Word: crumped
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last June the Democratic National Committeeman from Tennessee, Edward Hull Crump of Memphis, failed to attend the Democratic National Convention. Soon thereafter Tennessee's senior Senator, bumbling old Kenneth McKellar, hotfooted it to Memphis to see Boss Crump, conferred for a week with one of the South's most remarkable politicians...
More than 20 years ago Mr. Crump was Mayor of Memphis. In 1930 he was elected to Congress, served two quiet, unpretentious terms, gracefully retired. Now a jaunty, strapping six-footer of 60 with an unruly shock of hair, he controls all offices in Tennessee's largest city. The Crump dynasty is supposed to be financed by various forms of "protection money" from bootleggers, gamblers, et al. Be that as it may, Boss Crump keeps taxes low, picks good competent men for public office and-unusual in the South-cultivates and delivers a solid block of Negro votes.* Result...
Handy had 55 men playing for him when in 1909 he was hired to boost a Memphis politician named Edward Hull Crump, who was running for Mayor. Handy wrote a song, played it on Memphis street corners...
...Crump don't 'low no easy riders here, Mr. Crump won't 'low no easy riders here. I don't care what Mr. Crump don't 'low, I'm gonna bar'l-house anyhow. Mr. Crump can go and catch hisself some...
With all Memphis humming his song, Crump won the election, went on to become the Democratic boss of Shelby County and sit in Congress. Three years later when Handy attempted to publish the song as Memphis Blues, he met with repeated rejections, finally sold it, rights and all, for $100. St. Louis Blues (1914) might have had a similar fate, except that this time, when no publisher was interested, Handy decided to take a gamble and put it out himself. It made him a fortune, still sells so well that it brings in royalties of some $25,000 per year...