Liner Notes: THE ARIZONA KILLER I’d just returned from a gig at Telluride Mountainfilm Festival-- where they showed a documentary DVD of my activism; trying to save our Colorado River and restore Glen Canyon—to be zapped back into my past with a force that has left me dazed. Out of the blue I get an email from a guy named Bill who is a PhD student in rhetoric and a composition teacher at Carnegie-Mellon University. He tells me he saw this movie “3:10 to Yuma” and they played a verse from a song called The Arizona Killer. When he did a web search about the song, he found ME; and when I told him I’d never heard of the movie he thought I was pulling his leg. He wanted the song—all of it. Backpedal about 53 years: Chicago--Palmer House Hotel—nice suite—Harry and Milton, his guitarist—me and my guitar taping it for Harry…last name Bellefonte. He never sang it, as far as I know, though Milton said he liked the changes in the rhythm. Other than for my coffeehouse or nightclub audiences, the only times I remember singing it for the media were on Studs Terkel’s WFMT show sometime in the mid to late fifties, and maybe NBC-TV Telephone Hour. Old friend Josh White said something like, “Ah c’mon--he kills six dudes in a couple days?—that’s too wild even for the Wildest West!” And Burl, who’d gone thru my warehouse of folksongs, picking material I could best use on the road, asked why I wrote it—or re-wrote it, as the case may be. “Because I want my very own “One Hour Ahead of the Posse,” I told him--a song that he’d recently recorded, and which I liked a lot. “Not as classy as Posse,” he said, “but at least you’ve given it some character with the music.” The music I’d already composed for its sibling, The Tennessee Killer--found in Vance Randolph’s, Folk Songs of the Ozarks—soooo, I rewrote it, added another verse, decided our western place names fit my music better than the Ozark ones, and quit singing about Tennessee altogether. Lest you think I’m just name-dropping here, the object of this exercise is to show that none of these famous souls ever sang it and certainly never recorded it. Nor have I sung it for twenty years…until this week. Now I can’t get it out of my head! But, I did record it on my Concertone--the cream of machines back in the 60’s—and it does fit the movie, 3:10 To Yuma. I must commend these guys for using the one verse they used, and Tucker whose almost ‘singing’ gives the song and the scene maximum effect. Katie Lee 6-20-08