Ford informed her that Houdini had come through. Houdini did visit many mediums, and tried to make contact for years, with no luck - until one day a medium called Mr. Before he was bound up and sealed away inside a tank or some dark box, she would give him a parting kiss, and as their lips met, she would pass him the key which he would later use to unlock the padlocks that chained him. His wife would often help him with his escapes. He and his wife made a decision that if one of them should die and try to make contact, the other would know it was truly them through a code that only the two of them knew. I feel he must have believed in the possibility of contact after death, and perhaps in his own way, by weeding out the frauds, he hoped to find just one that could not be proven to be a fake.
His mother had died, and in trying to make contact through such spiritual people, he realized how much pain was being inflicted on people already in sorrow, people who would part with money just for the chance of a few words from a past loved one. The side most people know of Houdini is that of the escapologist, but he spent many years of his life exposing mediums and seances as frauds. 'Houdini' was covered by Baby Bushka, Kat Devlin and Goodknight Productions. 'Houdini' appeared as the B-side of the single Night Of The Swallow, released in Ireland only. The story fascinated Kate so much that she decided to write a song about it. She later came to believe that the code had been betrayed and she had been tricked. In January 1929, it was reported in the Detroit News that Bess had actually succeeded in contacting him. Since Houdini was a spirited debunker of spiritualist frauds during his lifetime, he had devised a code - 'Rosabel, believe' - to ensure she knew that it really was him. Following his death in 1926, his wife Bess tried to contact him during spiritual seances. This scene is depicted on the sleeve of the album.
In the song, the keys to his chains were passed on to him by his wife during a kiss. The song was inspired by Harry Houdini, the escape artist who became known as the "Handcuff King" at the beginning of the 20th century.
Originally released on her fourth album, The Dreaming.
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