“O’Banion’s Wake” comes from David Grisman’s score for Capone, the 1975 crime film produced by Roger Corman and directed by Steve Carver. Its title refers to Dean O’Banion, the leader of Chicago’s North Side Gang during Prohibition, who was shot dead on 10 November 1924 in Schofield’s flower shop. Grisman recorded the score in February 1975 at 1750 Arch Street Studios in Berkeley; Phil Sawyer was the recording engineer, and the credits list Rudy Cipolla on mandolin, Richard Greene on violins, Sy Perkoff on keyboards and Joe Carroll on bass alongside Grisman’s own mandolins, mandola and mandocello. That score stayed unreleased until Acoustic Disc issued it in 2021 as Music From Capone, where “O’Banion’s Wake” is the thirteenth of nineteen tracks.
The piece was in the David Grisman Quintet’s repertoire from the start: it is on the first tape of the group, made in Grisman’s living room on 15 October 1975 with Grisman and Todd Phillips on mandolins, Tony Rice on guitar, Darol Anger on violin and Joe Carroll on bass, which Acoustic Disc released in 2021 as First Recordings: Live in Dawg’s Living Room.
The recording that reached the public first was made in December 1989 at Dawg Studios in Mill Valley, California, for Dawg ’90 (Acoustic Disc ACD 1, 1990), the first album on Grisman’s label, where it is the fourth track, at 4:42. There Grisman plays mandolin, with Mark O’Connor on fiddle, John Carlini on guitar, Jim Kerwin on bass and Joe Craven on rhythm mandolin. It was chosen for Acoustic Disc’s 1993 sampler 100% Handmade Music, Vol. 1 and, in 2022, for Dawg Works Volume 1: 1963–1975, a collection of Grisman’s compositions in the order he wrote them.
