Osceola’s Crying; A Musician’s Response to the Oil Spill

By Leigh Clifton

For over 90 days now, an oil spill has gushed in the Gulf of Mexico. Many people feel helpless in the wake of such a massive tragedy; they are angry and frustrated, hurt by an oil company’s apparent reckless actions.
One local musician, Darrell Clanton, has found a way to vent those feelings of frustration through his music. Clanton is a Treasure Island boy, as local as they come and he and fellow musician Chuck Cobb have recorded perhaps one of the most relevant songs of the oil spill; a song that captures the true essence of Old Florida and the likes of which we will probably never see again. Osceola’s Crying is Clanton’s anthem for the Gulf region and it is a powerful reminder of what a great loss our waters would be if tainted with oil.
One of Clanton’s friends was talking with him about the spill and reminded him of the old Indian with the tear running down his face in the commercial about polluting that ran in the ‘70’s. A bell went off in his head. A successful songwriter and singer in Nashville for almost 30 years, an idea came to him to write a song that would embrace the feelings Floridians were having about the devastation of the BP spill.
“I thought to myself, what’s more Florida than Osceola, a great Indian Chief, who was very vocal about the polluting of the Indian lands by the white man. He was an environmentalist who cared deeply for the waters here and I wondered how he would have reacted to this tragedy,” Clanton explained.
Clanton immediately wrote the “hook”; he then wrote the words in a matter of days and picked at the melody in a minor key to add the drama of the American Indian’s music.
“I wanted it to sound like it was written by a Native Indian,” Clanton said. “I thought it would have more impact.”
The next step was to get the song to Chuck Cobb, a talented local songwriter and singer in his own rite, who had worked with Darrell as a duo on the beach, singing at local bars and restaurants. Clanton played the song for Cobb, who was amazed.
“There was magic in it,” Cobb said and immediately began to do all the vocal arranging. The song was cut on a Tuesday and on Thursday Clanton, Cobb and their back –up band De Lei’d Parrots stood on the beach and sang the song. The result was an instant impact, first of Clanton’s wife Debbie, who is Native American, and then on Dan Mashburn, the sound engineer and producer who would eventually shoot the video for the song in two days on the beach at Treasure Island. It was a whirlwind five days.
The song was premiered last week on WMNF on Pete Gallagher’s show where it got a tremendous response from the listening audience. Clanton hopes to put the song on ITunes and Rhapsody as a downloadable file, with the proceeds to go to one of the needy group of people affected directly by the oil spill.
Osceola’s Crying is a bittersweet ode to the ways of Old Florida and how through greed and avarice, the purity of the coastline has been forever compromised and lost perhaps forever.
There will be a video viewing party at 6pm on Tuesday, July 20, at the Peninsula Inn in Gulfport. Go to www.thedunedoctor.com for more info on the song and the upcoming video viewing party.

Leigh Clifton can be reached at leighclifton@thegabber.com