st. louis in song the big 3

Transcription

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the big 3
ST. LOUIS IN BLUES FOLK
SONG
The Library of Congress wrote that 80% of what passes for pure American Folklore comes out of the 17 square blocks of the black
St. Louis Chestnut Valley community, where ragtime music was also born.!
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1880!
1895!
1899!
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Duncan and Brady !!
Stagger Lee! !
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Frankie and Johnny! / Albert!
…I think a proper study and a research of Negro music would give a better picture of civil rights in America than anything else. !
Judge Nathan B. Young, author of Your St. Louis and Mine, and witness for Frankie Baker at 1942 trial, 1970!
what’s essentially true is virtual reality. technology to wipe out truth is now available. not everybody can afford it but it’s available.
when the cost comes down look out! there wont be songs like these anymore. !
Bob Dylan , 1993!
St. Louis in Blues Folk Songs –– the big 3!
page 1 of 83
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In keeping with the nature of the subject, there are multiple and contradictory versions of nearly everything….!
ST. LOUIS IN BLUES FOLK SONG: The Big 3
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1880!
Duncan and Brady !!
October 6!!
bar-owner Harry Duncan charged with killing Patrolman James Brady!
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Starkes Saloon! !
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patron Harry Duncan charged with killing Patrolman James Brady at Charles Starkes’ saloon!
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715 North 11th / 11th & Lucas (Christy?)!
@ north of site of former McMurphy’s Grill (614 No. 11th)!
@ Lucas Lofts / Terminal Bldg.on current map!
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Duncan and Brady / Been on the Job Too Long; versions on disc: total: 31
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same intersection as Starkes, Lucas and 11th:!
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Bridgewater Saloon!
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where Billy Lyons and Henry Crump were before heading to Bill Curtis’ saloon:!
1895!
Stagger Lee!
December 25!
Lee Shelton shot William “Billy” Lyons!
Bill Curtis Saloon!!
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1101 Morgan!
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11th and Convention northwest corner!
@ NationsBank 801 North 11th / Magnet School !
@ Hadley Square on current map!
13th and Convention / Morgan – alternate site, @ / behind Shell !
@ Terrace Lofts on current map!
page 2 of 83
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Lee Shelton tenement! 6th Street near Spruce (“Tamale Town”)! !
@ first base in Busch Stadium !
Stagger Lee / Stag O Lee / Stackerlee / Stack O’Lee, etc. version A
Stagger Lee version B; other variants; versions on disc: total: 101
1899!
Frankie and Johnny! / Albert!
October 15!
22-year-old Frankie Baker killed 17-year old Allen “Albert” Britt!
Stolles Dance Hall!
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13th
and Biddle!
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@ MacDonald’s / Kram Fish: columns on Kram, 1307 Biddle!
Baker / Britt apartment! 212 Targee Street, rear !
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(alley between 14th and 15th)!
@ Scottrade Center, block south of Peabody Opera House!
Frankie and Albert / Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Albert / Johnny version A: 158
Frankie and Johnny version B (Leaving Home): 3
Frankie and Johnny version C (pull the shades): 3
versions on disc: total: 164
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212 Targee Street, rear, apartment of Frankie Baker !
32 Tagee Street, apartment of Allen Britt’s parents!
9 Targee Street, Tom Turpin’s Saloon!
Targee Street was formerly known as Johnson Street and was probably named for Charles P. Johnson, a well-known St. Louis
businessman and lawyer who defended political boss Ed Butler in a bribery trial late in the 19th century. Johnson Street began as
an alley in 1858. It was called Breden Street between Poplar Street and Clark Avenue until 1893 and was later known as Targee
Street between Clark and Market. The latter of Targee name honored the City of Saint Louis Volunteer Fireman Captain Thomas
page 3 of 83
Targee, who was killed in the city's great May 17th 1849 fire, the first recorded City of Saint Louis Fire Department Firefighter killed
by fire in the line of duty and saved the City of Saint Louis. In 1900 the address, 212 Targee Street, was a four block street running
north and south from Market on the North to Poplar on the South and between Fourteenth and Fifteenth Streets now where the Kiel
Opera House is located at South West corner of Fourteenth and Market and the Scottrade Center, the home of Blues hockey, is
located at 1401 Clark. This was the area of the Chestnut Valley Community in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen
hundreds, once a 'red-light' district in St. Louis contains some most interesting best kept secrets. This is where the legendary song
"Frankie and Johnny" originated.!
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page 4 of 83
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Sidney Street at 9th, southwest corner, c. 1890s?!
page 5 of 83
The link says c. 1890; this is further south from the city, but it gives a glimpse both of a tavern of the time and, in the background,
some of the city fabric.!
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1880!
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1895!
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1899!
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Duncan and Brady
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Stagger Lee !
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!Starkes Saloon! !
715 North 11th / 11th & Lucas (Christy?)! !
@ north of former McMurphy’s Grill (614 No. 11th), @ Lucas Lofts / Terminal Bldg.on current map!
Bridgewater Saloon !
same intersection as Starkes, Lucas and 11th:!
Bill Curtis Saloon! !
1101 Morgan / 11th and Convention / Delmar northwest corner!
@ NationsBank 801 North 11th / Magnet School, @ Hadley Square on current map!
13th and Convention / Morgan – alternate site, @ / behind Shell @ Terrace Lofts on current map!
Lee Shelton tenement!
6th Street near Spruce (“Tamale Town”)! @ 1st base in Busch Stadium !
Frankie and Johnny! / Albert! !
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Stolles Dance Hall!!
13th and Biddle!
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@ MacDonald’s / Kram Fish: columns on Kram, 1307 Biddle!
Baker / Britt apartment !
212 Targee Street, rear (alley between 14th and 15th)!
page 6 of 83
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@ Scottrade Center, block south of Peabody Opera House!
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Britt’s parents 32 Targee, Richard Clay 34 Targee!
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Turpin’s saloon 9 Targee, just south of Market (Peabody Opera House)!
Babe Connor’s Castle was at 210 (or 236?)South 6th Street (Ballpark Village on the map)!
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DUNCAN AND BRADY, 1880
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Brady’s dead and Gaffney’s down,!
We’ll get busy in this town.!
Chase the policemen off the beat,!
Chase the white folks off the street.!
lyric taunting, weeks following Officer Brady shooting, October 6, 1890, at Starkes’ Saloon, 715 North 11th Street, St. Louis !
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Officer Brady is dead and gone!
Officer Gaffney has lost his gun!
We will now have lots of fun!
In Charley Stark’s saloon.!
song overheard near Starke’s Saloon, quoted in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Stark’s Brutal Song,” January 19, 1891!
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You ask for a version of a song intitled 'King Brady'.... I don't remember just what the verses were that you published, but I can give
you a few that I remember hearing sung by Negroes, and it was composed by Negroes, each one of them writing a verse to suit
himself, as there is no limit to them, for I have heard one of them sing for an hour, at least, on the song, and not sing the same verse
twise. The song is not intitled 'King Brady', just 'Brady.' Brady was Cheif of Polease in East St. Louis, and was shot and killed by a
Negro gambler, named Duncan. Brady was very strict with the sporting element, especially the girls of the restricted distric, who he
would not allow to come down town dressed in red.... Brady must of wore a Stetson hat for it is mentioned in the song quite
frequently like one verse windes up 'Brady, Brady where you at? Strutting in Hell with his Stetson hat.' He must of been killed some
time in the early '90's, as I heard the song in the Spring of '93.!
E. D. Baker to Robert Winslow Gordon, Library of Congress, April 14, 1924!
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Patrolman James Brady!
St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, Missouri End of Watch: Monday, October 6, 1890 !
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Officer Down Memorial Page Patrolman Brady was shot and killed during a shootout in a saloon at the corner of Carondelet
(sic; must mean Christy) Avenue and North 11th Street. He went there to assist other officers engaged in a shootout with several
men they had tried to arrest for fighting. All the suspects were taken into custody. The suspect who shot Patrolman Brady was
convicted of his murder and hanged on July 27, 1894.!
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Disc 1
5 Michael B. Serious
8 Retta Guest Choate
Duncan and Brady
Duncan and Brady
page 7 of 83
11 Wilmer Watts & The Lonely Eagles
Been on the Job Too Long
(on Times Ain’t Like They Used to Be)
14 New Riders of the Purple Sage
19 Gordon Bok
22 Leadbelly
Disc 2
3 Paul Arnoldi
8 Chris Smither
15 Rick Ilowite
21 Judy Henske
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Disc 3
1 Kacy & Clayton
6 Geoff Bartley
16 Ken Hamm
22 David Head
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Duncan and Brady
Duncan and Brady
Duncan and Brady (#)
Duncan and Brady
Duncan & Brady
Duncan & Brady
Duncan and Brady
Duncan and Brady
Duncan and Brady
Duncan and Brady
Duncan and Brady
Disc 4
10 Hoyt Axton
Long
19 Dave Von Ronk
22 Bill Morrissey & Greg Brown
Duncan and Brady
Duncan and Brady
Disc 5
3 Nico Backton
6 Woody Pines
10 Leadbelly
14 Eddie Pennington
18 Tom Rush
Duncan and Brady
Duncan and Brady
Duncan and Brady (Version 2)
Duncan and Brady
Duncan and Brady
Disc 6
2 The Johnson Mountain Boys
5 Paul Brady
10 David & Roselyn
16 Paul Clayton
Duncan & Brady
Duncan and Brady
Duncan and Brady
On the Job Too Long
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They’ve Been On Their Jobs Too
Disc 7
10 Noel Bush
Duncan and Brady
18 Michael Montecrossa And The Chosen Few Duncan And Brady Song
Disc 9
12 Quicksilver Messenger Service
Duncan And Brady
Disc 10
6 Mark Bilyeu
11 Big Smith
Brady and Duncan
Brady and Duncan
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page 8 of 83
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!So what really happened on October 6, 1890? !
