WG: It was General Sir Edward Pakenham who died commanding the British forces at the Battle of New Orleans, 8 January 1815. He was the brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, who would go on to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo that same year.
I could not find any evidence that Pakenham's body was enbalmed in a whiskey barrel, but as there was no other preservative at hand, it's quite possible this is true.
It's a pity that more people don't know about the Battle of New Orleans, since it's an amazing story of triumph in the face of a larger, better-equipped force. (British casualties: 2,000. American casualties: 71.) If it weren't for Jimmy Driftwood's song, practically no one would know about it. ("In 1814, we took a little trip...") While Jimmy wrote the lyrics to teach his high school history class, the tune comes directly from the battle--it's called "The Eighth of January".
Even more bizarre, the battle was completely unnecessary, as the Treaty of Ghent which ended the War of 1812 had been signed two weeks earlier.
I don't know about Driftwood but how about Johnny Horton?? Here's his version that I had to degrade from the good MP3 to post here for folks with just dial up. Click HERE!. And BTW.. how come a moderately intelligent guy like yourself has never played in the Nostalgia forum?? I would have thought you'd be good at it.
Sudo --- Jimmy Driftwood wrote the song "Battle of New Orleans" (based on the fiddle tune "8th of January"), so that his history class could get a grasp of what happened. He felt that his students would learn more quickly, and efficaciously, if the lesson was put to music.
Johnny Horton, was simply the man who made the record, to whom you have listened to on the radio. :)-->
Jimmy Driftwood was from Mtn. View, Arkansas -- and I don't know if he is still alive or not, yet he wrote the song.
And here are the original lyrics -- Not the ones you'll hear on the radio. :)-->
quote: Jimmy Driftwood version:
Well, in 18 and 14, we took a little trip
Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Missisip
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans
And we met the bloody British in the town of New Orleans
We fired our guns and the British kept a comin'
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago
We fired once more and they began a running
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico
Well, I seed Marse Jackson come a-walkin' down the street
And a-talkin' to a pirate by the name of Jean Lafitte;
He gave Jean a drink that he brung from Tennessee,
And the pirate said he'd help us drive the British to the sea.
Well the French told Andrew, "You had better run
For Packenham's a-comin' with a bullet in his gun."
Old Hickory said he didn't give a damn
He's a-gonna whup the britches off of Colonel Packenham.
Well, we looked down the river and we seed the British come
And there must have been a hundred of them beating on the drum
They stepped so high and they made their bugles ring
While we stood behind our cotton bales and didn't say a thing
Old Hickory said we could take em by surprise
If we didn't fire a musket till we looked em in the eyes
We held our fire till we seed their face well
Then we opened up our squirrel guns and really gave em well..
Well they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go
They ran so fast the hounds couldn't catch em
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico
Well we fired our cannons till the barrels melted down
So we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round
We filled his head with minie balls and powdered his behind
And when we touched the powder off, the 'gator lost his mind
They lost their pants and their pretty shiny coats
And their tails was all a-showin' like a bunch of billy goats.
They ran down the river with their tongues a-hanging out
And they said they got a lickin', which there wasn't any doubt.
Well we marched back to town in our dirty ragged pants
And we danced all night with the pretty girls from France;
We couldn't understand 'em, but they had the sweetest charms
And we understood 'em better when we got 'em in our arms.
Well, the guide who brung the British from the sea
Come a-limping into camp just as sick as he could be,
He said the dying words of Colonel Packenham
Was, "You better quit your foolin' with your cousin Uncle Sam."
Well, we'll march back home, but we'll never be content
Till we make Old Hick'ry the people's president.
And every time we think about the bacon and the beans
We'll think about the fun we had way down in New Orleans.
"Galen -My dad was on the Ronquil- an old diesel boat in the early fifties- he told me the torpedoes at that time used denatured alcohol (part wood alcohol) and compressed air. He said that every once in a while some torpedo mate would filter it through bread to filter the wood alcohol out, drink it and become permanently blinded from wood alcohol poisoning"
Yeah. I got to think though. A hundred boats, one fool on each boat is going to try that stunt every so often [the more time they spend at sea, and the more tempting it gets to try some new method of 'filtering' or 'refining'. [Read a book on chemisty and learn about 're-torting' darn it sure looks like you person could just. . . . .] After a few Ooops, it is no longer acceptable to have so much alcohol so close to so many thirsty men.
Eventually they did discover a self-oxidizing gel that would run a turbine, but before they did perfect such a thing. They shifted back to straight alcohol for a while.
It all seems so odd.
The miltary subsidizes the cost of booze, making it a fairly in-expensive hobby. While living in Scotland. We could take tours of wonderful Scottish Whiskey distilleries. Some were centuries old, still making wonderful whiskey. But I could purchase it on base for cheaper then buying it at the distillery. It gets made in Scotland, shipped stateside, sold to the NEX/PX/BX system, shipped back overseas to our various bases, and after all those 'mark-ups', it still costs a servicemember 30% less than it would for a Scotsman to walk into the distillery and to buy a fifth. We actually had 'black-marketing' problems with servicemembers purchasing booze on base and supplying it to Scottish pubs.
Sudo --- Jimmy Driftwood wrote the song "Battle of New Orleans" (based on the fiddle tune "8th of January"), so that his history class could get a grasp of what happened. He felt that his students would learn more quickly, and efficaciously, if the lesson was put to music.
Johnny Horton, was simply the man who made the record, to whom you have listened to on the radio. :)-->
Jimmy Driftwood was from Mtn. View, Arkansas -- and I don't know if he is still alive or not, yet he wrote the song.
