A “crime of passion” landed him in prison to serve a 99-year sentence for killing the man he had caught with his wife.

Two years into his sentence, he got chummy with the warden who came to trust him with his dog, a Bloodhound named “Ol Red.”

Now Ol Red wasn’t just a pet, he was a working dog who helped catch escapees. Ol Red was so good at his job that no prisoner had ever successfully escaped. It helped that the prison was surrounded by quicksand and hungry alligators, but Ol’ Red could smell a trail up to two days old, and the dog always “got his man” before the elements did.

We don’t know the name of this prisoner, but he was clever. He bribed a guard to let him send a letter to a cousin in Tennessee asking his cousin to bring his female Bluetick Coonhound to the vicinity of the prison, and put her in a pen just south of the prison walls. When Ol Red went out for his daily runs with his prisoner-handler, they always went past the lovely Coonhound so Ol Red would know she was there.

And then one week, the pair didn’t run past her, and wouldn’t for several days. Ol Red pined for the Bluetick’s company, and that’s when his handler made his move. On an inky dark night, he escaped from the prison and headed north in the direction of Tennessee. The warden turned Ol’ Red loose of course, but the Bloodhound was so eager to “honeymoon” with the Bluetick that he ran towards her, completely ignoring the scent of the escapee heading in the other direction.

Over time, there were came to be “red-haired Blueticks” all over the South. The prisoner, now long gone, reflected on how “Love got me in here and love got me out.”

If you’re a fan of country music, the story might sound familiar to you, and here’s why:

The fictional story about Ol Red, a Bluetick Coonhound, and a prisoner, was a song written by “Bo” Bohon, Don Goodman, and Mark Sherrill. It was originally recorded by George Jones, but Kenny Rogers also recorded it, and the video version you just saw was recorded by Blake Shelton who considers it his “signature song.”

The video was filmed at the Tennessee State Prison and included a cameo by NASCAR driver, Elliott Sadler as the cousin.

As an aside, for those who don’t follow country music, in 2017, Blake Shelton was named People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive.” Though his version of “Ol Red” never reached the Top 10 on the U.S. country charts, it did place at number fourteen on the Billboard Hot Country chart and sold a million copies. It remains one of Shelton’s most commonly requested songs in concert, and inspired the name of a chain of bars owned by Blake.

We’re pretty sure that Bloodhound and Bluetick Coonhound preservation breeders don’t endorse the “love match” sung of in the song, and happily, it’s fictional, but when two purebred breeds feature in musical pop culture, we pass it along.

Image was generated by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system, Shutterstock AI Generator/Shutterstock.com