Profits of Tragedy

Schadenfreude has always been one of humanity's least attractive--but most lucratively exploitable--qualities. Lately, though, in the field of popular music, delight in other people's anguish has reached new levels of callousness--and depressing commercial success.

INCIDENT AT DYKE BRIDGE, distributed as sheet music three months ago and recently recorded by its Texas creator, Red River Dave McEnery, the song is predictably moral, mournful and sententious:

When the sun came up next morning, the black Oldsmobile was found

The young man was so sorry, but sweet Mary Jo was drowned.

The composer, who once made it big with Amelia Earhart's Last Flight, feels he has "told the truth" in the ballad, but will not release it until after the Jan. 5 inquest, in case of "any dramatic change." Adds McEnery: "It might be wrong, and I want it to be right. I'm not trying to hurt anybody."

WE LOVE YOU, CALL COLLECT and DEAR MOM AND DAD are the work of Art Linkletter, who has for years dealt in mischievous humor. The record is a maudlin appeal to an erring daughter, which Linkletter recorded with his own daughter Diane last April. "Come back, come back," trembles Linkletter's voice. "I gotta do what's right for me," explains Diane. "We love you," says Art, with a choke in his voice. "Call collect." Originally the property of Word Incorporated, specialists in religious records, We Love You and Dad were not immediately released. But when Diane embarked on an LSD trip and leaped to her death from a window last fall, Capitol Records bought the record and swiftly released it in early November. It has sold 275,000 copies in eight weeks. Royalties, says Linkletter, will go "to combat problems arising from drug abuse."

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