allman, Hoyt Axton, Joan Baez, The Beach Boys, Stephen Bishop, Jackson Browne, Jack Bruce, The Byrds, The Carpenters, Cher, Eric Clapton, Gene Clark, Joe Cocker, Judy Collins, Alice Cooper, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Burton Cummings, Delaney & Bonnie, Derek and the Dominos, Neil Diamond, Donovan, Dr. John, The Everly Brothers, Art Garfunkel, Lowell George, Merle Haggard, Hall & Oats, George Harrison, Jim Henson, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Carole King, Cheryl Ladd, John Lennon, The Lettermen, Gordon Lightfoot, Nils Lofgren, Manhattan Transfer, Dave Mason, Country Joe McDonald, Maria Muldaur, The Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, Tracy Nelson, Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, Yoko Ono, Van Dyke Parks, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Kenny Rankin, The Righteous Brothers, Minnie Riperton, Johnny Rivers, Leon Russell, Seals & Crofts, John Sebastian, Carly Simon, Steely Dan, The Stone Poneys, Barbara Streisand, Mel Torme, Traffic, John Travolta, Tom Waits, Tim Weisberg, Bobby Whitlock, Andy Williams, Mason Williams, and Frank Zappa). 

Gordon

With George Harrison

Except for his father's death in 1973, the period after his return from England is one of the best in Gordon's life; there is plenty of work to be had (putting down the drumming track on the Incredible Bongo Band's cover of "Apache," Gordon will create a banging that will be sampled in over 750 hip-hop songs over the years), he buys a home in Sherman Oaks and purchases a new Mercedes 450SLC, reconnects with his daughter, and marries singer-songwriter Renee Armand (Gordon will play drums, guitar, piano, arrange, and write some of the music on his wife's solo album, The Rain Book).  For a time, Gordon is even off drugs, but continues to drink constantly (sometimes a fifth of vodka or scotch a day), and eventually, as the chatter in his head becomes louder, he is once more consuming chemicals, mostly speedballs mixing cocaine and heroin, in massive quantities.  Madness beginning to slip out, the marriage to Armand lasts only six months, and is destroyed when without provocation, Gordon attacks his wife when she returns home from buying groceries, cracking several of Armand's ribs as he blames her for evil spirits inhabiting his house.  Armand out, her place alongside Gordon is next filled by Stacey Bailey, a secretary for the soft-rock band, Bread.  For awhile they are a happy couple with Gordon studying the Bible, bringing Bailey breakfast in bed, getting his girlfriend a seat next to Bob Dylan at a local Joan Baez concert, and taking care of his girlfriend's dog and newborn puppies when she is away visiting her parents (and for the first time, Gordon tells someone else about the voices he hears in his head).  Violence however claims this Gordon relationship too as one evening Bailey awakes to find her boyfriend strangling her ... which he does off and then on again for over an hour before finally tiring and falling into bed with a chuckle.      

Armand

Off To The '77 Grammys

The voices, no longer a lonely child's pals, begin to totally dominate Gordon's life, there all the time, everyday, making demands on the drummer's time and taking on real identities that Jim can see in his head ... a family of familiar noise that includes the musician's brother, his aunt, and his mother, and others like a male leader with a white beard, a young blonde woman, and a Greek man with a dark complexion.  The music world finally finds out about Gordon's mental anguish when while recording Johnny Rivers' "Outside Help," the drummer suddenly stops playing and accuses guitarist Dean Parks of "messing with my time."  Fisticuffs barely averted, it will be the first of many similar accusations that now become regular events each time Gordon is hired, producers finally stop using the drummer for anything but lower paying jobs putting down tracks for movies, television, and commercials (he also receives residual checks from earlier session work).  Still trying to fight off the voices, Gordon flees to the Canada wilds to record with Burton Cummings, but the voices simply cross the border with the drummer.  By 1977, the demands of the voices in his head seem to concentrate into the voice of Gordon's mother and a sad circle game begins in which the musician repeatedly tells his mother to leave him alone, then calls her on the phone and says the same thing while discussing arguments that the pair have never had, which in turn terrifies Mrs. Gordon, who sends her boy for help from the mental health providers at the Van Nuys Psychiatric Hospital.  Over the next six years, Gordon will check himself into a mental facility at least fourteen times, before then checking himself back out ... his first stay lasts only two months.  Despite everything, Gordon gets a second chance at getting his musical career back on track when Jackson Browne asks the drummer to play his kit for a spring tour of America introducing Browne's The Pretender album to the public.  Surrounded by a host of friends and expert musicians, Gordon stays away from drugs and drink, jogs daily, and plays racketball with Browne, while not missing or being late to a single gig.  Tour over however, Gordon's return to Los Angeles reveals a town still wary of working with the drummer, and the voices begin screaming at the musician once more (when Bob Dylan calls to discuss Gordon playing on the artist's Slow Train Coming Tour, his mother's voice tells him to tell Dylan he is not interested in the job, even though he is, and after accepting a job to back up Paul Anka in Las Vegas, his mother in his mind again, forces him to quit and return to Los Angles after the drummer plays only a handful of notes).

