The Ballad of Red River Dave

Born in San Antonio, Texas, Red River on 15 December 1914, David Largus McEnery was an American artist, musician, and writer of topical songs who specialised in the darker side of music, writing and performing dozens of tributes to deceased celebrities. Apparently he picked up the nickname ‘Red River Dave’ in high school, because he enjoyed singing the song Red River Valley.

As a teenager, Dave regularly appeared on radio, as well as singing, yodelling, and performing rope tricks at rodeos - something he would continue to do for the rest of his life. In 1936, he broadcast live from the Goodyear Blimp for WQAM in Miami, but his career really took off (quite literally) with his song Amelia Earhart's Last Flight, which it is claimed was the first song ever sung on television in the US, broadcast from the 1939 New York World's Fair.

 

In a career that lasted more than 50 years, he appeared in several westerns movies as a singing cowboy, playing Steve Barrett in Swing in the Saddle (1944), which also featured the Nat King Cole trio and Slim Summerville, and was either featured or starred in more than half-a-dozen shorts, including Hidden Valley Days and Echo Ranch (both 1948). He worked for several radio stations, including WOR in New York City, WSAI (Ohio) and XERF, on the Texas/Mexico border. In later years, he became a well-known painter of Texas landscapes and Western Americana themes and was often known to paint the backs of his old guitars. Dave’s compositions (outside of the death disc genre) include Hitler Lives (If We Hurt Our fellow Man), the Wink Martindale, communist-themed pastiche Red Deck of Cards, and the 1980 novelty The Night Ronald Reagan Rode With Santa Claus.

 

Hugely prolific – in 1946, as part of a publicity stunt, he wrote 52 songs in 12 hours while handcuffed to a piano - Dave had a way with a death disc, and throughout the 1950s and 60s seemed to concentrate on songs about dead Hollywood stars, releasing ‘tributes’ to James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Bing Crosby and Sharon Tate, as well as one dedicated to Elvis’s mother. In 1975 he was on the cusp of issuing his latest waxing, The Ballad of Patty Hearst. He had just mailed out dozens of press releases to promote the single and was looking forward to getting some much-needed television coverage for the song, ‘with its emotional knockout punch aimed at the Symbionese Liberation Army’ [the newspaper heiress’s captors] when, what do you know, the FBI found Patty in San Francisco and scuppered his plans. Dave was heartbroken.

 

Red River Dave joined the subjects of so many of his songs on 15 January 2002, aged 87. His passing merited an obituary in The Guardian.

 

Here are a couple of killers from Dave’s prodigious output, his 1969 single about the Tate-LaBianca tragedy California Hippie Murders! and, from 1962, the surprisingly graphic The Ballad of Marilyn Monroe.

 

Enjoy! 

Download Hippie HERE 

Download Monroe HERE