And here are the original lyrics -- Not the ones you'll hear on the radio. :)-->
dmiller: Unfortunately, Jimmy died in the late 90s, but he was performing right up till the end. It's a crying shame that more people don't know anything more about the man, but that was because he didn't really care too much for all the fame and hypocrisy of Nashville in the 60s. Driftwood wrote over 6,000 songs, and researched hundreds of others in his folksong career, but people generally have only heard two of them, if any at all: Battle of New Orleans, and Tennessee Stud.
Fortunately, most of his excellent RCA Victor recordings of the early 60s were compiled to CD in the early 90s in a 3-disc box set called "Americana", which is still available online if you hunt for it. It's a treasury of early American folk songs from the Revolutionary War up through the Westward Movement.
A fellow named Richard Kent Streeter has compiled a biography of Driftwood, and also sells songbooks of his music and picking bows.
If you're at all interested in folk music, look up his stuff, by all means.
Maybe that explains why it took the USS Constitution, on average, nearly 6200 cannon shot per Brittish ship it skuttled?
Speaking of alcohol, my Chemisty/Physics teacher in high school used to work at Oak Ridge Laboratory in TN. She said they always had a lot of Top Secret experiments and lab notes laying out, so they hired only illiterate custodians to clean up at night. But she said they all knew the word "alcohol", and would invariably drink the wrong kinds. She said it was not uncommon to come into the lab and find a dead janitor laying around.
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Zixar
WG: It was General Sir Edward Pakenham who died commanding the British forces at the Battle of New Orleans, 8 January 1815. He was the brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, who would go on to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo that same year.
I could not find any evidence that Pakenham's body was enbalmed in a whiskey barrel, but as there was no other preservative at hand, it's quite possible this is true.
It's a pity that more people don't know about the Battle of New Orleans, since it's an amazing story of triumph in the face of a larger, better-equipped force. (British casualties: 2,000. American casualties: 71.) If it weren't for Jimmy Driftwood's song, practically no one would know about it. ("In 1814, we took a little trip...") While Jimmy wrote the lyrics to teach his high school history class, the tune comes directly from the battle--it's called "The Eighth of January".
Even more bizarre, the battle was completely unnecessary, as the Treaty of Ghent which ended the War of 1812 had been signed two weeks earlier.
Trivially,
Zix
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Sudo
Zix,
I don't know about Driftwood but how about Johnny Horton?? Here's his version that I had to degrade from the good MP3 to post here for folks with just dial up. Click HERE!. And BTW.. how come a moderately intelligent guy like yourself has never played in the Nostalgia forum?? I would have thought you'd be good at it.
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dmiller
Sudo --- Jimmy Driftwood wrote the song "Battle of New Orleans" (based on the fiddle tune "8th of January"), so that his history class could get a grasp of what happened. He felt that his students would learn more quickly, and efficaciously, if the lesson was put to music.
Johnny Horton, was simply the man who made the record, to whom you have listened to on the radio.
:)-->
Jimmy Driftwood was from Mtn. View, Arkansas -- and I don't know if he is still alive or not, yet he wrote the song.
And here are the original lyrics -- Not the ones you'll hear on the radio.
:)-->
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Galen
ckeer:
"Galen -My dad was on the Ronquil- an old diesel boat in the early fifties- he told me the torpedoes at that time used denatured alcohol (part wood alcohol) and compressed air. He said that every once in a while some torpedo mate would filter it through bread to filter the wood alcohol out, drink it and become permanently blinded from wood alcohol poisoning"
Yeah. I got to think though. A hundred boats, one fool on each boat is going to try that stunt every so often [the more time they spend at sea, and the more tempting it gets to try some new method of 'filtering' or 'refining'. [Read a book on chemisty and learn about 're-torting' darn it sure looks like you person could just. . . . .] After a few Ooops, it is no longer acceptable to have so much alcohol so close to so many thirsty men.
Eventually they did discover a self-oxidizing gel that would run a turbine, but before they did perfect such a thing. They shifted back to straight alcohol for a while.
It all seems so odd.
The miltary subsidizes the cost of booze, making it a fairly in-expensive hobby. While living in Scotland. We could take tours of wonderful Scottish Whiskey distilleries. Some were centuries old, still making wonderful whiskey. But I could purchase it on base for cheaper then buying it at the distillery. It gets made in Scotland, shipped stateside, sold to the NEX/PX/BX system, shipped back overseas to our various bases, and after all those 'mark-ups', it still costs a servicemember 30% less than it would for a Scotsman to walk into the distillery and to buy a fifth. We actually had 'black-marketing' problems with servicemembers purchasing booze on base and supplying it to Scottish pubs.
There are worse hobbies.
:-)
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Zixar
Fortunately, most of his excellent RCA Victor recordings of the early 60s were compiled to CD in the early 90s in a 3-disc box set called "Americana", which is still available online if you hunt for it. It's a treasury of early American folk songs from the Revolutionary War up through the Westward Movement.
A fellow named Richard Kent Streeter has compiled a biography of Driftwood, and also sells songbooks of his music and picking bows.
If you're at all interested in folk music, look up his stuff, by all means.
God bless,
Zix
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SocketCreep
Maybe that explains why it took the USS Constitution, on average, nearly 6200 cannon shot per Brittish ship it skuttled?
Speaking of alcohol, my Chemisty/Physics teacher in high school used to work at Oak Ridge Laboratory in TN. She said they always had a lot of Top Secret experiments and lab notes laying out, so they hired only illiterate custodians to clean up at night. But she said they all knew the word "alcohol", and would invariably drink the wrong kinds. She said it was not uncommon to come into the lab and find a dead janitor laying around.
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Zixar
Um, scuttling a ship is sinking it yourself to avoid it falling into the enemy's hands...
:)-->
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