Dean Parks

Browne

Depressed after the tour ends and no further job calls are received, drinking again to try and silence the sounds in his head, in November Gordon checks himself into the Valley Presbyterian Hospital where he has a horrible stay during which he threatens to kill a nurse, smashes a potted plant to pieces, and runs down a flight of stairs yelling for phantoms to "Let me go!  Let me go!"  By 1980, Gordon is no longer a professional musician, but with having saved his money (for the most part), real estate investments, and royalty checks still coming in, he is able do whatever he feels like doing, and in Gordon's case, that means fighting a losing battle with the phantoms in his head; for long periods of time he doesn't bathe, shave, or change what he is wearing, but on other days he cleans up and goes to church.  Large amounts of his time are spent sleeping, watching old black & white films on cable television, writing songs he never finishes, playing the same song over and over on his piano into the early hours of the next day, and drinking so much that doctor's warn him he will fry his liver if he does not desist ... good advice which of course leads Gordon to flee the facility where it was given.  Slowly circling the drain, when Gordon checks into another rehab clinic on June 5, 1980, he is found to have already consumed two-thirds of a bottle of cognac and a half gallon of wine before noon.  And if possible, he becomes even more obsessed with his mother, with her voice and the lady herself becoming one-and-the same.  Though he tells doctors his mother is his best friend and he is released from his hospital stays into her company, Gordon also thinks his mom is an evil person capable of torture (her voice often will allow the drummer to have one bite of whatever he is eating), and that she had already murdered both comedian Paul Lynde (he dies in his sleep at his Beverly Hills home at the age of 55 on January 10, 1982) and singer Karen Carpenter (she passes away at her parents' home in Downey, California as a result of anorexia nervosa on February 4, 1983, at the age of 32).  Every day becomes a waking struggle in a war that Gordon is powerless to win.  Gordon stops going to a favorite bar because it has become a haven for evil people.  No home seems safe, so he is continually changing where he lives.  No ride is adequate for more than a few days and in a two year period of time, he cycles through a Mercedes, a Capri, a Scirocco, a Volkswagen van, and a Datsun.  He prepares for the end of the world by renting a storage unit and filling it with freeze-dried food (he also pays off all his bills, and is up to the month on child support checks for his daughter).  And when he is feeling well, he discusses with his friend, guitarist Larry Rolando, getting a new band together ... a plan that never lasts more than a day or two.

Valley Presbyterian

Rolando

In October of 1982, Gordon is once again in a mental health facility.  This time his doctors and nurses hear about pains in his jaw and shoulder that are "killing him," that he is dying of "hate," and that his "world is falling apart."  And Gordon begins thinking that his life has come down to a decision between two awful choices ... Gordon can kill himself and get away from all the voices, or he can remove the voice he finds the most obnoxious by killing his mother.  Realizing she is a major part of her adult child's problems, Oso Gordon has moved to Lake Tahoe (retired from nursing, she still works off and on throughout the state as a licensed physical therapist) and hasn't seen her youngest son in two years, but she has missed and worried about him the whole time she has been in Northern California.  Back in Southern California, on May 23rd, Oso writes to her son of her plans to soon live in Seattle with her son John and his family, and once more tells Jim that she is not his problem, that she still loves him deeply, and that if he needs anything, she is just a phone call away.  The letter is never opened by Gordon.  Just a few days later, at 9:30 in the evening, Oso gets another one of her child's all too typical phone messages, she is bugging him again, demanding he get rid of his drums, and that if she doesn't stop, Jim is going to kill her.  Accusations denied as usual, after Mrs. Gordon gets off the phone, she calls the Medical Center of North Hollywood to find out if her son has checked into the facility for treatments.  Her inquiry is answered by a nurse who tells her that Gordon had been at the facility earlier in the day, drunk once more, claiming he was feeling violent and that he needed a prescription of the antipsychotic drug, Thorazine, but because his doctor wasn't in yet, he leaves without receiving medication or treatment.  Growing more concerned as the evening progresses, Oso next calls the police, but is told they can't presently do anything because Gordon hasn't yet done anything, she is wished good luck and told to keep the lights on in her home.  Then she tries to call her son John about the situation, but he isn't home.  At 11:40, she receives a second call from her son and it is more of the same as previously, accusations, denials, threats, and lots of tears that culminate in an abrupt hang-up.  Uneasy evening completed, in the morning Oso calls the city attorney's office about having Jim served with a restraining order, but aggravated by all the hoops she needs to jump through to get a judge to order her son to stay away from her, she hangs up ... and why not when she has been dealing with her son for years and years and the boy has never harmed her and his doctors have never once mentioned him being a threat.