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The best original scholarship on the historical source of this ballad appears to be the 1976 PhD thesis by John Russell David, titled
Tragedy in Ragtime: Black Folktales from St. Louis.!
The historical reality seems…an unfortunate mix of alcohol, bad temper, racial tension, and guns - all sparked by a simple
fistfight between two black men in a rowdy part of post-bellum St. Louis. It's true that Brady was a policeman trying to arrest a man
named Duncan, and that he was killed by a shot from behind a bar. And, generally, there was mutual distrust and animosity
between Irish policemen like Brady and black St. Louisians like Duncan. Oh - and the streets of Deep Morgan were certainly lined
with bordellos, fancy and otherwise. That's about where the similarities between song and history end. For example, Harry Duncan
didn't own the saloon. David cites the St. Louis Post Dispatch in describing him after his execution in 1894 as a "sport, a jolly fellow,
a swell dresser, a ladies' favorite, but, above all, he was a magnificent singer." Though he held odd jobs, David found him described
by The Dispatch in 1890 as being mainly a "specialty actor and singer." He was quite popular and well-known. Indeed, according to
David, Duncan gave many concerts while in prison and even sang two songs for reporters the day before his execution.!
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As for the crime, David makes clear that in reality, insofar as it was established in court and reported in the newspapers, Officer
Brady did not enter the saloon first or with the intent of *causing* trouble for the owner or the clientele. There was no charge of
corruption against him, and he was only there to assist in the apprehension of Harry Duncan. Sometime early in the evening, Harry
Duncan struck a white officer named Gaffney in the face when that officer laid hands on Duncan's brother Luther. Gaffney was trying
to break up Luther's fistfight with a fellow African-American barber, near Charles Starkes' saloon. After further concerted assault
upon the officer, the Duncan brothers ran in to the saloon. Alerting other officers in the neighborhood by firing his pistol twice in the
air, a dazed Gaffney then followed the Duncan brothers in to Starkes' saloon. In trying to arrest Luther, Gaffney was again attacked
by Harry, who ended up with Gaffney's revolver. Other patrolmen, including Brady, came in to Starkes' saloon just after that scuffle.
In the ensuing melee, Brady advanced on Harry Duncan, who had taken a position crouching behind the bar. (David's thesis
includes a detailed drawing of the inside of the saloon, presumably from trial records - I can't reproduce it here because of
copyright.) In reaching or leaning over the bar to fire, Brady took a fatal bullet to his chest. Duncan was wounded by gunfire
several times but taken alive. We find documentation of the crime and the ensuing legal battle in the records of the Supreme Court. Duncan's lawyer was Walter Moran Farmer. He was, according to Washington University Law, "the first African-
American lawyer to argue before the Supreme Court of Missouri (1893) and one of the first to
argue a case (Duncan v. Missouri 1894) before the U.S. Supreme Court." David's research shows that, two
days before he was executed and after nearly three years of legal appeals, Duncan publicly accused the tavern owner
Charles Starkes of shooting Brady. The claim had come up in previous trials, raised by Farmer in Duncan's defense to cast a
reasonable doubt about his guilt. It seems though only two witnesses with questionable character and motives testified to that
version of events. Duncan though, at that late date, was claiming *he* saw it happen, though he'd never told Farmer. Starkes had
been dead over a month by then and Duncan made no explanation as to why he'd waited so long to come forth with such a
statement. There had been several other legal arguments made as to why the execution should be stayed, and indeed such was
granted five times in the last year before it was carried out. In the end though, his new claim notwithstanding, William Henry
Harrison Duncan went to the gallows on July 27, 1894. Curiously, Starkes' daughter Lizzie (Randall) Ray in 1904 seems to have
provided information to the St. Louis Dispatch that led them to publish the claim that Charles Starkes confessed to Brady's murder
on his deathbed, a month before Duncan was hanged. It's a claim that I see often repeated in secondary sources, but was
apparently verified by the St. Louis judge and local historian Nathan Young in the 1960s. However I have not seen his work and I
have more digging of my own to do before I satisfy myself. Nonetheless, there is some reason to believe Duncan *may* have died
an innocent man. There is certainly reason to argue that, even if guilty, Duncan did not commit murder in the first degree. But the
hangman's noose made that discussion academic.
Patrick Blackman!
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from the Cabinet: According to Duncan, the crime had actually been committed by bar owner Charles Starkes, who denied it at the
time. Duncan was convicted and sentenced to hang for the crime, but fought the decision with a series of appeals that took the case
all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Lawyer Walter Moran Farmer presented his case and holds the distinction of being
the first African-American attorney to argue a case before the Court. The appeal was denied and Duncan was executed by hanging
on July 27, 1894. According to some, Charles Starkes would later confess to the murder on his deathbed.!
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Songs and Rhymes from the South!
3. OLD BRADY!
page 9 of 83
(From Mississippi; country whites; MS. Of R. J. Slay, student; 1908)!
O mamma, mamma! What was that?!
A big gun busted right across our back!!
Ho, ho! He has been on the jolly too long.!
I went a little closer and they stepped back,!
And I saw the blood on Brady’s back.!
They sent for the doctor in a mighty haste.!
“Oh, yonder comes the surgeon in a racking pace!”!
He raised his hand, and his hand was red,!
“Oh, my goodness gracious! Old Brady is dead!”!
When the news got out that old Brady was dead,!
Out come the ladies all dressed in red!
E, C. Perrow, The Journal of American Folklore, 1908!
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The Fuller Court, 1894-1895 (from the Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States)
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page 10 of 83
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notation of “Duncan and Brady,” John Lomax and Alan Lomax, Our Singing Country, 1941!
STAGGER LEE / STACKER LEE / STACK O’LEE,
1895
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VOL 5—NO.213. ST. LOUIS. SATURDAY MORNING. DECEMBER 28, 1895—FIVE CENTS!
Shot in Curtis’ Place.!
William Lyons, 25, colored, a levee hand, living at 1410 Morgan Street, was shot in the abdomen yesterday evening at 10 o’clock in
the saloon of Bill Curtis, at Eleventh and Morgan streets, by Lee Sheldon, also colored. Both parties, it seems, had been drinking,
and were feeling in exuberant spirits. Lyons and Sheldon were friends and were talking together. The discussion drifted to politics
and an argument was started, the conclusion of which was that Lyons snatched Sheldon’s hat from his head. The latter indignantly
demanded its return. Lyons refused, and Sheldon drew his revolver and shot Lyons in the abdomen. Lyons was taken to the !
Dispensary where his wounds were pronounced serious. He was removed to the City Hospital. At the time of the shooting the!
saloon was crowded with negroes. Sheldon is a carriage driver and lives at 914 North Twelfth Street. When his victim fell to the
floor Sheldon took his hat from the hand of the wounded man and coolly walked away. He was subsequently arrested and locked
up at the Chestnut Street Station. Sheldon is also known as 'Stag' Lee.!
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, December 28, 1895!
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SHOT IN A SALOON.!
Drinks and Politics Get a Bullet in William Lyons’ Stomach.!
William Lyons, 1410 Morgan street, was shot by Lee Sheldon in Bill Curtis’ saloon at Eleventh and Morgan streets Wednesday!
night. Both are colored. They were drinking and arguing about politics. War was declared and Lyons was shot in the abdomen. At
the Dispensary the wound was pronounced serious and he was sent to the…!
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 1895!
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page 11 of 83
The Four Hundred Club was organized December 6, 1895, for the moral and physical culture of young colored men. We
contemplate no acts of violence, and as law-abiding citizens and voters we stand ready and willing to protect the laws of our city,
State and the United States. Our order was organized with Mr. Will Richmond as president, Robert Lee as secretary and Mr. Lee
[Lee Shelton] as captain. !
J.C. Covington, financial secretary of the Four Hundred Club, letter to the St. Louis Star-Sayings, December 29, 1895!
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If there is anything that Morgan street dislikes it is conventionality... It scorns imitation. It is original or nothing, and has formulated an
unwritten social law of its own. Is it not the home of the famous Four Hundred Social Club, and the habitat of the Hon. Bill Curtis,
who runs the most extensive chance emporium in North St. Louis? What the late Al McWardister and his followers were to Gotham
the Hon. Bill Curtis and the colored 400 are to St. Louis. Happy is this city in the fact that death has withheld its destroying hand
from his headquarters and spared to us William and his cohorts. Though the Morgue and the City Hospital are regularly supplied
with subjects from his headquarters, his popularity never declines, for it is generally conceded that he is acting as a public
benefactor in allowing undesirable members of colored society to be dispatched in his place of business. Not every gentleman
would be so accommodating in this respect as the Hon. Bill. Would he permit his floors to be stained with the blood of these social
drones if it were not that his great heart is fairly bursting with magnanimity and unselfish zeal in the cause of good government? !
We trow not. !
article in a St. Louis newspaper, 1896!
