Delia's Gone: True Crime Murder Ballads Pt. 1

If you're a fan of old school folk, country, and jazz, chances are you've heard a song or two about Delia. But what you may not know is that these songs are inspired by real people. Songwriters through the years have taken varying degrees of creative license when telling the tale of Delia's fate, and the actual events surrounding her life and death are largely forgotten. She was a gambler in some versions, a prostitute in others. Today, the most well known version describes her as an evil woman whose luck ran out when she messed with the wrong guy.

In reality, Delia Green was a 14-year-old Black girl living in Savannah, Georgia in 1900 when she was shot and killed at a Christmas Eve party by 15-year-old Moses Houston. Intoxicated, Houston began publicly bragging to party goers about his sexual relationship with Green, using language to imply some sort of ownership over her. She denied it and rejected his claims, calling him a "son of a bitch" in the process. Ego bruised, he responded by shooting her in the groin. She succumbed to her injuries hours later, on Christmas day, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Savannah's Laurel Grove Cemetery. Houston was sentenced to life in prison, but only served 13 years before being granted parole.

Tragic circumstances like these often proved to be fertile grounds for songwriters, who rushed to use jaw-dropping breaking news stories to inspire fresh material. Though the original writers have been lost to time, Library of Congress field recordings suggest Delia Green was a popular lyrical subject from the time of her death until the end of the 1910s. While the tale of Green's murder fell out of favor for several decades, it returned with a vengeance by the middle of the century. Piedmont blues guitarist Blind Willie McTell recorded "Delia" and "Little Delia" in the 1940s, and Bahamas-based calypso musician Blake Alphonso Higgs recorded "Delia's Gone" in the 1950s. From there, the American folk music revival aroused a flurry of "Delia" covers, including from Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Josh White, and Burl Ives.

Johnny Cash released his own version in 1962, and another in 1994, the latter accompanied by a grotesquely glamorous Anton Corbijn-directed music video starring supermodel Kate Moss. Throughout the clip, Moss is posed dead-eyed beneath a noose and motionless at the bottom of a grave, dirt raining down on her. Cash, when not carrying Moss' lifeless body around, stands in a cemetery strumming his guitar, "DELIA" printed on the cross behind him. The song helped propel Cash's career comeback, with the LA Times proclaiming "Delia's Gone, But Man in Black's Back."

The recording itself is also particularly nasty. Adding verses that describe Delia as "cold and mean," Cash submits his actions as a blueprint for other men to follow: "So if your woman's devilish, you can let her run or you can bring her down and do her like Delia got done." While this rendition is particularly brutal considering the story behind the song, it's worth noting that this cold-hearted interpretation potentially matches the emotions of the moment more truthfully. During his confession, Houston reportedly exhibited zero remorse, saying he'd do it all over again if given the chance.

Not all versions are so cruel, however. Harry Belafonte released multiple stirring renditions, first in 1954 and again in 1967, lyrics rewritten to present the reason for Delia's mysterious absence as unknown. He also movingly covered the original in 1959, making him a particularly skilled interpreter of this story. And David Bromberg's 2016 re-recording is another standout among dozens of "Delia" performances.

In 2020, 120 years after her death, the non-profit Killer Blues Headstone Project raised the funds to finally deliver Green her own grave marker. It's a thoughtful tribute to the girl who has inspired countless musicians to pick up their guitar, but whose actual existence has been largely forgotten. So the next time you're singing along with "one more round, Delia's gone," remember the child whose death inspired those words. Rest in peace, Delia Green.

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I occasionally see people complain that stereotypes of trans women even in our own online communities are often about us being nerdy shut ins, and how they say that’s unfair and inaccurate. But besides the obvious selection bias that in online spaces people who are shut ins that spend most of their time online are going to be more prevalent than those who spend less time online, I feel like it takes a bit of willful ignorance to pretend that nerdy shut ins don’t make up a very large portion of transgender women for very material reasons. Most of the transgender women I know have a few things in common:

We grew up uncomfortable with our bodies

We spent most of our lives prior to transitioning feeling like something is very wrong and feeling like we don’t fit in with most of society

We frequently fantasized about a life that could be different

Again there is a very real amount of selection bias in this because basically every trans woman I know is also mentally ill and spends most of her time online. But again I feel that the material reality of being a person who feels uncomfortable with themselves, feels like they don’t belong, and often fantasizes about a life where they didn’t have those problems very much would cause said person to gravitate towards being nerdy and/or a shut in. And that is intensified if you consider the statistically higher percentage of trans women that are autistic (the autism-transgender connection is a whole different topic but there is a statistically significant overlap). To a person like that, video games, tabletop role playing, and online communities where you can present yourself how you’d like are all very attractive things. And if so many of us gravitated to those things before transitioning, existing in this world that is so deeply cruel and unaccepting of trans women only pushes us further into using those as our outlets.

I won’t pretend to have any statistical or other knowledge to make sweeping statements about that making up the majority of us or anything, and I also recognize there is selection bias inherent to this discussion and that my view is limited as an American white woman. But I will say that I don’t think it should be necessarily surprising or disappointing to anyone that online communities of transgender women tend to focus on talking about the types of transgender women that make up the majority of those communities: the ones who spend more time online

ASH KETCHUM IS A 10 YEAR OLD DAMMIT LET HIM ACT LIKE ONE!!!!

im talkin yo mama jokes, deez nuts, dabbing, absurd noises, learning swear words in different languages, Parry Gripp, and being a little shit like a real 10 year old boy

there will definitely be a part 2 i need to see more of this and damn im gonna miss him <333

edit: PART 2 LETS GOO

Finally found my Apple Pencil yesterday! No new art worth writing home about, but I did make some chicken-scratchy thumbnails.

