The Night Chicago Died

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"The Night Chicago Died" is a song by the British group Paper Lace, written by Peter Robin Callander and Mitch Murray, that reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for one week in 1974. The single reached number 3 in the UK charts. The subject matter is a fictional gang shootout in Chicago between gangsters tied to Al Capone and Chicago Police. The narrator retells his mother's anguish in awaiting news of the fate of her husband, a Chicago cop.

The song's opening is perplexing to anyone living in Chicago:

Daddy was a cop, on the east side of Chicago

Many believe that there is no "east side" of Chicago, and that the aforementioned cop must have patrolled Lake Michigan. In reality, the east side of Chicago is an isolated enclave at the extreme southern end of Chicago along the border with Indiana. It is far removed from areas of the near South Side and North Side where Capone conducted his business transactions, making it unlikely that said cop would have become involved in large-scale gangland warfare. Many of the discrepancies in the song can be attributed to the fact that the songwriters do not hail from Chicago, but from England, and admitted in interviews - most notably on Beat Club shortly after the song's release - that they have never even been to the city itself; their sole knowledge of the city and that period of its history being based on gangster films. The other gangsters did not "Surrender up or die", Capone was convicted of income tax evasion and for having weapons in his apartment. When Paper Lace sent this song to Chicago mayor Richard Daley, he was not impressed, shunning the fictionalized story, saying that the group was nuts.

Preceded by: "Feel Like Makin' Love" by Roberta Flack

Billboard Hot 100 number one single August 17, 1974

Succeeded by: "(You're) Having My Baby" by Paul Anka and Odia Coates