Gordon

Gordon

Two days later, on a Friday night at around 11:30 in the evening, Oso makes the mistake of answering her apartment's front door when her son comes calling.  No one sees what happens next, but the neighbor's hear Oso's frightful screams and call the police.  Arriving shortly afterwards, the authorities find 72-year-old, gray-haired widow, Osa Maria Beck Gordon, on the floor of her small North Hollywood apartment with a finely honed eight-and-a-quarter-inch butcher knife buried in the center of her chest.  Notifying the next-of-kin of the death, the police arrive at Gordon's Van Nuys condo (only a five mile drive from his mother's residence) the next morning and find Jim face-down on the floor of his living room, moaning and sobbing.  Lifted to his feet, the drunk (sober when the deed goes down, Gordon has spent the rest of the evening in a club, at a bar, and in his condo getting plastered on several double margaritas, shots of Pernod, Long Island Iced Teas <four ounces of alcohol in each in the form of vodka, rum, tequila, gin, and triple sec>, and a fifth of vodka) instantly confesses to the murder of his mother ... admitting to following through on the plans his mother's voice has given him ... selection of the butcher knife and it's sharpening to Oso's satisfaction, bringing along a hammer so he can knock his mother out before she can feel the pain of being stabbed to death, carrying the knife and hammer in a small leather attaché case, twice driving his white Datsun 200SX to his mother's home (she is absent during his first visit), and after she greets her son in a robe and her slippers, hitting his mother over the head four times, before stabbing her in the chest three times.  Voice of his #1 fantasy foe silenced, Gordon's problems are far from being over though as he is placed in custody on the fourth day of June, 1983.

Gordon

The News

Brought to trial the next spring, everyone agrees that Gordon is bat-shit crazy when not on his meds (the defense, the prosecution and the presiding judge, backed up by five defense psychiatrists who all diagnose the drummer as being an acute paranoid schizophrenic), but thanks to modifications to the statutes of California under the provisions of the Insanity Reform Act of 1984, it is almost impossible to prove legal insanity in the state anymore, and Gordon, on July 10, 1984 is found guilty of second-degree murder and given a sentence of sixteen years to life behind bars with the possibility of parole.  Gordon will be 39-years-old when he enters prison, and there will be no parole from either jail, or the voices in his head.  Serving his sentence at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo, the Atascadero State Hospital in Atascadero, California (appropriately, the name translates to "mire" in Spanish), and the State Medical Corrections Facility in the town of Vacaville.  Over the four decades Gordon will be behind bars he will be up for parole ten times (the first time takes place in 1991), but have each denied when he refuses to attend any hearings on the subject, he will still be judged to be suffering from acute paranoid schizophrenia in 2017 (a Los Angeles deputy district attorney will state in 2014 that Gordon is still "seriously psychologically incapacitated" and "a danger when he is not taking his medication"), tries to commit suicide a number of times, never plays drums again, and finds the most frequent visitor in his head is now the voice of his older brother John.  Dying from natural causes, Gordon, prisoner #C89262, finally passes away at the medical facilities of Vacaville on March 13, 2023 at the age of 77 ... hopefully he has now found the peace that was so missing from his life as a mad musician and matricide killer.

Convict

Gordon - Once Upon A Time

  
 

 

    
    

 

 

MOUNT PELEE, MARTINIQUE ERUPTS

5/8/1902 - Paradise terrifically transformed in literally a handful of seconds, Mother Nature demonstrates her formidable powers in a truly horrific manner on the French eastern Caribbean island of Martinique, when after only rumbling since 1851, the active volcano, 4,583 foot Mount Pelee (Antillean Creole for "bald mountain" or "peeled mountain") explodes, destroying the beautiful town of Saint-Pierre (known at the time as "The Paris of the Caribbean") and taking the lives of approximately 30,000 people in the most devastating volcanic eruption of the 20th Century.

The Big Eruption

Rising out of the ocean due to volcanic activity over a period of 24 million years, the island of Martinique has a land mass of 421 square miles and sits upon a subduction fault where the Earth's South American Plate slides beneath it's Caribbean Plate.  A part of the Caribbean's Antilles archipelago, it sits 280 miles to the northeast of the coast of South America and 435 miles to the southeast of the Dominican Republic.  It's Atlantic Ocean side (or "windward side") consists of a mixture of coastal cliffs, shallow coral reefs and cays, with winds that make sea traffic extremely hazardous.  On it's Caribbean Sea side (it's "leeward" coast), the winds are negated by the island's mass and the sea floor drops off dramatically from shore.  The southern part of the island contains white sand beaches, while the northern portion of Martinique is extremely mountainous, made so by a series of mountains ("mornes") and volcanoes ("pitons"), the highest, stretching 4,583 feet above the sea, being Mount Pelee, a 400,000 year old, still active volcano that has erupted more than 30 times in the last 5,000 years.

