Paper Lace's "The Night Chicago Died" hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during the chart week ending Aug. 17, 1974. Written by Mitch Murray and Peter Callander, the song tells the dramatic tale of a bloody showdown between Chicago police and gangsters working for mob boss Al Capone.
"The Night Chicago Died" depicts a massive gun battle between Capone's men and Chicago police, with the narrator anxiously awaiting word about his policeman father. While the song was inspired by Chicago's Prohibition-era gangster history, there was never a confrontation resembling the one described in the lyrics.
That might help explain one of the song's most notorious details: its reference to the "East Side of Chicago." While Chicago does have a neighborhood called East Side on the city's Far South Side, the city isn't conventionally divided into an East Side in the way the song suggests. Lake Michigan sits directly east of downtown.
As one reader wrote, "There IS no east side of Chicago; just awfully, awfully big lake. Daddy would've needed scuba gear to walk the beat."
"The Night Chicago Died" wasn't even Paper Lace's first Murray-Callander story song. The band previously recorded "Billy Don't Be a Hero," which became a No. 1 hit in the U.K. Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods then recorded their own version and beat Paper Lace to the American market, taking the song to No. 1 in the U.S.
"The Night Chicago Died" became the band's lone Billboard Hot 100 No. 1, while also reaching No. 3 in the U.K., No. 2 in Canada and No. 1 in Australia and New Zealand.
After Paper Lace's song became a hit, a copy was reportedly sent to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. According to accounts of the incident, the response from his office was considerably less than congratulatory.
Wayne Jancik was similarly amused by its relationship with reality in "The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders," writing that Paper Lace "rewrote a piece of history" with its account of the "mythical night."
More recently, Paste included "The Night Chicago Died" near the bottom of its ranking of 1974's No. 1 hits, placing it No. 28 out of 34, writing, "'The Night Chicago Died' is basically a novelty song but a good-sounding one, so that counts for something, I suppose. Chicago mayor Richard Daley hated the song, and one of his staffers allegedly said that Paper Lace should 'jump in the Chicago River, placing your heads under water three times and surfacing twice.'"
Fifty-two years later, it remains an unusual piece of chart history: two English songwriters who had never been to Chicago wrote a song about a Chicago battle that never happened, and Americans took it all the way to No. 1.
Related: 1963 Bob Dylan Song, Ranked Among 'Greatest Songs of All Time,' Went to No. 1 For Beloved Folk Trio
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