Stone Cold Dead in the Market (He Had It Coming)

DESCRIPTION: Singer's husband returns from drinking and beats her. She kills him with a rolling pin. "Now he's stone cold dead in the market" His family swears to kill her. She says "if I kill him he had it coming" even "if I was to die in the electric chair"
AUTHOR: Wilmoth Houdini
EARLIEST DATE: 1939 (Houdini)
KEYWORDS: violence crime homicide derivative husband wife
FOUND IN: West Indies(Trinidad)
RECORDINGS:
Wilmoth Houdini and his Royal Calypso Orchestra, "He Had It Coming" (1939, on Decca 18005)
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordann and His Tympany Five, "Stone Cold Dead in the Market" (1945, on Decca 23546A)
Macbeth the Great and Gerald Clark and the Band, "Stone Cold Dead in the Market" (1999, on "Calypso at Midnight," Rounder CD 11661-1840-2 [recorded 1946]
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Murder in the Market" (some lines; probably the basis for "Stone Cold Dead in the Market")
NOTES [79 words]: The Macbeth Town Hall version ties Houdini's song back to "Murder in the Market" with the verse "Oh Payne dead, Payne dead, he's stone dead (3x) And if I kill him he is me husband." Macbeth also refers to the Fitzgerald-Jordan version with the lines "I catch up the rolling pin And work on his head till I bash it."
I have included this song because of the part it plays in the history of commercial calypso music. For the context see the discussion of "Hold 'im Joe." - BS
Last updated in version 5.2
File: RcSCDitM

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