Martinique

Mount Pelee

Sometime around 130 A.D., the Arawak people of northern South America become the first people to settle on the island, but in a preview of what is to come, they are decimated when Mount Pelee erupts in 295 A.D.  Back for a second try, around 400 A.D. the gentle farmers repopulate Martinique, but are wiped out two centuries later when the cannibal warrior Caribs arrive from the coast of what will become the country of Venezuela.  European interest in the island begins when Christopher Columbus charts it's location in 1493, and then comes ashore on his fourth voyage to the "New World," spending three days in the area resting and bathing his men, washing laundry, gathering fruit, and refilling water casks.  Ignored for the most part by the Spanish, at the behest of Cardinal Richelieu, in 1635, the French trader, Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc, and one hundred settlers, establish a colony on the northwestern portion of the island, where a fort is built at the mouth of the Roxelane River they name, St. Pierre.  Shortly thereafter, they are warring with the Caribs until the island is completely subjugated by the French in 1658.  At first exporting annatto (a fruit used to make dye and cheese), indigo, tobacco, cacao, and cotton, the colony becomes highly successful enterprise when it begins trading in sugar, rum, and molasses.  Subsequent years will have the colony endure hurricanes, English (and a brief occupation during Great Britain's wars with Napoleon Bonaparte) & Dutch attacks, slave revolts, earthquakes, pirates (the most famous being the buccaneer Bartholomew "Black Bart" Roberts"), fire, and minor eruptions of Mt. Pelee (in 1792 and 1851).  Despite the many calamities that assault the island, by 1888, Martinique has a population of 176,000 souls, with over 25,000 residing in St. Pierre, by then known as "the Paris of the Caribbean."

Carib Warrior

The French Land On Martinique

Roberts Pirate Flag - The AMH Signifies The Skull

Belongs To A Martinique Citizen

Providing a warning to the residents of the island as to what is coming (the volcano had been calm for two generations of St. Pierre residents), on April 23, 1902, Mt. Pelee begins a series of phreatic explosions (magma heating ground or surface water into super-heated steam) that send a light rain of cinders on to the volcano's southern and western sides while setting off seismic activity in the region.  The volcano sends more rock and ash clouds into the air on the 25th and 26th, but because little damage is done by the ash fall, public authorities are not worried by Mt. Pelee's demonstration.  On the 27th, as the ugly smell of sulfur reaches St. Pierre (four miles away), a number of hikers make their way up the volcano and report that the Etang Sec ("Dry Pond') crater at it's top has filled with water, forming a lake 590 feet across that is being fed by a steady stream of boiling water coming out of a 50 foot high cone of volcanic debris.  The 30th of the month sees two local waterways, Riviere des Peres and the river Roxelane, swelling out of their banks due to fallen boulders and trees from the volcano clogging their courses, while the villages of Precheur and Sainte-Philomene are covered in a steady rain of ash.  Each eruption seemingly more powerful than the last (the explosions now are occurring every five to six hours), on May 2nd, at 11:30 p.m., the volcano produces a violent eruption that produces loud explosions, earthquakes, and sends a huge pillar of black smoke into the sky, and below, farm animals begin dying from hunger and thirst as their water and food supplies are contaminated from all the falling ash that now covers the entire northern portion of Martinique (the sharp knives at the local newspaper, Les Colonies, indefinitely postpone the May 4th picnic they have planned to take place on the slopes of Mt. Pelee).  On May 3rd, winds blow the ash cloud away from St. Pierre, and the city receives a brief respite.  The following day however, the ash fall is back and intensifies, becoming so dense that communications are cut off between St. Pierre and the Precheur district, and small boats are unable to navigate along the coast causing many citizen to flee the city, filling the local steamer lines to their full capacity.  As a new week begins on May 5th, the activity of the volcano appears to decrease, but at around 1:00 in the afternoon, the sea suddenly recedes 330 feet and then rushes back, flooding parts of St. Pierre while a new, large cloud of black smoke is expelled westwards out of the volcano.  On Mt. Pelee, one wall of the Etang Sec crater collapses, sending a wave of boiling water and mud (known as a lahar) into the Blanche River that destroys the Guerin sugar works and buries 150 people beneath 200 to 300 feet of muck.  The eruption also sends a horrifying array of poisonous gigantic centipedes, pit vipers, and biting ants down the hill, where they savage much of the livestock in the area and kill at least fifty people.   Filling St. Pierre with more refugees fleeing the wrath of the volcano, in the night, the city is plunged into darkness when the atmospheric disturbances caused by Mt. Pelee's eruptions knock out the city's electricity.  The following day, loud noises can be heard coming from deep within the volcano.

