Song: Would You Fly? (Bonnie & Clyde Song)

The song, "Would You Fly" was the first of our Louisiana songs. 


For Marsha, I wrote "We found ourselves in Louisiana/ We had been searching many years/ Now our lives are intermingled/ It's like music to our ears." 
It seems a little bit appropriate for Bonnie and Clyde, who treated Louisiana as a safe zone until . . . that fateful day in 1934.

The song was very lucky for us. We put it on the flip side of "Cajun Christmas" (when people made records and they had flip sides) and it somehow made its way to the Off-Broadway play, "Steel Magnolias." Then both songs got into the movie: "Would You Fly" is very unobtrusive, some gentle bluegrass music from a radio under a car. "Cajun Christmas" makes a grand entrance when Julia Roberts flips a switch at Dolly Parton's hairdressing salon. "Down in Louisiana we have a Cajun Christmas, etc." 

Marsha & Monty, Children's Stage at the
Red River Revel, Shreveport.

 We were lucky with musicians, too. We had befriended the "Watkins Family" band at various concerts and festivals — Luke and Gene and their kids — and I played their LP on the radio. They laid down the accompaniment for "Would You Fly'" 

The lives of Bonnie and Clyde ended abruptly on May 23rd, 1934. They were driving south on Route 154 near Mt. Lebanon, Louisiana, when a team of lawmen shot the hell out of their stolen Ford V-8 which they had purloined in Kansas City, Missouri. The lawmen included a former Texas Ranger, Frank Hamer, and three Texas State policemen; plus the local Bienville Parish Sheriff Henderson Jordan and one of his deputies. It was a classic ambush: Bonnie and Clyde were betrayed by a gang member so that the lawmen waited in the bushes and opened fire when they drove into range.

Bonnie at a happier moment.

The car after the shooting.

The car, along with the bullet-riddled bodies of the outlaw couple and a stash of arms and ammunition they'd assembled, was taken to the nearby town of Arcadia. A large crowd gathered during the day. 

The bodies were taken to Conger's Funeral Home which doubled as a furniture store which also sold records to go with their console radios (pieces of furniture). Conger's had connections, via Bienville's own Grigg Family Band, to the Victor Recording Company over the past few years. The Griggs had auditioned for record producer Ralph Peer at Conger's in Arcadia, and their records were a popular item at the store. 

Lawmen responsible for gunning down Bonnie & Clyde.
Front row C, Henderson Jordan, R, Frank Hamer.