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This is all the verses I remember. The origin of this ballad, I have been told, was the shooting of Billy Lyons in a barroom on the
Memphis levee by Stack Lee. The song is sung by the Negroes on the levee while they are loading and unloading the river
freighters, the words being composed by the singers. The characters were prominently known in Memphis, I was told, the
unfortunate Stagalee belonging to the family of the owners of the Lee line of steamers, which are known on the Mississippi River
from Cairo to the Gulf. I give all this to you as it was given to me. …. The effect of the song with its minor refrain is weird, and the
spoken interpolations add to the realism. It becomes immensely personal as you hear it like a recital of something known or
experienced by the singer.!
Miss Ella Scott Fisher, to John Lomax, on the Ballad of Stagalee, February 1910!
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Gambling's good when you're winning. Gambling's bad when you lose. But a new gambling story is always good to hear. In "Billy
Lyons and Stack O'Lee" Furry Lewis, popular Vocalion blues star, tells us a story of two gamblers you won't want to miss. On the
other side, he sings and plays "Good Lookin' Girl Blues," a mighty good number, too. Be sure to listen to this record today!!
The Chicago Defender , April 2, 1928!
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“Stagolee” was one of the verses that went into numbers that was wrote and rewrote in St. Louis. Stagolee and Billy Lyons about
the milk white Stetson hat.!
Jelly Roll Morton, 1938!
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Disc 1
2 Uncle John Patterson
Stagolee Was a Bully
(track #11 on Folk Visions & Voices: Traditional Music & Song in Northern Georgia; in unknown section of library, 21 tracks)
7 Curtis Jones
10 David Miller
Stackolee
That Bad Man Stackolee
(on My Rough and Rowdy Ways, track 5)
16 Ed McCurdy
20 Furry Lewis
!
Stackerlee
Billy Lyons And Stack O’lee
page 12 of 83
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version A
Disc 2
1 Pete Farrow
2 Alice Stewart
5 Lloyd Price
11 Raun Burnham
16 Tim Hardin
20 Gregory Paul
24 Cisco Houston
version B
(on Authentic USA 1)
Stagolee (1993)
Stackerlee
Stagger Lee
Stagerlee 1
Stagger Lee (LP Version)
Stagger Lee
Stagolee (Stagger Lee)
page 13 of 83
!
Disc 3
4 Little Johnny Kantreed
8 Bert Jansch
10 Woody Guthrie
12 Wilson Pickett
14 Bob Dylan
23 Tennessee Ernie Ford
Stagger Lee
Stagolee
Stackolee
Stagger Lee
Stack a Lee
Stack-O-Lee
Disc 4
1 Jesse Fuller
3 Hogman Maxey (on Angola Prisoners Blues, track 2)
7 Tin Penny
9 Memphis Slim; Muddy Waters
12 Tom Rush
15 The Wayside Trio
17 Willie Ford and Lucious Curtis
Stagolee
Stagolee
Stagger Lee
Stack Alee
Stackerlee
Stagger Lee
Stagolee
!
(on Alan Lomax Collection: Deep River of Song: Mississippi Saints & Sinners)
20 Champion Jack Dupree
Stack-O-Lee
Disc 5
2 Ma Rainey
5 Wilbert Harrison
9 Mike Bloomfield
11 Blind Jesse Harris
Stack O’ Lee Blues
Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee (Live)
Stagolee
!
(track #19 on Field Recordings – Volume 4: Mississippi and Alabama 1932-1942; in unknown library section, wma, with 44
tracks)
13 Bennie Smith
Stagger Lee
17 Nat Gonella
Stack O’Lee Blues, Pt. 1
19 Big Bill Broonzy; Memphis Slim; Sonny Boy Williamson
Bama’s Staggerlee
20 The Staggers
Stagger Lee
22 Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds
Stagger Lee (Munich)
!
Disc 6
3 The Blue Rider Trio
(under Ben Andrews, Jeff Sarli, Mark Wenner)
Stagolee
6 Tommy Roe
Stagger Lee
9 Uncle Earl
Stacker Lee
13 Bobby Pratt & the Rockers
Stagger Lee (on Wildcat Jamboree)
18 John Holt
Stagger Lee
20 Mississippi John Hurt
Stagolee
!
Disc 7
4 Julius Lester
8 Frank Morey
12 Ken Colyer’s Skiffle Group
19 Sherman Lee Dillon
!
Stagolee
Stack O’ Lee
Stack O’ Lee Blues
Stack O Lee
page 14 of 83
Disc 9
2 Samuel L. Jackson
5 Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry
15 Cephas & Wiggins
18 Pete Seeger
!
Stack-o-lee
Stack-o-lee
Stack and the Devil
Stagolee (Stagger Lee)
Disc 11
1 Taj Mahal
Stagger Lee
3 Kingfish
Stack O’lee Blues
6 Acie Cargill
Stack O’ Lee
7 Fruit Jar Guzzlers
Stack-O-Lee
9 Pine Top Smith
Stack O’Lee Blues
11 Sol Hoopii
Stack O’Lee Blues
12 Long “Cleeve” Reed
The Down Home Boys Original Stack O’ Lee
Blues
14 Mickey Baker
Stack O’Lee
16 Bob Wallis and his Storyville Jazzmen
Old Stack-O-Lee Blues
18 Lost Jim
Stack O’ Lee
20 Little Harvey Hull
Original Stack O’Lee Blues
21 Steve Howell
Stack O’ Lee
22 The Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group
Bad Man Stack-O-Lee
24 Bassholes
Stack O Lee
25 Jorma Kaukonen
Stack O’ Lee (2006 January 18th)
!
Disc 12
3 Margaret Walker
5 James Brown
8 Dale Miller
10 Modern Life Is War
11 Keb Mo
13 Neil Diamond
17 Ike And Tina Turner
!
Disc 13
3 E. Frank Murphy
8 New Monsoon
15 Johnny Hernandez
Stagger Lee (Stagolee)
Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee
Stack O Lee
Stagger Lee (Album Version)
Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee
!
Disc 14
1 Tony Futado
2 Ursine Princes
Lee
4 Smooth Kentucky
5 Kickstart
7 Julian Fauth
8 Ron Schaffer
(under Pickathon Music Festival – 2002)
Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee
The Mean Ole Ghost of Stagger
Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee
Yet Another Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee
page 15 of 83
10 Andy Coats
12 Broke Toe Rezo
14 Danielle Miraglia
15 George Griffin
17 The Blue Aeroplanes
Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee
Disc 15
3 Magic Dirt
7 Joe Rollin Porter
13 Shane Spann
Stagger Lee
Billy Lyons & Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee Trad.
Disc 16
5 Alton Purnell
Stagger Lee
!
!
(under Cousin Joe & Alton Purnell – New Orleans Piano Blues)
6 Alex Richard Commins
Stagger Lee
9 Teddy Hill (Various Artists – Stone Cold Country of the 60’s and 70’s, Vol. 2
Stagger Lee
15 W.D. Dailey
Stagger Lee
21 Ian “Buzzsaw” Barnes & the Holy Hoboes
Stagger Lee
23 Nobody’s Mule
Stagger Lee Redux
!
Disc 17
6 Poisonville
12 Dick Wagner
Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee
Disc 18
18 Hank Shizzoe
20 Dave Bartholomew
Stagger Lee
Son of Stagger Lee
Disc 19
6 Dave “Baby” Cortez
12 Herma Keil & The Keil Isles
Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee
!
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(Various artists – Early Rock & Roll From New Zealand – Volume 9 & 10)
18 Don Revel & The Primettes
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Lee Shelton
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(Super Rare Soul, Volume 3)
Return of Stagger Lee
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March 16, 1865 – March 11, 1912
The historical Lee Shelton was an African American born in 1865 in Texas. He later worked as a carriage driver in St. Louis,
Missouri, where he gained a reputation as a pimp and gambler, and evidently served as a captain in a black "Four Hundred Club," a
political and social club with a dubious reputation. He was not a common pimp — described by Cecil Brown, "Lee Shelton belonged
to a group of pimps known in St. Louis as the 'Macks.' The Macks were not just 'urban strollers'; they presented themselves as
objects to be observed." He was nicknamed "Stag Lee" or "Stack Lee," possibly because he 'went "stag,"' meaning he was without
friends, or took the nickname from a well-known riverboat captain called "Stack Lee."!
!
John and Alan Lomax claimed that the nickname came from a riverboat owned by the Lee family of Memphis called the Steamer
Stacker Lee, which was known for its on-board prostitution. Lee Shelton's nickname was later corrupted into various other forms in
the folk tradition.!
!!
page 16 of 83
The main confusion among scholars owed to the fact that another “Stack Lee” existed. That man – the white Samuel “Stacker” Lee,
who lived in Memphis in the mid-1800s – owned steamboats that traveled the Mississippi. It’s been submitted that Stagger Lee was
a worker on one of “Stacker” Lee’s boats and got his nickname from the original “Stacker.”
- Randall Roberts, 1999!
!
!
!!
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (March 17, 1911) described Lee Shelton as “formerly a Negro politician” and the
“proprietor of a lid club for his race.: …A lid club was an underground establishment that kept a “lid” on such
criminal activities as gambling while serving as a front for other activities. According to Gould’s St. Louis Directory
for 1894, “Stack L. Shelton” was a waiter living at 1314 Morgan Street. Three years later he was listed as “a
driver” living on North Twelfth Street. The newspaper reporting the murder of Billy Lyons said that Shelton was a
“carriage driver.” …. At the time of the murder Lee Shelton owned a lid club called the Modern Horseshoe Club,
a name that related nicely to his profession as a carriage driver. According to blues scholar William Barlow, the
Modern Horseshoe Club was in the “center of the tenderloin’s night life” on Morgan Street, ranking among the
most prestigious underworld nightclubs, ranking among the most prestigious underworld nightclubs along with the
Chauffeurs Club, the Deluxe Club, the Jazzland Club (Tom Turpin), and the Cardinal’s Nest in the 1920s. .... In St.