City Theater

St. Pierre Harbor Area

Mt. Pelee

The day before doom, there is actually a belief in St. Pierre that nothing major will come of Mt. Pelee's eruptions despite the clouds of ash expelled now being streaked with volcanic lightning and it's crater glowing reddish orange in the night.  All the local newspapers downplay the threat the volcano poses, and showing the citizenry all is well, notables such as Governor Louis Mouttet (he will appoint a commission to decide whether evacuation is necessary, and based on the opinion of a local high school science teacher, it is decided that the residents of St. Pierre should stay so that they can vote in the island election scheduled to take place on the coming Sunday for the French Chamber of Deputies, and decision made, troops are actually sent out to keep people from fleeing St. Pierre for the island's other large city, Fort-de-France, the Martinique's capital) and his wife Marie Henriette Helene de Coppet (thankfully for them, their three children are left back in Fort-de-France), Les Colonies newspaper editor, Andreus Hurard, the local high school's science professor, civil engineer Gaston Landes, Monseigneur Gabriel Parel (acting head of the local Catholic parish while it's bishop is in France), St. Pierre Mayor, Pierre Rodolphe Fouche (along with his wife), civil engineer, William Leonce, and Lt. Colonel James Gerbault (an artillery officer) put on brave faces for the populace.  And when news is received that the volcano La Soufriere has erupted on the nearby island of Saint Vincent (95 miles away from Martinique), it is believed that the pressure building up inside Mt. Pelee has been relieved with the explosion (the lesson that should have been learned is the toll the eruption takes on the residents of the island, killing roughly 1,500 individuals).  Representing the United States of America due to a mix-up that sees the post he was promised in Batavia, Java, assigned to another diplomat, also staying in the city despite the danger are Consul General Thomas Prentis (a former sharpshooter from Vermont during the Civil War), his wife, Clara "Louisa" Prentis, and their young daughters, Louise Lydia and Christiana Hazel, along with Vice-Consul Amedee Testart Grosval.  More wary though is Captain Marina Leboffe of the Italian barque Orsolina out of Naples.  Witnessing the violent machinations of Mt. Pelee, which remind him of Mt. Vesuvius back home, Leboffe leaves port with only half the sugar cargo he has been consigned to carry loaded into his vessel, a decision that enrages the St. Pierre shipper and port authorities that threaten the captain with arrest, and leaves sixteen ships in the harbor.  In the evening, Mt. Pelee's tremors seem to subside.  

Mouttet

The Prentis Family

After La Soufriere Blows

At 4:00 in the morning of Ascension Day, Thursday May 8, 1902, Mt. Pelee begins rumbling again and emits a dark cloud of ash and fiery cinders that trade winds push out to the west of Martinique.  As dawn begins to break, at 6:30 a.m., the Quebec Line's passenger steamship SS Roraima (built in 1887 and captained by G. T. Muggah) drops anchor 900 yards off in St. Pierre's harbor as passengers and crew line it's rails watching the volcano erupting, there are 68 souls on board and she is the largest vessel in port.  A short while later, the British passenger steamship SS Roddam anchors close inshore, becoming the 18th ship in port, while eight miles out at sea, west of the ruins of the Guerin sugar factory destroyed by the Monday wave of mud, the repair ship Pouyer-Quertier sets about fixing a trans-Atlantic cable, broken in one of the earthquakes the volcano sets off.  The morning is clear and sunny, and despite the volcano, the air of St. Pierre is filled with the sound of church bells ringing and the singing of voices celebrating the anniversary of Jesus Christ's ascension to Heaven ... a Christ that will soon be joined by thousands and thousands of St. Pierre souls.  

