On this day, April 3, 1961, Spade Cooley, nicknamed the King of Western Swing, beat his wife to death in a drunken rampage. Cooley, a California big band leader and fiddle player, also appeared on the big screen, earning a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Cooley’s promoter claims to have coined the term “Western swing.”
Cooley suspected his wife, Ella Mae Evans, of having an affair. He filed for divorce, and 11 days later bashed his wife’s head into the floor, stomped on her stomach, then crushed a lighted cigarette into her skin to see if she was dead.
Cooley was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He died of a heart attack while on furlough to play a benefit concert for a sheriff’s association in Oakland, Calif.
-Scott McCabe
