Notes of Infamy: Paul Metsa's Song About the Shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald

Wednesday was the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. 

Today is the 60th anniversary of the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald as he was being escorted out of the jailhouse. The event made an impression on me, as it no doubt did on many others who witnessed it as it happened.

The shooter was Jack Ruby. 

Bob Dylan wrote Murder Most Foul, a song about the shooting of the president. This other singer/songwriter from the Iron Range, Paul Metsa, wrote a song about the gunman who shot and killed the man fingered as JFK's assassin. You might call it Paul Metsa's "Signature Song." 

Moment of Impact

In the first one-third of this three-part drama, the song's structure is an echo of Frank Sinatra's "It Was A Very Good Year." Both tell the story of a life--Sinatra's being his own biography, Metsa's being Jack Ruby's, at 15 living in Capone's Chicago, at 21 taking an interest in guns, at 35 setting up shop in Dallas, etc.

The second act details the dramatic event at Dealey Plaza, culminating with the suggestion that Oswald was a patsy. The final third of the song explores the variety of theories as to what really happened in Dallas that weekend.

Metsa has a gruff attention-getting style of singing, and he's good at getting his blood up when singing this song. And it grows on you when he barks that chorus, "Jack Ruby, Jack Ruby in a Cavanaugh hat...."

Jack Ruby, Jack Ruby in a cavanaugh hat
Whoever taught you to shoot a pistol like that
Oh, you snuck in the basement and you stood in the back
Jack Ruby, Jack Ruby in a cavanaugh hat

Jack Ruby, Jack Ruby when you were fifteen years old
On the south side of Chicago you looked up to Capone
Stole girls lunch money beat boys on their way home
Jack Ruby, Jack Ruby when you were fifteen years old

Jack Ruby, Jack Ruby when you were twenty-one
you traded brass knuckles for a caliber gun
In the Sherman Hotel bootleg whiskey did run
Jack Ruby, Jack Ruby when you were twenty-one

Jack Ruby, Jack Ruby when you were thirty-five
Set up shop in Dallas, had nothing to hide
A nightclub with hookers and cops side by side
Jack Ruby, Jack Ruby, when you were thirty-five

Jack Ruby, Jack Ruby when you were forty-nine
At the Carousel Club you kept the judges in line
J. Edgar Hoover said there's no organized crime
Jack Ruby, Jack Ruby when you were forty-nine.

Read the rest of the lyrics here:
http://www.marcogiunco.com/Testi/001982_03.htm

Cavanaugh Hat from the JFK Presidential Library and Museum

Paul Metsa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNxKhY-C8MA