SS Roraima

Suddenly, shortly after 7:52, just as the night shift telegraph operator in St. Pierre sends out a volcano update to Fort-de-France stating that no new activity has taken place on the volcano, Mount Pelee massively erupts in a huge roar that can be heard everywhere on the island (and 800 miles away at Maracaibo, Venezuela).  With a blinding light brighter than lightning, the mountain tears itself apart sending from one rent at it's top a huge black mushroom cloud that rushes up into the sky, darkening the sky above in a radius of 50 miles (Mass just beginning in Fort-de-France, the darkness that suddenly descends on Martinique's capital is so deep that objects only a foot away from churchgoers eyes can not be discerned), while a second rent opens in the side of the mountain that shoots out a massive horizontal, ground hugging pyroclastic surge of rock fragments, magma particles, super-heated steam and fiery gases that exceeds temperatures of 1,967 degrees Fahrenheit and travels at an estimated speed of 100 mph ... a hurricane of death and destruction that takes roughly only a minute to reach St. Pierre.  Nowhere to run, the catastrophic cloud covers the two-mile length of St. Pierre, destroying everything it touches as steel is turned into melted pretzels, concrete walls three to four feet thick are torn apart as if they were made of paper, and the roofs of homes and businesses disintegrate, thousands of casks of rum on the harbor's quay explode and create burning rivers of booze; everything combustible catches fire, animals and people included.  Depending on where they meet death, the residents of the city perish from the cloud's shock wave, inhalation of hot gases, deep burns, are crushed by volcanic boulders or under collapsed buildings.  With only a few exceptions, by 8:02 in the morning, the city of St. Pierre and it's citizens are all gone.  

The Volcano Explodes - Painting

Mt. Pelee Eruption

The Destruction Of St. Pierre

Hell also stalks the ships in St. Pierre's harbor.  Sixteen of the eighteen ships in port, vessels like the cable repair ship CS Grappler, the French square-rigger Tayama, the three-masted schooner Anna E. J. Morse, the Italian sailing barks Nord America (three of her crew survive when they are blown into the harbor, submerge ahead of the deadly cloud, hold their breath, and then cling to wreckage until rescued) and Teresa lo Vico (survival aboard the ship seems to be based on being buried at the bottom of clumps of corpses, Captain Ferrara is crushed under one of the masts of his command, while his wife and the ship's engineer, Jean-Louis Prudent, manage to survive after abandoning the wreck and finding a small boat which Prudent eventually steers to safety) and the ferry Diamant all go down with the loss of all of their crews (aboard the Diamant, only the cabin boy, Jean-Baptiste, survives; blown into the water while attaching a hawser to the quay, he stays submerged for as long as his breath holds and then though badly burned, holds on to a bit of wreckage until he is rescued seven hours later).  The first to be reached by the volcano's eruption is the CS Grappler.  Built in 1880 for the West India & Panama Telegraph Company, the 200-foot long, 828 gross registered ton vessel, carrying over a hundred miles of cable catches fire and then moments later is hit by a monster wave and capsizes, it's entire crew, from Captain A. J. Boreham to jointer A. Smart are burnt to death, killed by volcanic debris, or jumping into the water, drowned in St. Pierre's boiling waters.  Only the SS Roraima and the recently arrived SS Roddam survive the initial devastation ... barely.  Next to the CS Grappler, the SS Roraima has all it's upper works, masts, bridge, and funnel swept away, while her captain catches fire and unconscious, falls into the sea.  Though hit by a surge wave that sends the ship to the bottom briefly before it pops back up, the ship, burning until it's end, will take over a day to sink ... of it's sixty-eight crew and passengers, only nine crewmen and two passengers (8-year-old Marguerite Stokes and her 26-year-old nurse, Clara King) will survive the ordeal.  Amazingly, SS Roddam takes a punch from the fire cloud and the boiling seas and manages to steam out of the burning harbor, due to the steam in it's engines still being up, some of her engineers being below decks, missed by the cloud, and due to the heroism of the vessel's captain, 35-year-old Edward William Freeman (he is in the ship's chart-room when the cloud hits his ship), who manages to navigate full astern (the steering gear is jammed for 90 minutes) through sunken ships, huge waves, and burning debris despite his face and hands being burnt to a crisp (he will leave the flesh of his hands on the steering wheel of the ship and have a crewman pour water in his eyes as needed so he can see where he is going).  Arriving hours later (around 5:00 in the afternoon), led on by a group of fleeing dolphins, at the port of Castries on the nearby island of St. Lucia, harbor authorities will be horrified by the condition of the ship, still smoldering, paint burnt off and covered in grey ash, with 22 individuals laying dead on it's deck.  Shocked and unaware of the eruption of Mt. Pelee, they will ask Freeman where his ship has come from and he will croak out his truth, "We come from Hell" (still indomitable despite what he has endured, the captain will refuse medical treatment until all his crew and passengers are first seen to, it will be three weeks before he can raise his hands ... for services rendered, Freeman will receive a "meritorious" service medal from the insurance company, Lloyd's of London, along with a silver presentation cup).