Louis (the) migration of nightlife into the “interzones” seems to have occurred as early as 1895. Cecil Brown, 2003
On Christmas night in 1895, Shelton shot William "Billy" Lyons in a St. Louis saloon
following a dispute. A story appearing in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in 1895 read:
!
William Lyons, 25, a levee hand, was shot in the abdomen yesterday evening at 10 o'clock in the saloon of Bill
Curtis, at Eleventh and Morgan Streets, by Lee Sheldon, a carriage driver. Lyons and Sheldon were friends and
were talking together. Both parties, it seems, had been drinking and were feeling in exuberant spirits. The
discussion drifted to politics, and an argument was started, the conclusion of which was that Lyons snatched
Sheldon's hat from his head. The latter indignantly demanded its return. Lyons refused, and Sheldon withdrew his
revolver and shot Lyons in the abdomen. When his victim fell to the floor Sheldon took his hat from the hand of
the wounded man and coolly walked away. He was subsequently arrested and locked up at the Chestnut Street
Station. Lyons was taken to the Dispensary, where his wounds were pronounced serious. Lee Sheldon is also known
as 'Stag' Lee.
!
page 17 of 83
!from Murder and Mayhem in Missouri, by Larry Wood:
!…Billy Lyons and Henry Crump had already had a few drinks at Henry Bridgewater’s St, Louis saloon at
Eleventh and Lucas Streets when they ambled a couple blocks to William Curtis’s rival saloon at 1101
Morgan, about four blocks west of the present-day Edward Jones Dome. (Bridgewater Saloon, owned by
Henry Bridgewater, was the main rival of Curtis’s Elite Saloon; Billy Lyons was Henry Bridgewater’s
brother-in-law.) Pausing outside the door, Lyons, according to Crump’s later testimony, balked at
entering the place because of the “bad niggers” that frequented it and asked Crump for a weapon with
which to defend himself in case a fight broke out. Described by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as one of the
“worst dens in the city,” Curtis’s saloon was indeed considered a rough place, as was the whole
neighborhood, which was known as Deep Morgan.
!
!
SHOT IN A SALOON.
Drinks and Politics Get a Bullet in
William Lyons’ Stomach.
!
William Lyons, 1410 Morgan street, was
shot by Lee Sheldon in Bill Curtis’ saloon
at Eleventh and Morgan streets Wednesday
night. Both are colored. They were drinking and arguing about politics. War was
declared and Lyons was shot in the abdomen. At the Dispensary the wound was
pronounced serious and he was sent to the…
(The Wood book associates the house at 911 North 12th with Lee Shelton’s residence, but the police record indicates
it was around 6th and Spruce in Tamale Town. The row house might have an association with the Third Ward
businesses, since the Bridgewater and Curtis saloons were in the area….)
!!
from Stagolee Shot Billy, by Cecil Brown:
!
A cold wind blew through the streets of downtown St. Louis that Christmas night in 1895.
In the Third Ward,
better known as “Chestnut Valley,” well-dressed Negroes strolled up and down Market Street, which was lined with
high-class whorehouses. A large crowd had gathered in Tom Turpin’s Rose Bud Saloon, at 2222 Market (around
western end of Union Station, Aloe Plaza area), where Turpin sat beside a Christmas tree that was “beautifully
illuminated by scores of electric lights in all colors.”
About ten blocks away, two men came out of the Bridgewater Saloon at the corner of Eleventh Street and Lucas
Avenue (Brown elsewhere lists the address as 814 Christy) and watched the crowd: women daily dressed as though
going to a church parade, men sporting spats and high-roller derbies. One of the watchers was William Lyons, a
stout man in a derby. The other was his friend Henry Crump. Joining the moving crowd, the two men ended up a
few blocks down the street at the Bridgewater’s rival establishment, the Bill Curtis Saloon, at 1101 Morgan Street,
at the corner of Thirteenth in the Bloody Third District (also known as the Bloody Third Ward).
Between Morgan and Christy Streets, as one newspaper put it, the heart of black society “throbbed” with
vaudeville theaters, bordellos, shoe-repair shops, and billiard parlors. In fact the Bill Curtis Saloon was the
epicenter of the vice district.
When they arrived at the Bill Curtis Saloon, Lyons stopped at the door and asked Crump to lend him a weapon.
Everybody knew the saloon’s reputation for crime. Murders had taken place in the rowdy atmosphere. Billy Lyons
didn’t have to read the newspapers to know that the saloon was the “envy of all of its competitors and the terror of
the police,” or that newspaper owner and moralist Joseph Pulitzer regarded it as one of the “worst dens in the city…
patronized by the lower-class of river men and other darkies of the same social status.” Billy knew from firsthand
experience what the saloon was like; one night he had had to pull his knife on a fellow. Every time he went into the
saloon, Billy told Crump, he got into trouble with “those bad niggers.” Crump had a knife and agreed to lend it to
Billy. After Crump handed him the knife, the two men entered the saloon.
page 18 of 83
They walked deep into the bar, near the stove. A ragtime band was playing a happy, delightful music. There were
good-looking belles sitting at the tables. At the back, on a platform, a craps game was in session.
After ordering beer, Billy Lyons noticed that people were looking toward the door. Turning to see what they were
looking at, he saw that Lee Shelton, known as “Stack Lee,” had entered.
Shelton was dressed in a pair of tailored shoes known as “St. Louis flats,” with almost no heels and long toes
pointing upward. On the top of the toes were tiny mirrors that caught the electric light hanging overhead and sent
sparkles upward. A pair of dove-colored spats covered Shelton’s shoe tops. Gray-striped pants hung over his spats.
The flaps of his black box-back coat fell open to reveal an elaborately patterned red velvet vest and a yellow
embroidered shirt with a celluloid standing collar that kept his chin high in the air. Knuckle-length sleeves almost
covered the gold rings on his manicured fingers; his left hand clutched the gold head of an ebony walking cane. The
other hand took a long cigar out of his mouth./ On his head was a nigh[-roller, milk-white Stetson. Along the
hatband was an embroidered picture of his favorite girl, Lillie Shelton.
Lee Shelton belonged to a group of exotic pimps known in St. Louis as the “macks.” The macks were not just
“urban strollers”; they presented themselves as objects to be observed.
According to eyewitness George McFaro, Shelton asked, “Who’s treating?” In reply, someone pointed to Lyons.
Shelton approached him. Apparently, he and Lyons drank and laughed together for some time until the conversation
turned to politics. (Shelton was a Republican, Lyons was a Democrat.) Soon they began to exchange blows by
striking each other’s hats. Shelton grabbed Lyon’s derby and broke the form. Lyons said he wanted “six bits” from
Shelton for damaging his derby.
Then Lyons grabbed Shelton’s Stetson. When Shelton demanded it back, Lyons said no. Shelton said he would
blow Lyons’ brains out if he didn’t return it. Next Shelton pulled his .44 Smith & Wesson revolver from his coat and
hit Lyons on the head with it. Still Lyons would not relinquish the hat. Shelton demanded the Stetson again, saying
that if Lyons didn’t give him his hat immediately, he was going to kill him.
Then Lyons reached into his pocket for the knife his friend Crump had given him and approached Shelton, saying,
“You cock-eyed son of a bitch, I’m going to make you kill me.” Shelton backed off and took aim. The twenty-five
people in the saloon flew for the door. Only the bartenders Thomas Scott and Frank Boyd and a few others—Henry
Crump, George McFaro, and Leslie Stevenson—were left drinking at the bar. Both bartenders later testified to the
coroner that they saw Lee Shelton shoot Billy Lyons.
After shooting Lyons, Shelton walked over to the dying man, who was still holding on to the bar, and said,
“Nigger, I told you to give me my hat!” He snatched his hat from Lyons’ hand, put it on his head, and walked out.
Shelton walked to his house, a few blocks away, checked his gun with his landlady, went upstairs, and presumably
sent to sleep. Meanwhile, Billy Lyons was taken to an infirmary; later he was moved to a hospital, where he died
about four o’clock in the morning.
At three o’clock that morning, police officers John Flanigan and A. Falvey went to arrest Lee Shelton. Not
knowing where he lived, they went to “a lady at No. 307 (Sixth Street).” There they found a woman “carrying a
note to this man’s (Stack Lee’s) girl. We suspected that Stack Lee wrote it and sent it out there. We went down
there and got Stack Lee, in bed.”
Shelton’s Sixth Street address was a tenement building near Spruce Avenue in “Tamale Town.” Sixth Street was
the district’s main artery of vice. Blacks, lower-class whites, and Chinese were the principal inhabitants. With
available living space reduced by the growing number of factories, public buildings, hotels, and business
establishments in St. Louis, six hundred of Tamale Town’s fourteen hundred black residents lived in this one
block.
After arresting Lee Shelton, Officer Flanigan went back and asked “the woman of the house” if she had “Stack
Lee’s revolver.” The landlady said yes, she had put it in a drawer. “I went to the bureau drawer and took out the .44
Smith & Wesson, fully loaded, every chamber was full,” Flanigan said. Perhaps Shelton had put another bullet in
the chamber to eliminate evidence that he had fired his gun.
