Ain’t gonna tell you no stories
We’ll start today’s posts with some news accounts, to begin thinking about whether and how the facts matter to the song, and how the facts leave their traces, often in indirect ways, in the songs. For the moment at least, we’ll proceed on the assumption that “Frankie…” tells the story of Frankie Baker and Allen Britt.
From the St. Louis Republic, October 16, 1899 (cited by Cecil Brown, see previous post):
“Negro Shot by Woman”
After midnight, Sunday, Allen Britt, Colored, was shot and badly wounded by Frankie Baker, also Colored. The shooting occurred at the woman’s home at 317 Targee Street, after a quarrel over another woman named Nellie Bly. Britt had been to a Cakewalk at Stolle’s Dance Halls, where he and Nellie Bly had won a prize. His condition at City Hospital is serious.
When Allen Britt died a few days later, the Republic printed the following:
“Amid the suffering”
Allen Britt’s brief experience in the art of love cost him his life. He died at the City Hospital, Wednesday night, from knife wounds inflicted by Frankie Baker, an ebony-hued cakewalker. Brit was also colored and he was seventeen years old. He met Frankie at the Orange Blossom’s ball and was smitten with her. Thereafter they were lovers.
In the rear of 212 Targee Street lived Britt. There his sweetheart wended her way a few nights ago and lectured Allen for his alleged duplicity. Allen’s reply was not intended to cheer the dusky damsel and a glint of steel gleamed in the darkness. An instant later the boy fell to the floor mortally wounded. Frankie is locked up in the Four Courts.
OK, so the press at the time got the facts a little off–stabbing or shooting, and which address was it, exactly?. For the record, to whatever extent it matters, everybody else who sings the song gets the facts wrong, too.
The story of Frankie Baker and Allen Britt is different in a good many ways from most of the versions of the song, except for the fact that Britt was “her man” (in some sense), he “done her wrong,” and she shot him. Frankie Baker was a prostitute, and within the context of the song, the fact that she was a “good girl,” and “bought Albert a new suit of clothes,” had as much to do with paying her pimp as anything else. This is a good way distant from the Guy Lombardo version.
So, the nature of their romantic tie comes into question, certainly. What’s also apparent from the contemporary and subsequent testimony about the case is that the killing of Albert Britt didn’t exactly happen the way most of the songs say it did, either. Whether or not there was a confrontation about another woman, Frankie contended that she shot Allen in self-defense. That was the ruling of the coroner’s jury—justifiable homicide. I have yet to find a version of the song that makes her shooting in self-defense.
Cecil Brown quotes a 1935 interview of Frankie Baker, when she was living in Portland, Oregon (having moved there to escape the notoriety caused by the song):
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| Allen Britt’s grave in St. Peter’s Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri |
“About three o’clock Sunday morning, Allen came in. Pansy Marvin [Baker’s roommate and friend] opened the door and let him in. I was in the front room, in bed asleep, and he walked in and grabbed the lamp and started to throw it at me….I jumped up out of the bed and says, ‘What’s the matter with you Al?’ and he says, ‘What the hell are you doing in this bed?’ I say, ‘I’ve been sick and come in where I can get some air,’ and he walked around the bed and started to cut me, like this, twice. I asked him, ‘Say, are you trying to get me hurt,’ and he stood there and cursed and I says, ‘I am boss here, I pay rent and I have to protect myself.’ He run his hand in his pocket, opened his knife, and started around this side to cut me. I was staying here, pillow lays this way, just run my hand under the pillow and shot him. Didn’t shoot but once, standing by the bed.”
It’s appropriate to recognize that this story may be a cover for the real facts, and that it’s possible that the song tells more of “the real story,” than Frankie’s testimony in court or her subsequent interviews. She was on trial, and it’s quite possible that the coroner’s jury was not really all that concerned about making sure they found justice for the killing of a 17 year old, African-American pimp.
Although in some versions of the ballad Frankie is sentenced to death, it’s not the case in all versions, and clearly not the case in real life. There apparently was an “Alice Pryor,” but she wasn’t present at the time. (Remember above that the newspaper reported it had something to do with a woman named “Nellie Bly.” This is an interesting name to choose, being the name of that day’s most famous female journalist.)
In the 1912 Tell Taylor version the exchange prior to the killing was Albert announcing to Frankie that he was leaving her. She pleads with him, and when he refuses and explains that he’s involved with another, she shoots him. If this was the actual story, the court didn’t uncover it, or find it relevant.
Frankie apparently did not initiate the violence and it didn’t take place in a barroom, drugstore, or any other public place. What was apparently public, in the close-knit world of the African American community in St. Louis, was the wounded Allen’s flight down the street to his parents’ home (likely why the press accounts listed two different addresses). Aspects of this are picked up in Leadbelly’s version, also re-presented Leadbelly-style in a more modern recording by Rolf Cahn and Eric Von Schmidt.
Note that the tagline for each verse changes with almost refrain. One refrain reflects on Albert’s mother’s plight, “he was her son, and her only one.” This is one way in which this version of the song elevates the pathos of the situation.
Cecil Brown’s argument is that this semi-infamous and sensational local tale immediately captured the imagination of the public and of one Bill Dooley, a local songwriter and contemporary of W.C. Handy. Brown argues that the similarities in style among most recorded versions of “Frankie…” on the one hand, and verses and phrases used in Dooley’s “Stagger Lee” on the other, point to the song’s likely origination with Dooley after this one episode in 1899.
But, the story may be more complicated, as we’ll soon see.