Joe, fully armed, rips through the cloth door of Ramón and Josefa’s cabin and drags Josefa away. Ah Sing is out in the night, looking for him. Joe Cannon arrives, drunk and lost in the dark. Josefa repeats over and over to Ramón that she is not allowed to cry.
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She knows she and Ramón are targets, and that she will not live long. She feels the weight of the world on her heart, a world that is exploding around her. Josefa asks her lover Ramón to stay with her. Scene 4: The Stabbing Ned barely escapes the fury of the mob, leaving a distraught Dame Shirley to lament the loss of her only true friend, whose beautiful voice will never be heard again in these mountains. There was no resistance.” They burnt the houses and the bodies. They describe a massacre they’ve already participated in: “a half dozen bucks, some squaws, some children.
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They are recruiting men to go out and “chastise” some local Indians in response to the murder of one of their miner buddies. Joe, Clarence and a band of violent miners suddenly interrupt the dinner. He serves her and sings a quiet, intimate statement of his beliefs. Ned has prepared a lavish dinner for her, his “Queen” of Rich Bar. Joe and she confess their love for each other. When she was a little girl, she was sold for a mere $10. A blessed thing in anybody is bone, backbone!”ĭame Shirley, alone in her cabin while her husband is away caring for a badly injured miner, receives a visit from Ned who reveals that he was a fugitive slave.Īh Sing appears in a new dress in a new apartment. Joe and Clarence are feeling bullish, singing a song to help restore their virile pride: “Give me a man that’s all a man, who stands up straight and strong. Josefa and Ramón remember an afternoon far outside the city when their love was dangerous, fresh, and unobserved. Joe is a particularly drunk, aggressive customer and his crude advances towards Josefa trigger an ugly incident. He deals, she is there to attract the crowd: “Without a girl, there can be no hotel, without a beautiful one, there can be no business.” The miners are addicted to gambling, making fortunes, and hopelessly ruining themselves, night after night. Panicking in the face of her expectations, Joe runs out into the night. She sizes him up and decides he is the perfect man to help her realize her future ambitions. Joe romances Ah Sing with a corny old song. In 1967 Dolly Good died, and Millie Good followed at the age of 80 in 1993.Josefa, a young Mexican who works the bar, and Ah Sing, a vivacious young Chinese prostitute, voice a more sober view of life. After this, they occasionally performed and recorded again in 1963. They also later moved from WLS to WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio. Toward the end of the 1940s, their careers faded. Later in their careers, they performed on more television shows such as Renfro Valley Barn Dance and Boone County Jamboree. The Girls of the Golden West still remained a popular group, with other songs like "Lonesome Cowgirl" and "Silvery Moon on the Golden Gate", which became their signature tune. They would also inspire a short-lived girl group, The Davis Sisters. There were few women then in the genre, excluding Patsy Montana, The girls would inspire a whole new breed of country music singers such as Kitty Wells, Jean Shepard and Patsy Cline. Girls of the Golden West were pioneers in country music at the time. They would normally wear cowgirl western-style outfits for their appearances on television programs. However, this was all part of the image of the "Western Music" craze. They would claim they were from Muleshoe, Texas, though in reality they were farming girls from Illinois. The Girls also had kept up a fictitious story of their life. The Girls of the Golden West were one of the most popular acts of the 1930s and 1940s, and were one of the few women then found performing country music. They started singing songs such as "Put My Little Shoes Away" and " Ragtime Cowboy Joe". They named themselves the Girls of the Golden West, taken from the opera by Puccini, The Girl of the Golden West. They first started recording for Bluebird Records in July 1933. Bradley Kincaid, also at WLS, later worked with the girls in their recordings. In 1933, they moved to the WLS National Barn Dance, then the home of country music pioneers Gene Autry and Patsy Montana. The Girls of the Golden West first entertained family and friends before they worked on a radio station in St.