They took Lee Shelton to the Chestnut Street police station. Like the railroad’s busy Union Station, the Chestnut
Street station was in the center of the high-class prostitution area. Once in the station, Shelton was taken into the
Four Courts.
!
page 19 of 83
!
!
The Four Courts was notorious. For many, like the young Theodore Dreiser, who was there frequently as a crime
reporter, it was a symbol of injustice. “A more dismal atmosphere than that which prevailed in this building,” he
wrote, “would be hard to find.” The complex consisted of “the city detention wards, the office of the district
attorney, the chief of police, chief of detectives, the city attorney, and a ‘reporters room’ where all the local reporters
were permitted to gather and were furnished paper, ink, tables.” Dreiser saw the Four Courts as an embodiment of
corrupted institutions. “Harlots, criminals, murderers, buzzard lawyers, political judges, detectives, police agents,
and court officials generally—what a company!” he exclaimed. “The petty tyrannies that are practiced by
underlings and minor officials! The ‘grafting’ of low, swinish brains! The cruelty and cunning of agents of justice!
To me, it was a horrible place, a pest-hole of suffering and error and trickery.”
By Friday, December 27, Lee Shelton had hired a lawyer, Nat Dryden. Dryden was a brilliant if eccentric
advocate from a well-known Missouri family. He had been the first lawyer in the state of Missouri to gain a
conviction of a white man for murdering a black. Since no black lawyer was admitted to the bar in St. Louis until
1894, Lee Shelton was unlikely to have been able to hire a black lawyer.
What was unusual was that Shelton had Dryden, who seems to have been one of the best lawyers, if not the best,
in town. Dryden was an alcoholic and opium addict, but in the courtroom he was flamboyant and dramatic, a
brilliant cross-examiner and gifted orator, with a good record of beating murder convictions. The fact that he could
afford Dryden suggests that Lee Shelton was a man of means. In addition, Shelton could afford to post a bond as
high as $4,000.
!
page 20 of 83
!
What do you know about this affair?!
Well, at the time it started, there was a crowd of men at the bar, drinking… I suppose there was 25 men in the room when this
trouble first started.!
At least 25 men?!
Yes, sir.!
Well, how many were there about, when the shooting was done?!
Now, I could not tell you.!
Was the room full?!
No, sir.!
Well, was there 6 or 8?!
Oh, I suppose there was that many.!
6 or 8?!
Yes, sir, I suppose there was, I could not say for sure, because right there it was an exciting time, I don’t know just how many !
there was, I didn’t pay attention as to hom many there were.!
Frank Boyd, bartender at Bill Curtis Saloon, interrogated by Coroner W.J. Wait, M.D., December 27, 1895!
!
!
Stack came in and says, “Who is treating?” …. I thought he (Stack Lee) was playing and he hauled off and broke his (Billy Lyons’)
hat, his derby. !
(Coroner W.J. Wait, M.D.: Was that in play, or quarreling?) !
No, sir, they wasn’t quarreling, just playing, and so he says to him when he grabs Stack’s hat, Stack goes to him and he says, ‘give
me my hat,’ and he says, ‘I ain’t going to give it to you, I want pay for this.’ Stack says, ‘how much do you want?’ He (Billy) says, ‘I
want six bits,’ and he (Stack) says, ‘six bits will buy a box of those hats.’ He (Billy) says, ‘I want six bits,’ and he (Billy) said, ‘Well,
what made you break my hat, my derby,’ and Stack done that way (indicating) and then they stood and talked awhile, and Stack
snatched out his pistol, and he said, ’if you don’t give me my hat, I will blow your brains out.’ He (Billy) said, ‘I am not going to give
you the hat, you can kill me.’ So when he pulled the pistol out, I walked out, I didn’t stay any longer.!
George G. McFaro, December 27, 1895 !
!
Well, then he just walked there, and stands there, it looked like about 2 or 3 seconds, he staggered against the side of the bar,
leaned against the railing, holding the hat in his fingers like that, and it seemed he was getting weak, and he let the hat drop out of
his hands. About that time, Shelton say, “Give me my hat, Nigger,” and he says, “You got my hat,” and he takes and picks it up and
walks out into the brisk air.!
Leslie Stevenson, December 27, 1985!
Further details are preserved in trial accounts. For example Shelton had first crushed Lyons'
Derby hat, after which Lyons grabbed Shelton's hat and demanded restitution; Shelton then
page 21 of 83
drew his gun and smacked Lyons on the head with it. Lyons lunged for Shelton and Shelton
shot.
!
from Bear Rasmuson:!
The details of what happened are fortunately recorded in the trial transcripts. According to witnesses: “Soon they began to
exchange blows by striking each other’s hats. Shelton grabbed Lyons’ derby and broke the form. Lyons said he wanted ‘six bits’
from Shelton for damaging his derby.“ Then Lyons grabbed Shelton’s Stetson. When Shelton demanded it back, Lyons said no.
Shelton said he would blow Lyons’ brains out if he didn’t return it. Next, Shelton pulled his .44 Smith & Wesson revolver and hit
Lyons in the head with it. Still Lyons would not relinquish the hat. Shelton demanded the Stetson again, saying that if Lyons didn’t
give him his hat immediately, he was going to kill him. “Then Lyons reached into his pocket for the knife his friend Crump had given
him and approached Shelton saying ‘You cock-eyed son of a bitch, I’m going to make you kill me’. Shelton backed off and took aim.
The twenty-five people in the saloon flew for the door. [...] Both bartenders later testified to the coroner that they saw Lee Shelton
shoot Billy Lyons.” Contrary to the original news report, there is little evidence that Stag and Billy were friends, though they certainly
knew each other. Billy was a levee man–a stevedore or longshoreman unloading freight from the riverboats. Stag Lee was a
carriage driver, sometime waiter and pimp. And not just any pimp, but a member of the elite fraternity known as “Macks” ….!
More importantly, Billy was a Democratic political operative and Stag Lee was a Republican operative. The bar where the
killing occurred, Bill Curtis’ Elite Club, was the center of Republican politics in the St. Louis red light district. Billy Lyons was
the brother-in-law of Bill Curtis’ main competitor, Henry Bridgewater. Curtis and Bridgewater competed not only for business,
but for political power in the black community. What the two men were discussing that night is unknown, but it must have been
important to bring Billy Lyons into “enemy territory.” While Lyons was apparently no stranger to violence himself, he was nervous
enough to borrow a knife before entering the bar. It seems likely that politics was at the root of the disagreement, and politics would
certainly enter into the events that followed.!
!
!
*
*
*!
The murder had serious political consequences. Lyons, it turned out, was a staunch Republican, as were nearly all of
St Louis's 25,000 black people. Lyons's stepmother, Marie Brown, owned the famous Bridgewater saloon. Her sonin-law, Henry Bridgewater, was reputed to be the richest black man in St Louis. Lyons belonged to this powerful
clan loyal to the Republican party, which had freed the slaves. A new generation, represented by Stagolee, was
anxious to vote for the Democrats. Stagolee had gained the support of the Democrats and so was hated by most of
the black bourgeoisie, who were represented by Billy Lyons. In the 1890s in St Louis, black people sought political
protection with their right to vote. Both the Republican and the Democratic parties thought they could win if they
got the black vote. The majority of black St Louisans voted Republican, but during the Republican convention, in
the summer of 1896, many - unhappy that the national Republican party ignored their interest - broke with the party.
This break owed much to the black pimps in St Louis. Under the guise of "sporting" clubs, frequently called the 400
Clubs, pimps, saloon-keepers, and gamblers exerted voting power for the Democratic party. Some saloon-keepers
represented the "unofficial" Democratic party. They took him to the courthouse Judge Murphy sat on the bench An'
the first one to put her can in a chair Was Stack-o-Lee's lovin' wench Down at the trial, down at the trial of Stack-oLee. Many of the figures in the ballad - Judge Murphy, Stagolee's defense lawyer Nat Dryden, Stagolee's wife were well known figures in the area. Other versions of the ballad make references to historical places and people,
like St Louis Chestnut Valley, Lillie Shelton, and bartenders Tom Scott and Frank Boyd. We can assume, therefore,
that the hero Stagolee who is the center of the poem is a reference to the real man Lee Shelton.
Cecil Brown
*
*
*!
Stag was arrested at a house he owned a few blocks away. Bail was set at $4,000.00–equal to about $100,000.00 now. Obviously
Stag had backing, because the bail was posted promptly and he went free pending trial. The case definitely stirred up the town. The
Bridgewater faction turned out 100 people to jeer and boo as Stag was brought in and out of court. Bridgewater also hired and paid
an attorney to prosecute. Stag, however, had no slouch for a lawyer. Nat Dryden had established his reputation as a criminal lawyer
by becoming the first attorney in Missouri to secure the conviction of a white man for killing a black man. Dryden wasn’t without his
faults–he was an alcoholic and an opium addict–but his vices didn’t seem to affect his courtroom performance. Stag’s choice of
attorney was vindicated when Dryden got a hung jury (Seven of them voted for second-degree murder, two for manslaughter and
three for acquittal), but the story wasn’t over yet. The state decided to retry Stag, and he was again held to bail–$3000.00–which
again was promptly raised. Unfortunately, Dryden’s lifestyle had finally killed him and with another attorney Stag was convicted.
