Alamo Fast Draw

Alamo Fast Draw: I want to see what ya’ll thoughts are, I believe all three of you have probably done some research on western history and come up with the resources that ya’ll like. I find that when I do research on whatever aspect of the old west, whether it be hats or boots or clothes  or historical

Tombstone Arizona

information on anything it’s sometimes really hard to know if the person you’re getting the information from did a good job themselves.

Gunfighter W.C. Hall:As far as research?

Alamo Fast Draw: Yeah. As far as research. Cuz you’ll get somebody who did research and wrote an article and they didn’t do quite as good a job in the research as they should of. I think I read some news articles. You know, original news articles or copied it. I’ve been reading original news articles from back in the day where maybe the writer was a little one sided in his reporting. So, I find that sometimes it’s really hard to get really good resources. Have you had experiences like that?

Gunfighter W.C.Hall: Well, you know back to even the 1800’s, 1880’s or the 1990’s or going as far as the 1920’s when dime novels were popular. A lot of the dime novels were produced… I would refer to the dime novels as your US Weekly or your magazines that really don’t make no sense. They blow up the character so big. And your character is not really researched. If anybody had really done any research at all.

A good example is Wyatt Earp. You can read the dime novel, the original dime novel online. They make Wyatt Earp to be the biggest, baddest lawman good guy that was ever around. Well, we were in Wichita Kansas three years ago and there was a gentleman there that did a little history on Wyatt Earp. He did an outstanding job. He stayed in character throughout the entire thing and one of the judges said, “Well, Mr. Earp, what would be one of the worst jobs you ever had while you were in Tombstone?” That stumped this guy because I mean, he was just stumped. The worst job Wyatt Earp ever had was… when he lived in Arizona he was actually a dog catcher.

Alamo Fast Draw: [Laughs]

Gunfighter W.C. Hall:That was the worst job of his life. Now, not only was he not the big, bad good guy… All of the Earp brothers, including Wyatt, especially Wyatt, were punk asses.

Alamo Fast Draw: [Laughs]

Gunfighter W.C.Hall:They were not liked by anybody. Nobody liked them. They were bullies. They were not what Hollywood has made them up to be. They were not what the dime novels have made them up to be. Okay. So, when you do your research on U.S. history you gotta be a little open minded when you do this research.

Alamo Fast Draw:Right now. To finish what you’re saying. That’s pretty much what I’m saying in the article about research and that’s what one reason I always bring it up. To see what other people thought.

Gunfighter W.C. Hall:Yeah. I’ve done a lot of research on living history. When you’re doing living history, you portray that individual that you’re doing history on like for example I do living history on Jack McCall. If you don’t know who Jack McCall was… He was the man that shot Bill in Deadwood. He’s the man that killed Wild Bill Hickcok and in my research on Jack McCall there was nothing ever said or written about Jack Mc Call until that day that he shot Hickcok. So you punch in Jack McCall in a search engine called Google or whatever and everything you see will have nothing but Wild Bill Hickcok. So incidentally I ended up doing a lot of research on Bill Hickcok who I really had no interest in.

And you can look at one article say… You can look at the Deadwood Historical Museum and they wrote an article on him and then you can go to the New York Historical Museum and they say two totally different things about Hickcok.

Gunfighter Gulch Is a great place to get a lot of info on Fast Draw History.

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