CS Grappler

Harbor Disaster

Wreck Of The SS Roraima Before She Goes Under

Freeman

SS Roddam After

Responding to the cataclysm, eight miles out to sea, the CS Pouyer-Quertier witnesses St. Pierre's destruction but is powerless to do anything about attempting to give any succor to the city, and instead finds itself battling red-hot stones and ash that begin pelting the ship, which with difficulty, heads further out into the Caribbean (the vessel will eventually be able to participate in local relief efforts, taking to the safety of Fort-de-France 450 survivors of the eruption from the village Le Prechuer).  Communications with the outside world cutoff, the secretary-general of the colony, and acting governor in Mouttet's absence, Georges L'Heurre, at noon orders the French cruiser Suchet (under the guidance of Commander Pierre Le Bris who will be promoted to captain for his actions during the rescue mission) to make the run from Fort-de-France up to St. Pierre.  The warship arrives off St. Pierre at 12:30 in the afternoon and finds the port still in flames.  Twice, longboats are sent towards shore, but have to turn back due the fires and heat coming from the devastated city, and it will not be until 5:00 p.m. for relief to get ashore (during this period the cruiser also picks up the handful of survivors while attempting to put out the fires aboard the doomed SS Roraima ... in various relief efforts, the Suchet will bring over 1,200 Martinique residents to the safe haven of Fort-de-France).  But only briefly as fires and horror at what they discover force them back too.  Reporting what they have found the world soon learns that St. Pierre is no more.  Responding to the tragedy, President Theodore Roosevelt asks Congress that $500,000 be appropriated for emergency relief efforts on the island and sends the cruiser USS Cincinnati (in Santo Domingo), the converted freighter Dixie (from San Juan, Puerto Rico), and the navy tug Potomac (also out of Puerto Rico) to Martinique with Army rations, medical supplies, and doctors.  Responding to the emergency, assistance will also be provided by Canada, the United Kingdom, the Vatican, Russia, Denmark, Japan, Italy, Germany, and of course France.   

Suchet

Harbor Area

USS Cincinnati

Despite the world becoming involved, there is little that can be done for St. Pierre.  Finding an area of ten square miles of annihilation to people and property, the relief parties that enter the rubbled city gather corpses that are then cremated ... some appearing to be surprised at the fate that has befallen them, and others seemingly screaming in agony for another second of life.  It will take weeks to gather the volcano's victims, and many bodies are never identified or even found.  Falling on Ascension Day, the catastrophe also engulfs the religious services taking place in and about the city ... 25 priests, 76 nuns, and 26 orphan girls from the House of St. Anne will all lose their lives in the blast.  But there are a few miracles too.  In the nearby village of Morne Rouge, at the Convent of the Order of Notre Dame, 23 nuns will be untouched by the eruption and numerous witnesses will see an apparition of Jesus, with blood dripping from his heart, in the host when Father Mary exposes the Blessed Sacrament for public adoration, a vision that lasts several hours until it is repositioned in it's tabernacle and is believed to be responsible for saving the village on May 8th.  Shielded by a high promontory at the south end of town, the village of Le Carbet survives the holocaust, and five miles to the north of St. Pierre, the fishing village of Le Precheur loses people and buildings, but endures the volcano's wrath, in part protected by the mud wall tragedy of May 5th.  The miracle of miracles though is that three members of St. Perre's populace live through the tumultuous event that claims over 30,000 other souls.  With her family on the way to services at the city's cathedral, 10-year-old Havivra Da Ifrile is sent by her mother to pick up snacks for later at her aunt's pastry shop, and full of fear as the rumbles of Mt. Pelee grow in intensity, she instead runs to the harbor, jumps in a small boat belonging to her brother, and just as the mountain explodes, makes her way into a small ocean cave where she and her friends used to play pirates ... burnt and knocked unconscious as the death cloud hits St. Pierre, she will be rescued two miles out to sea later in the day when the cruiser Suchet arrives.  Living on the edge of the city's death-zone, 28-year-old shoemaker Leon Compere-Leandre, as the sky turns black, his arms and legs burning, is able to stumble three or four steps into his home, where he collapses on a bed, waking an hour later to find the house's roof on fire and dead bodies about the area that also sought the home for refuge.  Legs bleeding, the shoemaker shambles almost four miles down a nearby trail to the village of Fonds-Saint-Denis before rescuers send him on to Fort-de-France (amazingly, he will also survive further eruptions of the volcano that take place on May 20th and August 30th, that kill an additional 3,000 individuals, many in the region trying to support relief efforts the volcano's first eruption caused ... still on the island, he passes away in 1936 at the age of 62).

