James Wayne "Jim" Stafford (born January 16, 1944) is an American comedian, musician, and singer-songwriter. While prominent in the 1970s for his records "Spiders and Snakes", "Swamp Witch", "Under The Scotsman's Kilt", "My Girl Bill", and "Wildwood Weed", Stafford has headlined at his own theater in Branson, Missouri, since 1990. Stafford is self-taught on guitar, fiddle, piano, banjo, organ and harmonica.
Stafford was raised in Winter Haven, Florida. In high school, he played in a band along with friends Bobby Braddock, Kent LaVoie (also known as Lobo) and Gram Parsons (of the Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers).
Stafford's first chart hit was "Swamp Witch", produced by Lobo, which cracked the U.S. Top 40 in July 1973. On March 2, 1974 his biggest hit, "Spiders & Snakes", peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, selling over two million copies, earning a gold disc by the R.I.A.A. that month. Stafford continued to have moderate chart success through most of 1975.
Coordinates: 52°48′24″N 2°07′02″W / 52.8066°N 2.1171°W
Stafford (/ˈstæfəd/) is the county town of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands of England. It lies approximately 16 miles (26 km) north of Wolverhampton, 18 miles (29 km) south of Stoke-on-Trent and 24 miles (39 km) north-west of Birmingham. The population in 2001 was 63,681 and that of the wider borough of Stafford 122,000, the fourth largest in the county after Stoke-on-Trent, Tamworth and Newcastle-under-Lyme.
Stafford means 'ford' by a 'staithe' (landing place). The original settlement was on dry sand and gravel peninsula that provided a strategic crossing point in the marshy valley of the River Sow, a tributary of the River Trent. There is still a large area of marshland northwest of the town, which has always been subject to flooding, such as in 1947, 2000 and 2007.
It is thought Stafford was founded in about 700 AD by a Mercian prince called Bertelin who, according to legend, established a hermitage on the peninsula named Betheney or Bethnei. Until recently it was thought that the remains of a wooden preaching cross from this time had been found under the remains of St Bertelin's chapel, next to the later collegiate Church of St Mary in the centre of the town. Recent re-examination of the evidence shows this was a misinterpretation – it was a tree trunk coffin placed centrally in the first, timber, chapel at around the time Æthelflæd founded the burh, in 913 AD. The tree trunk coffin may have been placed there as an object of commemoration or veneration of St Bertelin.
Forty-one individuals who played professional baseball at the major league level lack identified given names. Identification of players remains difficult due to a lack of information; a Brooklyn, New York directory, for instance, lists more than 30 men that could be the professional player "Stoddard". Possible mistakes in reading box scores from the 19th century could have also led to players without given names: "Eland", for example, could be another player from the Baltimore Marylands roster whose name was simply misread. Four of the 41, McBride, Stafford, Sterling, and Sweigert, were local players added to the Philadelphia Athletics team by manager Bill Sharsig for Philadelphia's last game of the season against the Syracuse Stars on October 12, 1890. Sterling pitched five innings for the Athletics and conceded 12 runs. McBride, Philadelphia's center fielder, and Stafford, the team's right fielder, both failed to reach base, but left fielder Sweigert reached base on a walk and stole a base. Society for American Baseball Research writer Bill Carle "doubt[s] we will ever be able to identify them".
HM Prison Stafford is a Category C men's prison, located in Stafford, Staffordshire, England. The prison is operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service.
Stafford Prison was built on its current site in 1793, and has been in almost continuous use, save a period between 1916 and 1939. It held Irish Internees taken by the British after the 1916 Easter Rising from May. They were released Christmas 1916.
Among its earlier prisoners was George Smith who served several sentences for theft there but began his later work as a hangman while a prisoner, assisting William Calcraft. He officiated at several executions in the prison later in his life, notably that of poisoner William Palmer in 1866.
In November 1998, an inspection report from Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons heavily criticised security at Stafford Prison, after it emerged that inmates were being supplied with drugs flown in on paper planes. Inmates were fashioning strips of paper into planes, then attaching lines to them and flying them over the 19-foot (5.8-metre) perimeter wall. The lines were then used to pull packages containing drugs and other banned substances back over the wall. The prison was also criticised for being overcrowded, under-resourced, and failing to prepare prisoners for release.
Wildwood flower grew wild on the farm
And we never knowed what it was called
Some said it was a flower and some said it was a weed
I didn't give it much thought
One day I was out there talkin' to my brother
And I reached down for a weed to chew on
Things got fuzzy and things got blurry
And then ev'rything was gone
Didn't know what happened but I knew it beat the hell
Out of sniffing burlap
I come to and my brother was there and he said,
"What's wrong with your eyes?"
I said "I don't know, I was chewin' on the weed"
He said, "Let me give it a try"
We spent the rest of that day and most of that night tryin'
To find my brother Bill
Caught up with him about six o'clock the next mornin'
Naked, singing on the windmill
He said he flew up there
I had to fly up and get him down
He was about half crazy
The very next day we picked a bunch of them weeds
And put 'em in the sun to dry
Then we mashed 'em up and we cleaned 'em off
Put 'em in the corn cob pot
Smokin' them wildwood flowers got to be a habit
We never seen no harm
We thought it was kind-a handy
Take a trip and never leave the farm
Big 'ole puff of that wildwood weed next thing you know
You're just wand'ring 'round behind the little animals
All good things got to come to an end
It's the same with the wildwood weeds
One day this feller from Washington come by
And spied one and turned white as a sheet
And they dug and they burned
And they burned and they dug and they killed
All our cute little weeds and then they drove away
We just smiled and waved sittin' ther on that sack o' seeds