Twisted Tales: 'Shame on You,' Spade Cooley, for Your Murdering Ways

Posted on Feb 15th 2008 5:00PM by James Sullivan
Comments

He claimed he arrived in Hollywood with pennies in his pocket and a fiddle under his arm, and he left with a star on the Walk of Fame. He was best friends with Roy Rogers, rivals with Lawrence Welk and the impresario of a proposed Water Wonderland in the desert. After killing his wife, he was pardoned by Ronald Reagan. With a name like Spade Cooley, his life was bound to be an eyebrow-raiser.

Once one of the hottest performers on the West Coast, the all-but-forgotten "King of Western Swing" -- grandfather of Drive-By Truckers co-founder Mike Cooley -- is more noted today for the gruesome way he murdered his own career than for his multifaceted entertainment empire. A transplanted Okie who often claimed he was part Cherokee, Donnell Clyde "Spade" Cooley supposedly got his nickname after an especially lucky night at the poker table.

In the 1940s, working as a musician for hire, he befriended the cowboy star Roy Rogers and got a job as the singing actor's stunt double. Cooley parlayed the connection into a house-band gig at the Venice Pier Ballroom, where his fame grew exponentially. Legend has it he bested the great Bob Wills in a "Battle of the Bands," claiming the title King of Western Swing.

By 1946, Cooley and his band had the year's No. 1 country hit with 'Shame on You.' At the height of his fame, he played to 8,000 fans a night. He hosted the highest-rated TV show in L.A. and appeared in dozens of movies. But the demise of the big bands, the rise of honky-tonk music and the sudden mania for rock 'n' roll combined to make Spade Cooley a has-been by the late 1950s.

Always a heavy boozer and womanizer, the bandleader grew increasingly paranoid about his second wife, Ella Mae, whom he had ensconced with their two children in a second home at the edge of the Mojave Desert.
Bizarrely, he came to believe that two of his business partners were gay and had lured his wife into a "free love" cult. He also believed she had had a fling with Rogers, his "ex-best friend."

On April 3, 1961, after years of psychological warfare, Cooley beat his wife severely, burned her with cigarettes and threw her in the shower. When their 14-year-old daughter, Melody, came home, he dragged Ella Mae into the living room, pulled a gun and threatened to "kill us all" if Melody called the police. When a phone rang, the girl ran.

Hours later, as attendants were removing his wife's battered body from the house, he reportedly sobbed, "I love you! Please don't be dead."

In a sensational trial, Cooley tried to claim innocence but eventually allowed that "rockets ran through my brain." He was sentenced to life in prison, where he apparently became a model citizen -- building violins, forming a band and declaring his intention to become an evangelist.

In 1969, California Gov. Ronald Reagan, a fellow former B-movie actor, pardoned Cooley, arranging for his release on his 60th birthday in February of the coming year. In November, the former King of Western Swing was granted a furlough to perform at a law-enforcement benefit in Oakland. Backstage after a well-received set, Cooley said, "I have the feeling that today is the first day of the rest of my life."

Then he promptly dropped dead of a heart attack.