Stag was sent to prison, but was pardoned and released in 1909–by a Democratic Governor, no less. The experience doesn’t seem
to have changed his temperament, as he was again arrested and convicted in 1911 of pistol-whipping a man to death during a home
invasion robbery. Amazingly, he was in line to be pardoned again in 1912, but died of tuberculosis before he could be released. He
was 47 when he died.!
!
page 22 of 83
!
!
For all the outsized reputation and legend surrounding him, Stag apparently wasn’t all that impressive in person. Prison records
recorded him as being 5’7″, 140 lbs., with a crossed left eye, “mulatto” complexion and two scars on his left cheek and two on his
back.!
The police testified that they found Stack Lee through his woman: “We knowed where she lived and went down
there and found Stack Lee.”
!
William Lyons died of bullet wounds at four o’clock on Thursday morning, December 26, 1895. The next day his
body was taken to the medical examiner, where an inquest was held with the suspect Lee Shelton present. A few
days later, Lyons was interred in the Henry Bridgewater lot at St. Peter’s Cemetery (Normandy, Lucas & Hunt), where
he now rests.
!(Henry Bridgewater - St. Peter's Cemetery, St. Louis, MO, died in 1904)
!
At the time of Billy’s death his father was married to Marie Brown. It was this stepmother’s son, Charles Brown,
who in 1892 killed Harry Wilson—Lee Shelton’s friend—in the Bridgewater Saloon. According to John David,
Billy Lyons’ sister, Eliza, was married to Henry Bridgewater, who owned the saloon., The newspaper account of
Charles’s murder has Charles at the same address that was given as Billy’s; they were brothers-in-law who lived
together on Gay Street. Billy Lyons may also have worked at the Bridgewater Saloon.
!
Nat Dryden argued that Lee Shelton shot Billy Lyons in self-defense. At noon on July 18, after deliberating for
twenty-two hours, the jury returned, unable to agree on a verdict. The last ballot stood seven for murder in the
second degree, two for manslaughter, and three for acquittal. The jury was discharged; the case would be tried
again. Shelton was taken from jail by a deputy sheriff and arranged for a bond from friends that would be given on
Monday for his release. Apparently, Shelton returned to his job running the Modern Horseshoe Club.
!
!
On August 26, 1897, before he could defend Lee Shelton at his second trial, Dryden died…on a drinking binge,
which killed him.
Although we have no records of the second trial, Shelton must have been tried soon afterward, because on October 7
he entered the Missouri State Penitentiary at Jefferson City to begin serving a twenty-five-year sentence. In the
penitentiary in March 1899, Shelton was given five lashes for “loafing” in the yard. On June 14 of that year, he was
reprimanded for “shooting craps.” But because he had helped authorities to detect a “systematic thief” in the prison
(and perhaps also because of petitions from many powerful and influential Democrats), he was recommended for
parole.
!
Lee Shelton was paroled on Thanksgiving 1901. He arrived at the Benevolent Order of Peerless Knights, Othello
Lodge No. 1, to begin work in the yard. But two years later he was in trouble again. In February 1911, Assistant
Circuit Attorney Charles B. Davis declared in a statement that Lee Shelton—alias Stack Lee—had on January 26
assaulted William Akins, another Negro, last January, beating Akins on the head with a revolver and breaking his
skull.” We must remember that three witnesses claimed Shelton had pistol whipped Billy Lyons. Shelton was
sentenced to five years and returned to prison on May 7, 1911. A.H. Myerdick, the prison doctor, reported that
Shelton “is getting pretty low and I fear he cannot live much longer.”
!
When Shelton reentered prison, he was sick with tuberculosis. Governor Herbert S. Hadley was impressed by
Shelton’s weakened condition; his weight had dropped to 102, down over 20 pounds in less than six months. Under
pressure from other Democrats, the governor granted him another parole, effective February 8, 1912. But Elliot
Major, Missouri’s attorney general, objected to the parole, and Shelton died in the prison hospital on March 11. !
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
page 23 of 83
!!
“Stagolee” was one of the verses that went into numbers that was wrote and rewrote in St. Louis. Stagolee and Billy Lyons about
the milk white Stetson hat.!
Jelly Roll Morton, 1938!
!
The songs about Stag probably started within days of the killing. The earliest copyright found for the song is in 1903, but as the story
moved into folklore different versions formed, merged and re-formed. Ma Rainey recorded a version in 1925, but it uses the tune
and much of the story line from “Frankie and Johnny.” In 1927, Long “Cleve” Reed and Little Harvey Hull released their “Stack 0′Lee
Blues” (only one copy remains in existence, valued at over $30,000.00) and in 1928 Mississippi John Hurt released his version. All
in all Hurt’s version is closest to the truth, though it still retains the morality play ending with Stag being hanged for his crimes.
Bear Rasmuson!
!!
!
Lyons eventually died of his injuries. Shelton was tried and convicted for the crime in 1897, and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was
pardoned in 1909, but was imprisoned again two years later for assault and robbery. Unable to get parole, he died in the hospital of the Missouri
State Penitentiary in Jefferson City on March 11, 1912. Shelton is buried at the historic Greenwood Cemetery in Hillsdale, Missouri. The Killer
Blues Headstone Project raised monies to place a stone on his unmarked grave, and on April 14th, 2013 a marker was laid during a public
ceremony.
!
2013 !
Although “Stagger” Lee Shelton was not a musician, the events that transpired on that fateful night in 1895 made a
significant historical impact on American music. Earlier this year…the Killer Blues Headstone Project honored Shelton by placing a
headstone on his unmarked grave.!
!
page 24 of 83
!!
!
Stagolee: Preserving St. Louis' intangible cultural legacy
!
Posted by DEVIL AT THE CONFLUENCE (Kevin Belford)!
Tuesday, June 4, 2013!
Stagger Lee: Invention and legend!
!!
!
The legend of Stagger Lee has a mystery within it: Why was Billy shot? That can be discussed and pondered, though there
probably isn't anything that can prove why he was killed. But there are things that aren't mysteries, they're just false, just made up.!
Like Cecil Brown's book, Stagolee Shot Billy - it just made up the story that Lee Shelton was a pimp.!
Shelton wasn't a pimp. And there is nothing that says he was other than Brown's book. Brown made it up. It's just that simple. Many
people assume Brown's book proved that Shelton was a pimp, but there are no footnotes to factual sources. Starting with his very
first mention of Stagolee Shelton as a pimp on page 8:!
!
!
"The fact that Stagolee was a pimp…"!
No footnote. That's just the author writing his own personal statement.!
And every time the word "pimp" is used with Shelton's name, no proof is provided. Each time is simply the author repeating his
conjecture or making more things up:!
!
p. 11; "...a real Stagolee, a well-known figure in St. Louis’s red-light district during the 1890s, a pimp…" No footnote. !
p. 12; "The hero of the ballad was a pimp…" No footnote.!
p. 16; "…the black pimps in St. Louis” No footnote.!
p. 23; "Lee Shelton belonged to a group of exotic pimps" No footnote.!
p. 33; (Song lyrics, no footnote.)!
p. 45; "...if Lee Shelton was a pimp even before arriving in St. Louis" No footnote.!
p. 46; "If he was a successful pimp..." No footnote.!
p. 50; "Shelton, a pimp who became a legend" No footnote.!
p. 84; "The Stags were probably the first party of pimps" No footnote. !
p. 103; "Shelton… owned a club called the Modern Horseshoe Club, drove a carriage, and was known to be a pimp." No footnote.!
p.104; "...since he was both a pimp and a gambler" No footnote.!
p. 116; "Shelton had been a pimp, a political figure, a saloonkeeper" No footnote.!
p. 218; "We have seen how the Stagolee narrative has been associated with the pimp and the prostitute, begining with ragtime
music" No footnote.!
!
Each of these statements are the author's musings. None of these statements have basis in historical fact. There was no pimp
named Stagolee in St. Louis. There was no pimp club or pimp political party. Shelton was not a club owner, a maquereaux, mack, or
pimp. Simply, there are no police arrests, legal documents, newspaper articles, or other factual sources that provide proof that Lee
Shelton was a pimp.!
!
There may be lyrics, opinions, and dreams that say Staggerlee was a pimp or whatever else, but those aren't facts.!
And if I were to write that Lee Shelton was a laborer and footnote it to the Missouri State Penitentiary Register Book V, State
Archives, Office of the Secretary of State, Jefferson City, Missouri, that then is a sourced fact.!
!
page 25 of 83
!!
!
!!
!
Stagger Lee
!
!
: 911 North 12th Street : 914 North 12th Street!
!
!!
The building at 911 N. Tucker was built in 1890.!
911 N. Tucker, built c. 1840, is the only survivor of the dense residential neighborhood that once enveloped downtown. It is a
wonderful example of the City's early Federal architecture as well as the City's changing immigration patterns. Owned first by a
German family, it was then purchased by a Jewish family from Poland, and then an Italian couple who operated a speakeasy and
boarding house. Rumors are that it was also at one time a bordello.!
!!
!
!!
(It is reported) that Lee Sheldon lived at 911 N 12th Street, now 911 N Tucker Blvd. !
Here is a story from the December 28, 1895 St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat. !
Shot in Curtis’ Place.!
William Lyons, 25, colored, a levee hand, living at 1410 Morgan Street, was shot in the abdomen yesterday evening at 10 o’clock in
the saloon of Bill Curtis, at Eleventh and Morgan streets, by Lee Sheldon, also colored. Both parties, it seems, had been drinking,
and were feeling in exuberant spirits. Lyons and Sheldon were friends and were talking together. The discussion drifted to politics
page 26 of 83
and an argument was started, the conclusion of which was that Lyons snatched Sheldon’s hat from his head. The latter indignantly
demanded its return. Lyons refused, and Sheldon drew his revolver and shot Lyons in the abdomen. Lyons was taken to the !