St. Pierre Ruins

St. Pierre Rum Factory

U.S. Consul Building After

The most amazing survival story though belongs to a 27-year-old convicted felon, Louis-Auguste Cyparis (some accounts have his name as being Ludger Sylbaris, the stage name he will later use).  A notorious, husky trouble-maker known to the St. Pierre police as "Samson," the night before Mt. Pelee erupts Cyparis gets plastered and gets into a brawl in which he cuts a friend's head open with a cutlass (in some stories he kills his friend). Taken into custody by the authorities, he is thrown into a solitary confinement cell built of stone that is partially underground, faces out to sea, and has no windows, for ventilation there is only a narrow slit in the top of the enclosure's door.  Built around 1660 and once used for storing munitions, it is the most secure area in all of St. Pierre.  Waiting for a guard to bring him his morning meal, on the morning of the 8th, Cyparis suddenly experiences a rumble in the earth, a flash of light through the grate, then darkness as ash begins swirling into his cell, with the heat becoming so severe that though his clothes don't catch fire, he suffers deep burns that will bleed on his hands, arms, back and legs.  He survives by holding his breath as long as possible during the initial wave of super-heated air hitting his cell and by urinating on his clothes and stuffing them into the ventilation slit.  Once the worst is over, the felon begins calling for help ... help that finally arrives three days later when a relief party moving through the blasted city finally hears his cries and digs him out of his cell.  Amazed at finding an actually survivor within the city, Cyparis is brought to Fort-de-France where his wounds are treated, and because of the ordeal he has endured he is granted a pardon for his previous crimes.  Suddenly a celebrity with a tale the world wants to be told about, he is signed up to tour (using the stage name Ludger Sylbarus) with the "Greatest Show On Earth," the Barnum & Bailey Circus, becoming the previously segregated entertainment giant's first black star.  Billed as both "The Man Who Lived Through Doomsday" and "The Most Marvelous Man In The World," his acts consists of Cyparis stepping out from a replica of his cell (the real thing still exists and is visited by hundreds of tourists every year), a recounting of Mt. Pelee's explosive horrors, and bringing gasps from the audience, shucking his shirt to show off his heat-scarred back.  Every day since 5/8/1902 a blessing to be alive, the former Martinique hoodlum dies of natural causes on Martinique at the age of 54 in 1929.

The Cell

Cyparis Postcard

Circus Poster

Sadly, despite it's disastrous eruption, the volcano isn't done with St. Pierre or Martinique's residents after the 8th of May.  Lessons still to be given, believing the mountain is no longer a danger, relief workers pour into the area just in time for Mt. Pelee blowing up again on May 20th ... an explosion that knocks down most of what remained of St. Pierre (the city will never be fully rebuilt or be repopulated) and kills over 2,000 more souls.  Still not satisfied with the toll it has taken, though of less intensity, the mountain erupts again in August, this time hammering the villages of Morne Rouge (800 deaths, sadly, among the community's casualties is Father Mary, the heroic priest of Notre Dame de La Delivrande, that remained at his post during the volcano's May eruptions, giving shelter to the region's survivors, including helping to treat the wounds of Cyparis before he is sent on to Fort-de-France ... only steps away from the entrance to Morne Rouge's stone church, he is caught by another death cloud from Mt. Pelee and dies in agony two days later), Ajoupa-Bouillon (250 deaths), Basse-Pointe (25 deaths), and Morne-Capot (10 deaths), along with causing a tsunami that causes damage to the fishing village of Le Carbet ... to date the last fatalities caused by the volcano.

Downtown - Rue Victor Hugo After The First Eruption

St, Pierre Devastation

Exploring The Ruins

Before the eruptions finally end in 1905, the mountain provides scientists the opportunity to study a living spine of lava in the process of mountain building which geologist Angelo Heilprin will describe as being grander than the Matterhorn, the Domes of Yosemite, the Mexican volcano Popocatepetl, and the Grand Canyon ... a wonder that will be known as "The Needle of Pelee" or "Pelee's Tower."  Beginning in October of 1902, an obelisk-shaped tower of rock, a lava dome, starts building up out of the Mt. Pelee's Etang Sec crater.  With it's cracks glowing from inside the tower, with steam escaping from it's summit, eventually reaching a maximum width of roughly 500 feet that stretches roughly a 1,000 feet into the air, the rock formation grows at a rate of around 50 feet a day, and in five months will basically attain the same volume as the man-made Great Pyramid of Egypt.  A prisoner of the laws of gravity, the spine will finally become unstable and collapse into a pile of rubble in March of 1903.  Lessons learned, quiet for over a decade, when the volcano becomes active again on September 16, 1929, the Martinique authorities are quick this time to evacuate the region based on the mountain's rumbles, which go quiet again at the end of 1932.  To date, no more eruptions have taken place, but seismic activity has begun again at the volcano site in 2019 and 2020, with 4,544 individuals now living in the St. Pierre region.

St. Pierre Still Smoldering

Looking Down On The Ruins Of St. Pierre

The Tower

May 8, 1902 ... the world blows up for the residents of St. Pierre, Martinique.

Present Day Madness

The Wasteland Of St. Pierre

 

     

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