Ok, I know it's totally random but I'm at a store right now trying different kinds of accessories and whenever I try to put a choker on I get this weird suffocating feeling like someone or something is wrapping their hands, something, around my neck and slowly pressing on my neck. ( it's a weird thing that I've had for a long time, even turtlenecks are a drag for me but not as bad as those kinds of necklaces )

And I just thought, what if Katsuki had the same feeling but with ties and that is why he doesn't wear them anymore/often ?

( if I remember correctly even his costume for the i-island arc didn't have one? )

A post-JN concept:

Tokio knows about Gary's crush on Ash. He's too polite to pry or tease him about it, of course, but (judging by the earnest smile he gives Gary whenever Ash's name comes up) Gary knows that he knows, and he absolutely hates it.

I will never stop talking about this picture

Random Headcanon idea: Whenever Ash travels to a different region, he never forgets to send a regional cookbook/recipe book to Delia depending on where he is right now...

YES-

Delia doesn’t get to many calls with Ash now, the time difference continues to grow with each region, but she’s always assured that Ash is okay because a cook book shows up at her house. Marked with so many postage stamps and the package a bit dinged. Things change when Lance start personally bringing the cook books to her after the first time one of the books got absolutely destroyed in travel and the postal company refused to acknowledge their blunder.

[ID copied from alt text: A digital drawing of a portrait of the Bryn family, characters in my D&D campaign. The family is made up of parents Ferris (he/him) and Delia (she/her), tween daughter Nerisya (she/they), and twin babies Owyn and Aymen (both he/him). Delia and her three kids are sat together on a couch, with Delia holding the two swaddled babies, while Ferris is stood behind the others. Ferris is a young, muscular, pale complexion human man with light brown hair pulled up in a small ponytail, as well as a short chin beard. He is wearing ceremonial armor that is in shades of gold and brown, with an orange heart gem at the center of the chest plate, along with a dark teal half cape, and dark green pants. He is smiling as he looks forward.

Sat on the far left of the couch is Nerisya, a young, thin, pale complexion Half Elf girl with bright red hair pulled up in high ponytails, each with a blue and gold crystal clip in them. She is wearing an orange dress with light blue accents and a pink flower necklace. She is smiling as she looks at her mom. Delia is a young, thin, pale complexion Elf woman with short bright red hair. She is wearing a brown and red dress, with her accessories all adorned with a similar light blue gem, excluding her wedding ring, which has an orange gem in a silver band. She is smiling as she looks towards the viewer. She is sat in three quarters profile, holding her swaddled sons close. Owyn and Aymen are twin pale complexion Half Elf babies with short red-brown hair. They are both resting with cute smiles on their faces. End description.]

Been thinking a lot about the family of one of my player's PC's and just thought itd be real cute to draw the happy family 💙🧡

hello! the ADHD demons have allowed me to focus enough to post one chapter! the next is almost done but i need to get to bed so please enjoy this offering <3

the 3 closest fictional characters we've ever gotten to the kinds of girls i fall hardest in love with are delia ketchum, maya fey, and terezi pyrope, so idk what that says about me

You know not once in my life had I thought I'd find someone as despicable as Griffith in Berserk, but AFO proved me wrong... 😃🔪

grown ash waltzing through the delia's front door, as he's (quite sporadically) wont to do, so happy to be home and see his mom.

delia remembers a time she'd see his smaller figure lumbering down the hall and feel nothing but radiant joy that her son had come to visit.

nowadays, there is but a microsecond of some unnameable feeling, like a solitary bead of ice crawling down her spine. just before the light at his back recedes and she can see his face in the shade of the hallway, just for that tiny split second —

she wonders if his father, her husband, has finally found his way home.

but it's never him. always ash. he looks so much like him now... no, no, perhaps ash has even outgrown him. who can say?

ash's 36th birthday approaches. delia never even got to celebrate his father's 25th with him.

who can say anymore?

whenever i rant about jn pls imagine a banner on every post i make that says "GOH IS FINE I LIKE HIM"

DONATION SKETCHES - thank you!!

Nicole - @risingsh0t || Sam - @confidentandgood || Amara - @florbelles || Delia - @statichvm || Eddie - @chuckhansen || Stasia - @multiverse-of-themind​

Cordelia and Chamyrrha

Yay! We recently hit 500 followers!

I won't be doing anything fancy this time since I still have a lot to do, but as a little thank you to everyone for reaching this milestone, I finally made some drawings for Cordelia and Chamyrrha!

I don't have much time to clean up the line work and do more than simple gradient shading, but I hope you like them anyway!

If you've missed their introduction posts, Delia and Cham are two of the other four crush options you've yet to meet in the story worlds. You can find Cordelia's intro post here, and Cham's intro post here!

Oh, and if you didn't catch it, I also updated Chapter 3 again to include new diary entries and a bunch of other stuff! You can find the link and change log in this post!

Feel free to send me any asks about them!