Dispensary where his wounds were pronounced serious. He was removed to the City Hospital. At the time of the shooting the!
saloon was crowded with negroes. Sheldon is a carriage driver and lives at 914 North Twelfth Street. When his victim fell to the
floor Sheldon took his hat from the hand of the wounded man and coolly walked away. He was subsequently arrested and locked
up at the Chestnut Street Station. Sheldon is also known as 'Stag' Lee.!
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, December 28, 1895!
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from the 3clearlight.com website: Tourists note 911 N. 12th Street, which was "Stag" Lee Sheldon's house, is still standing, although it was recently boarded up and for sale; it's the
only house remaining on the block (directly across from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch building). About 15 years ago, an alderman
named Bruce Sommer ran a restaurant there called the Sommer House -- with live music, including old-time performers Cousin
Curtis & the Cash Rebates, and blues singer Tom Hall. Tom wasn't aware that he was singing in Stagger Lee's old house.!
!
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Billy Lyons and Henry Bridgewater are buried in Saint Peter’s Cemetery.!
Devil at the Confluence
!
Thursday, January 31, 2013, by Kevin Belford!
There are a lot of things said about Lee Shelton. A lot of really sensational things that people made up. That's what being legendary
is, I suppose, the made-up stuff is more well-known than the real stuff. But Shelton was a real man living in St. Louis around the turn
of the century. He wasn't a gang boss, nor involved in prostitution, and he didn't own a nightclub. And Lee Shelton never owned a
house. He lived by the day or by the month in tenement houses in St. Louis. One such place was 914 North Twelfth Street, where
he was living in December of 1895. That's the address that the police had for him when they arrested him for the murder of Billy
Lyons and that's what the St. Louis Globe Democrat newspaper printed the next day, December 26, 1895. But just about every time
someone writes about Shelton's shooting of Lyons they say the house at 911 North Twelfth street is Stagger Lee's house. But that's
the wrong address. The mistake first appeared around 2002 when someone transcribed the newspaper story into a Usenet posting.
The number could be misread as 911, but if you look up the microfilm copy it's obviously 914. Then in 2004, a book titled, Stagolee
Shot Billy by Cecil Brown, used the wrong address from Usenet. Then a comic book titled, Stagger Lee, repeated the error from
Brown's book. And since then the wrong address has been reposted too many times to count.* !
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*Some repostings on the web of the wrong address found in Brown's book:!
http://www.thecabinet.com/darkdestinations/location.php?sub_id=dark_destinations&letter=l&location_id=lee_sheltons_house!
http://www3.clearlight.com/~acsa/stagroot.htm!
http://voices.yahoo.com/the-lee-sheldon-william-lyons-story-behind-ballad-87595.html!
http://www.troubleinrivercity.com/2008/11/25/stagger-lee/!
http://www.the-clash.co.uk/enlighten/Stagger%20Lee.htm!
http://wcbsfm.cbslocal.com/2011/05/26/behind-the-hits-stagger-lee-by-lloyd-price/!
http://illfolks.blogspot.com/2007/02/18-versions-of-stagger-lee.html!
https://sites.google.com/site/thestaggerleefiles/!
http://staggerlee.typepad.com/stagger_lee/2006/11/photos_from_the.html!
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1829!
page 27 of 83
http://sixeyes.blogspot.com/2009/11/nick-cave-and-more-stagger-lee-mp3s.html!
http://www.marseillefigs.org/slee.html!
!
A number of published books copied the error including True Crime: Missouri, and Wicked St. Louis, and the wrong address was
repeated by the St Louis Police Veteran's Association: http://www.slpva.com/historic/police220chestnut.html. The building standing
today at 911 N. 12th street looks pretty old, but the 1895 fire insurance map shows that there was no 911 address at that time.
Across the street, the even-numbered side, is where the tenement house stood where Lee Shelton had rented a room. The song of
Stagger Lee is mostly made up by people over the years and that's how it became a great American folktale. And the folktale is an
important part of St. Louis' music legacy - a long history of very important contributions to American culture. But sadly, the city has
few landmarks left standing to show for it. "Legendary" shouldn't mean that all the real stuff is gone and only the made-up stuff
remains, but sometimes it seems like that's what we're doing.!
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Billy Lyons may have had three little children and a very sickly wife,
but when he wasn’t gambling, he worked as a short order cook.
!
A lot of the truth has been lost in the retelling of the fable of badman Stagolee and Billy, two men who
were real people living in St. Louis over a hundred years ago. In fact, the real lives of Billy Lyons and Lee
Shelton have never been told.!
!
And as far as world famous legends go, Stagolee is about as big as they get. The story and song tell of
the murder of Billy Lyons during a card game. But over the years, the prose outlived the facts and the
buildings are gone. No artifacts remain. And that’s St. Louis’ fault.!
!
The city has what seems like a compulsion for demolishing buildings. And although there are individuals
and groups concerned with the preservation of old buildings, those efforts are often more interested in
architecture, rather than what happened within the buildings. Unfortunately, the sites of most of St. Louis’
culturally important landmarks are not the unique or ornate buildings. !
page 28 of 83
!
The stories are our intangible cultural legacy, and it’s a kind of demo by neglect when it’s lost because we
didn’t fight to save it. Stories, traditions and folklore are as significant to civilizations as their monuments.
We have a world-famous legacy. We need to preserve our heritage and we need to be the advocates for
our cultural history to preserve it. !
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!
This is a blogpost to correct inaccuracies concerning the incident of Billy and Staggerlee. An earlier post shows that a house said to
be Shelton's house is the wrong house. It's important to note that made-up stuff is OK, that's the legend. But why make a swindle
out of it? Devil At The Confluence was written partly to correct assumptions and errors about the music history of St. Louis. Part of
the reason this city's proud history isn't well-known is because many opinions and writings about the history are not, but are
assumed to be, fact.!
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timeline!
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1865, March 16. Lee Shelton is born.!
1865. With $100, John B. Stetson rents a small room, buys tools and $10 worth of fur. The John B. Stetson Hat
Company is born.!
Late 1800s. A popular song of the south is "Bully of the Town." Ragtime emerges as a new musical style. St. Louis is
the Ragtime hothouse. (re: Scott Joplin, Tom Turpin, Mill Creek / Chestnut Valley)!
Early 1890s. Madame Babe’s is a famous, classy St. Louis brothel. Madame Babe once refused to have Oscar Wilde
in her house. Mama Lou, the house singer, is renowned for belting out her version of “Bully of the Town.”!
Madame Babe Connors (1856-1918) was a plump, bronze-skinned lady of mixed blood who stood 5 ft. 7 in. tall and
usually weighed in at around 165 lb. By the time she had opened her first famous parlor house at 210 South Street in
St. Louis (about 1890), she was in her mid-30s--an outgoing, fun-loving businesswoman who liked to dress elegantly
(complete with feather boa and parasol) while taking drives in her open carriage through fashionable Forest Park. !
!
1894. On a train from Chicago to San Francisco, white sports writer, horse judge and amateur musician, Charles E.
Trevathan, plays the song to amuse fellow passengers. Making no mention of St. Louis brothels, he claims to have
learned the tune from Tennessee blacks. The passengers encourage him to put lyrics to it. He does.!
!
1895, September 16. May Irwin, Trevathan’s girlfriend, sings his “The Bully Song” in the Broadway musical, “The
Widow Jones.” Although it pre-dates Lee Shelton’s inclusion in the song and is arguably used in a non-pejorative
sense, this is the only time a white person records the word “nigger” in the Stagger Lee bloodline.!
!
Have you heard about that Bully that just come to town? He’s down among the niggers, layin’ their bodies down. I’m a-lookin’ for that bully and he must be found. !
!
page 29 of 83
1895, 27 December. "Stag" Lee Shelton shoots William Lyons in the Bill Curtis Saloon, "the most extensive chance
emporium in North St. Louis". There is an argument that culminated with Lyons snatching Shelton's Stetson hat. It is
only 1 of 5 similar murders that day in St. Louis.!
!
1895, December. White lawyer Nathaniel Dryden defends Shelton. Dryden was the first lawyer in the state of
Missouri to gain conviction of a white man for the murder of a black man. 300 angry black people hiss and curse
Shelton and Dryden as they enter the courthouse.!
!
1896. Election year in what will be considered by historians to be one of the most dramatic campaigns in American
history. St. Louis is the 4th largest city in the country. Both political parties are seeking the black vote. William Lyons
was an organizer for the Republicans. Lee Shelton was an organizer for the Democrats. The black vote had gone to
the Republicans since the end of the Civil War but times are changing.!
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1896, January 3. Lee Shelton held on a $4,000 bond – equivalent to $100,000 today.!
1896, February 12. Grand Jury indicts Lee Shelton on a charge of first-degree murder.!
1896, June 25. Lee Shelton is released on a $3,000 bond paid by pawnbroker, Morris H. Smit. Does the money come
from political connections?!
1896, July 15. Lee Shelton's trial starts. Dryden argues self-defense.!
1896, July 18. The jury is unable to agree on a verdict. Seven vote for murder in the second degree, two for
manslaughter, and three for acquittal.!
1897 – 1918. Ragtime’s period of peak popularity. !
