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Frankie And Johnny (song)
"Frankie and Johnny" (sometimes spelled "Frankie and Johnnie"; also known as "Frankie and Albert", "Frankie's Man", "Johnny", or just "Frankie") is a murder ballad, a traditional American popular song. It tells the story of a woman, Frankie, who finds her man Johnny making love to another woman and shoots him dead. Frankie is then arrested; in some versions of the song she is also executed. History The song was inspired by one or more actual murders. One of these took place in an apartment building located at 212 Targee Street in St. Louis, Missouri, at 2:00 on the morning of October 15, 1899. Frankie Baker (18761952), a 22-year-old woman, shot her 17-year-old lover Allen (also known as "Albert") Britt in the abdomen. Britt had just returned from a cakewalk at a local dance hall, where he and another woman, Nelly Bly (also known as "Alice Pryor" and no relation to the pioneering reporter who adopted the pseudonym Nellie Bly or the " Nelly Bly" who was the subject of an 1850 son ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Murder Ballad
Murder ballads are a subgenre of the traditional ballad form dealing with a crime or a gruesome death. Their lyrics form a narrative describing the events of a murder, often including the lead-up and/or aftermath. The term refers to the content, and may be applied to traditional ballads, part of oral culture. Definition The term ballad, applied to traditional or folk music, means a narrative song. Within ballads, the "event song" is dedicated to narrating a particular event, and the murder ballad is a type of event song in which the event is a murder. This definition can be applied also to songs composed self-consciously within, or with reference to, the traditional generic conventions. Atkinson, referring to traditional English ballads, comments that "there is no shortage of murders in the corpus of ballads ..and few of them are concealed with any success." Perspectives are numerous. Some murder ballads tell the story from the point of view of the murderer, or attempt to por ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
