“Dangerous” Dan McGrew

I’m currently re-reading Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day, and this excerpt here struck me:

[…] a gunshot occurred back down Pacific Street, somebody climbed to a rooftop and began to recite “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” […]

Obviously I was struck by the coincidence(?) and googled the title “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” only to find it come up predictively as a previous search. I guess I did realize it the first time I read the book after all.

Anyway, it could well be a coincidence, and I’m not familiar with the ballad in question myself, but this sequence of Against the Day takes place in an intentionally-stereotypical version of the Wild West, as did one particular segment of Gunmen of the Apocalypse, which also featured a Dan McGrew.

It could be a coincidence…but who knows? It’s not thoroughly outlandish that Rob and Dog might have taken the name from “The Shooting of Dan McGrew.”

You can listen to somebody read it here:
http://www.archive.org/details/JohnMacKenzieTheShootingofDanMcGrewRobertService

I’ll check it out later but I didn’t think it was worth holding off on the post. I’m genuinely curious whether or not this is where they got the name.