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One exception that may help you explore the difference between “framed” and “unframed” approaches is a 2003 recording by The Crooked Jades, who developed theme of “The Unfortunate Rake” across two albums. Their version of “The Unfortunate Rake” surprisingly tells a woman’s story with a traditionally “male” song title, and a male voice in the lead. It has a distinct alt.country feel to it, and the presentation nicely draws out the rueful quality of the song. Unlike its fellow “Rakes,” however, this version eschews the narrator to give us the “voice of the dying woman straight off.

As with the Old Blind Dogs version, the narrator for most performances of “Pills of White Mercury” and most male-focused versions of “Rake” is usually a “comrade” or fellow soldier. In “Rake” versions with a female protagonist, the “reporter” figure is often the dying woman’s mother, as in this excellent version by Betsy McGovern (which, unusually, uses the “Pills” title for telling a woman’s story).

Goldstein’s liner notes for the Folkways recording observe that, as of 1960, the “Bad Girl’s Lament” versions of the song, often entitled “Young Girl Cut Down in Her Prime,” were “reported with greater frequency than any other, excepting of course, for the later cowboy adaptations.” We’ll get to those with “Streets of Laredo.” Goldstein found that Old World, male-focused versions of “Rake” were squeezed out by their western variants, and that “only variant forms of ‘The Bad Girl’s Lament’ have been reported in the New World.” Fully to tell the story of why and how “Pills of White Mercury” feels and sounds the way it does requires us to explore these versions of “The Bad Girl’s Lament.”

The male and female songs’ stories are essentially the same, but the difference between “comrade” and “mother” is significant. It applies different moral weights and themes to the male and female versions, and structures accountability slightly differently. The soldier’s demise is linked to the flash girl’s failure to tell him “in time.” The daughter’s demise becomes linked to her own failure to tell her mother in time.

Furthermore, the dramatis personae in the male version are soldiers/sailors and prostitutes. In the female versions, the young girl is not a prostitute, and the young man may or may not be a soldier. Viewed with a contemporary lens, the victim in the female version is innocent in a way that the actors in the male version are not, however much the intended moral of the story, its homiletic aim, may have been to safeguard one’s chastity. In other words, previous eras at least may have held the man’s failing and the woman’s as fully equivalent.

The gender differences in the stories also come through in differences in musical arrangement. “Bad Girl” arrangements are usually mournful. The ones I’ve found, and put on the playlist below, are decidedly lovely, and decidedly sad.

In contrast to the women’s songs (and even to the older performances of men’s songs collected by Goldstein), the general tone of the arrangements for recently recorded male-focused versions of “Pills of White Mercury,” drifts more to a bawdy drinking song, with a lusty, full-harmony chorus. The Old Blind Dogs performance is not alone in being up-tempo, with the chorus creating a tone of gleeful irony in contrast to the grisly fate of the young comrade. This is a subjective feel, perhaps, and your take might differ.  You can judge for yourself, if you’d like, using this Spotify playlist.

Even though the scales of agency are putatively balanced between the “Rake” and the “Bad Girl,” the general drift of the arrangements, when considered in the aggregate, reinforces acoustically that the burden of moral failing weighs more heavily on the feminine. These lyrical and musical choices speak to artists’ own judgments as to the heart of the song, and probably also to what listeners find most compelling. They add up, though.

“Say a prayer over me”

What I have supposed about different times of the song’s life, however, is that the imposition of the narrator is a step that affects whether and how one might take the song to heart, to have it fulfill its “homiletic” purpose. One influence here, certainly, is the stigma around syphilis. Another influence is the desire to warn and to teach. Sometimes the warning is more moral in tone, at other times, more pragmatic.

Some of  what’s going on in the song, though, has to do with the comrade’s desire to claim a final dignity, even though he’s morally and physically fallen. Whatever the “Rake” or the “Bad Girl” have done, their calls for compassion in death speak with a resonance we can’t ignore. This theme in the song suggests that the framing device of the narrator may not entirely be about creating some “proper” distance between ourselves and the morally and physically “fallen” comrade. The narrator’s presence elevates the desire for witnesses to our lives, those who will carry forward our memories. Through the narrator, our empathy is drawn not to the protagonist’s corruption and fall, but to his or her desire to be absolved of personal failings at the final hour, and to have his or her final wishes heard. Beyond empathy, the narrator models sympathy for the fallen friend, for honor and respect despite personal regrets and moral failings. You can count on seeing this theme return.

Thanks for reading, and thanks especially to Shaleane and Steven for their helpful comments.