GREW FAMOUS IN PRISON.

Shannon News, 25 August 1925, Page 1

GREW FAMOUS IN PRISON.

CONVICT PIANIST EARNS WEALTH A striking example of the sentimentality of the simple farming population of the middle-west of America is provided by the affair of the radio pianist of Jefferson City Penitentiary. So extrarordinary was the wave of hysteria aroused by his music that he was pardoned half-way through his sentence, and drove out of the prison gates in a car, the gift of his admirers, containing:— 50' silk shirts 3 Airedale terriers 300,000 cigarettes 12 suits of clothes, and 8 spare tyres. In his pockets were £7OO in cash, and a two-year music hall contract at an enormous salary. In addition to the £7OO and the things already mentioned, his gifts from unknown well-wishers during his enforced sojourn included: — 40 ducks, 1 ton of sweets, 3 setters, 1 cock, 4 geese, 1 hog and 2 German police dogs. Among other amenities of life in this great convict prison is an orchestra that not only entertains its fellowinmates with jazz and ragtime, but broadcasts its evening csncert to the less fortunate freemen out on the prairie farms. Its prowess does not appear to have been of the highest, for no sooner did Harry Snodgrass, "a honky-tonk piano player in, small-time vaudeville," as he modestly described himself, sit down to his new hotel's instrument than he had the governor and warders charmed —not to say hypnotised. They couldn't do enough for him. When the motor car, which was sent to him in parts from admirers in every State in America, began to trickle in by every post, the prison workshop was cleared and Mr. Snodgrass's fellow-convicts were told to put them together. He had "drifted into trouble" by being one of a gang that "held up" a Greek restaurant keeper and forced him, at the revolver point, to hand over a bottle of bootlegged spirits. As it was not he wlio actually pointed the revolver, he was let down lightly with a three years' sentence. Pleased with lus wirelessed interpretations of "Tsvelfth Street Rag Melodies," "Three O'clock in the Morning," and other classics of that kind, the Middle West got busy and agitated .for his release. The popular point of view was voiced by the agitator who declared to a crowded meeting: "Of course, he shouldn't have got drunk, but outside of that he didn't do anything wrong. He got into bad company. He was a victim of the hold-up men juat as much as the Greek was." Bowing to popula:- clamour, the Governor pardoned liim. "I've come out," he daclared, "with fame, wealth* more friends than I knew there were in the world; a proud, happy family; and a rosy future.