‘The Night Chicago Died’ by Paper Lace was a Number One hit.

By Randal Hill
Guest Columnist

Paper Lace

If you’re part of a lucrative songwriting team, you’ll want to take pains to be accurate if you’re describing a historic event, especially one that occurred in another country. Otherwise, you just might end up with egg on your face, as happened with the Number One hit “The Night Chicago Died.”

In England, Mitch Murray and Peter Callendar were pop-music creators responsible for such best-selling 45s as Georgie Fame’s “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde,” Vanity Fare’s “Hitchin’ a Ride” and Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods’ “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero.”

But these partners didn’t have their facts straight with “The Night Chicago Died,” which breathlessly — and erroneously — told of a Chicago gun battle with Al Capone’s gang, and a heroic cop who miraculously survived an ordeal that killed 100 officers. (Gangs sometimes had shootouts with each other but not usually with police officers.)

“The Night Chicago Died” was unlike any other successful disc. Rather than being offered an instrumental lead-in followed by a vocal, we were instead snapped to attention by a throbbing drumbeat, a shrieking synthesizer that simulated wailing police sirens, and a passionate spoken introduction by Paper Lace lead singer Phil Wright:

“Daddy was a cop/On the east side of Chicago

“Back in the USA/Back in the bad old days”

Throughout the song, the ear-candy chorus — repeated over and over and over — had many of us singing along after just one listen:

“I heard my mama cry/I heard her pray the night Chicago died

“Brother, what a night it really was/Brother, what a fight it really was

“Glory be”

Paper Lace, an English quartet first called Music Box, was formed in 1967 in Nottingham, home of the Robin Hood legend and at one time the cloth and paper lace-making capital of the world (hence the band’s name). The group was organized by drummer and primary vocalist Wright and three musical pals.

Paper Lace’s hit was originally conceived to be a UK-only release before Mercury Records honchos in America decided that it had hit potential here —which it did, reaching the peak of the Billboard charts (and making Number Three in the UK) before the band became another “one-hit wonder.”

Songfacts.com is a website dedicated to behind-the-scenes information about popular recordings. It was there that Mitch Murray, one-half of the team behind “The Night Chicago Died,” emailed a note that read, “As co-writer of this song, I feel qualified to settle some of the questions involving ‘The Night Chicago Died.’ My writing partner, Peter Callander, and I are both British, and we had never been to Chicago at the time we wrote the song. Having been brought up on a tasty diet of American gangster movies, the term ‘east side’ usually meant the seamy side of a city. Of course, looking back, it was used about New York, not Chicago. We were obviously a little careless with our research.” Obviously, Mitch.

When Murray signed off, he pointed out that he hailed from the (hip) west side of London.