Song of the Day 9/28: Michael Martin Murphey, “Geronimo’s Cadillac”

As the link in today’s open thread illustrates, we never do right by native Americans, even though we’ve admitted the injustices for a long time now. For example, it was almost exactly 50 years ago when this title track and lead single from Michael Murphey’s debut LP reached the charts.

Murphey wrote the song after seeing the famous 1905 photograph of the Apache leader at the wheel of a primitive horseless carriage. While some of Murphey’s terminology is outdated, his sentiment — “They stole their land and they won’t give it back, and they sent Geronimo a Cadillac” — remains salient. He said,

It was every irony I could ever think of about our culture in two words. Their attempt to make of him what we would define as a civilized person. That was the reason they put him in a Cadillac in the first place. He was actually in jail at the time.

The last part is true. It’s not actually a Cadillac — it is, somehow more appropriately, a Locomobile. But they didn’t give him the car — he spent the last 23 years of his life as a prisoner of war. In truth, his captors used it to transport him back and forth from Fort Sill, Okla., to Wild West shows, where he earned money by selling mementoes.

Murphey’s single topped out at No. 37 on the Hot 100. This is the album version, which features a grittier vocal. You’d never guess from this that his biggest hit would come three years later with the sappy ballad “Wildfire.” By then he was with a different record company, so his old one tried to cash in by re-releasing “Geronimo’s Cadillac.” It sank without a ripple.