1897, August 21. The earliest known reference to the song appears in the Kansas City Leavenworth Herald. It is
understood that Prof. Charlie Lee, the piano thumper, will play 'Stack-a-Lee' in variations at the K. C. Negro Press
association.!
!
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1897, August 26. Nathaniel Dryden, a morphine addict, dies after a drinking binge.!
1897, October 7. The second trial takes place in the court of Judge James E. Withrow. The jury takes two hours to
return a guilty verdict. Shelton begins a 25 year sentence in the Jefferson penitentiary.!
page 30 of 83
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1903. Earliest known transcription of lyrics from Memphis but reportedly first heard in Colorado in 1899 or
1900.!
1903. Another transcription of lyrics to the Ballad of Stackerlee. Sung from the perspective of a St. Louis
prostitute !
working for him as her pimp. The song spreads like a game of Chinese Whispers across the South as
musicians hear it !
and play it back from memory with their own embellishments. The Stag Lee of the song is hung for the murder,!
sent off with an elaborate funeral, kicks the Devil from his throne and takes over Hell.!
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1909, Thanksgiving. Lee Shelton released from prison, pardoned by governor Joseph “Holy Joe” Wingate
Folk. !
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Judge Joseph “Holy Joe” Wingate Folk, 1869-1923; c. 1904
Nathaniel Dryden!
1910, February. Miss Ella Fisher of Texas sends John Lomax, a pioneering musicologist and folklorist, 8
stanzas of !
The Ballad of Stagalee. She writes to him, “This song is sung by the Negroes on the levee while they are
loading and !
unloading the river freighters.” !
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1911. The first published versions of the lyrics appear in The Journal of American Folklore.!
1911, January 26. Shelton pistol whips and kills William Atkins while robbing his house.!
1911, May 7. Shelton enters prison once more.!
1912, February 8. Governor Herbert Spencer Hadley (Republican 1909–13) pardons Sheton under pressure
from the!
Democrats.!
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page 31 of 83
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STAGGERLEE WONDERS — JAMES BALDWIN !
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1!
I always wonder what they think the niggers are doing St. Louis in Blues Folk Songs –– the big 3!
page 32 of 83
while they, the pink and alabaster pragmatists, are containing Russia and defining and re-defining and re-aligning China, nobly restraining themselves, meanwhile, from blowing up that earth which they have already blasphemed into dung: the gentle, wide-eyed, cheerful ladies, and their men, nostalgic for the noble cause of Vietnam, nostalgic for noble causes, aching, nobly, to wade through the blood of savages— ah - ! Uncas shall never leave the reservation, except to purchase whisky at the State Liquor Store. The Panama Canal shall remain forever locked: there is a way around every treaty. We will turn the tides of the restless Caribbean, the sun will rise, and set on our hotel balconies as we see fit. The natives will have nothing to complain about, indeed, they will begin to be grateful, will be better off than ever before. They will learn to defer gratification and save up for things, like we do. Oh, yes. They will. We have only to make an offer they cannot refuse. This flag has been planted on the moon: it will be interesting to see what steps the moon will take to be revenged for this quite breathtaking presumption This people masturbate in winding sheets. They have hacked their children to pieces. They have never honoured a single treaty made with anyone, anywhere. The walls of their cities are as foul as their children. No wonder their children come at them with knives. Mad Charlie man's son was one of their children, had got his shit together by the time he left kindergarten, and, as for Patty, heiress of all the ages, she had the greatest vacation of any heiress, anywhere: Golly-gee, whillikens, Mom, real guns! and they come with a real big, black funky stud, too: oh, Ma! he's making eyes at me! Oh, noble Duke Wayne, be careful in them happy hunting grounds. They say the only good Indian is a dead Indian, by what I say is, you can't be too careful, you hear? Oh, towering Ronnie Reagan, wise and resigned lover of redwoods, deeply beloved, winning man-child of the yearning Republic!
from diaper to football field to Warner Brothers sound-stages,!
be thou our grinning, gently phallic, Big Boy of all the ages!!
page 33 of 83
!
Salt peanuts, salt peanuts,!
for dear hearts and gentle people, !
and cheerful, shining, simple Uncle Sam!!
!
Nigger, read this and run!!
Now, if you can't read, !
run anyhow!!
!
From Manifest Destiny!
(Cortez, and all his men!
silent upon a peak in Darien)!
to A Decent Interval,!
and the chopper rises above Saigon,!
abandoning the noble cause!
and the people we have made ignoble!
and whom we leave there, now, to die, !
one moves, With All Deliberate Speed,!
to the South China Sea, and beyond, !
where millions of new niggers!
await glad tidings!!
!
No, said the Great Man's Lady,!
I'm against abortion,!
I always feel that's killing somebody.!
Well, what about capital punishment?!
I think the death penalty helps.!
!
That's right.!
Up to your ass in niggers!
on Death Row.!
!
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!
Oh, Susanna,!
don't you cry for me!!
2!
Well, I guess what the niggers !
is supposed to be doing!
is putting themselves in the path !
of that old sweet chariot!
and have it swing down and carry us home.!
!
That would help, as they say,!
and they got ways!
of sort of nudging the chariot.!
They still got influence!
with Wind and Water,!
though they in for some surprises!
with Cloud and Fire.!
!
My days are not their days.!
My ways are not their ways.!
I would not think of them,!
one way or the other,!
Did not they so grotesquely!
block the view!
between me and my brother.!
!
And, so, I always wonder:!
can blindness be desired?!
Then, what must the blinded eyes have seen!
to wish to see no more!!
page 34 of 83
!
For I have seen, !
in the eyes regarding me, !
or regarding my brother, !
have seen deep in the farthest valley!
of the eye, have seen!
a flame leap up, then flicker and go out,!
have seen a veil come down,!
leaving myself, and the other,!
alone in that cave!
which every soul remembers, and!
out of which, desperately afraid, !
I turn, turn, stagger, stumble out, !
into the healing air,!
fall flat on the healing ground, !
singing praises, counseling!
my heart, my soul, to praise.!
!
!
What is it that this people!
cannot forget?!
Surely, they cannot be deluded!
as to imagine that their crimes!
are original?!
!
There is nothing in the least original!
about the fiery tongs to the eyeballs,!
the sex torn from the socket,!
the infant ripped from the womb, !
the brains dashed out against rock,!
nothing original about Judas,!
or Peter, or you or me: nothing:!
we are liars and cowards all,!
or nearly all, or nearly all the time:!
for we also ride the lightning,!
answer the thunder, penetrate whirlwinds,!
curl up on the floor of the sun,!
and pick our teeth with thunderbolts.!
!
!
Then, perhaps they imagine!
that their crimes are not crimes? !
Perhaps.!
Perhaps that is why they cannot repent, !
why there is no possibility of repentance.!
Manifest destiny is a hymn to madness, !
feeding on itself, ending!
(when it ends) in madness: !
the action is blindness and pain,!
pain bringing a torpor so deep !
that every act is willed,!
is desperately forced,!
is willed to be a blow: !
the hand becomes a fist,!
the prick becomes a club, !
the womb a dangerous swamp,!
the hope, and fear, of love!
is acid in the marrow of the bone. !
No, their fire is not quenched, !
nor can be: the oil feeding the flames!
being the unadmitted terror of the wrath of God. !
!
Yes. But let us put it in another, !
less theological way: !
page 35 of 83
though theology has absolutely nothing to do !
with what I am trying to say.!
But the moment God is mentioned!
theology is summoned!
to buttress or demolish belief:!
an exercise which renders belief irrelevant!
and adds to the despair of Fifth Avenue !
on any afternoon, !
the people moving, homeless, through the city,!
praying to find sanctuary before the sky !
and the towers come tumbling down, !
before the earth opens, as it does in Superman.!
They know that no one will appear!
to turn back time, !
they know it, just as they know!
that the earth has opened before !
and will open again, just as they know!
that their empire is falling, is doomed,!
nothing can hold it up, nothing.!
We are not talking about belief. !
!
3!
I wonder how they think!
the niggers, make it, !
how come the niggers are still here. !
But, then, again, I don't think they dare!
to think of that: no: !
I'm fairly certain they don't think of that at all.!
!
Lord, !
I with the alabaster lady of the house, !
with Beulah.!
Beulah about sixty, built in four-square, !
biceps like Mohammed Ali,!
she at the stove, fixing biscuits, !
scrambling eggs and bacon, fixing coffee, !
pouring juice, and the lady of the house,!
she say, she don't know how!
she'd get along without Beulah!
and Beulah just silently grunts,!
I reckon you don't,!
and keeps on keeping on!
and the lady of the house say!
She's just like one of the family,!
and Beulah turns, gives me a look, !
sucks her teeth and rolls her eyes!
in the direction of the lady's back, and!
keeps on keeping on. !
!
While they are containing !
Russia!
and entering tonto the quicksand of !
China!
and patronizing!
Africa, !
and calculating!
the Caribbean plunder, and!
the South China Sea booty, !
the niggers are aware that no one has discussed !
anything at all with the niggers. !
!
Well. Niggers don't own nothing,!
got no flag, even out names !
are hand-me-downs!
page 36 of 83
and you don't change that !
by calling yourself X:!
sometimes that just makes it worse, !
like obliterating the path that leads back!
to whence you came, and !
to where you can begin. !
and, anyway, none of this changes the reality, !
which is, for example, that I do not want my son !
to dies in Guantanamo, !
or anywhere else, for that matter, !
serving the Stars and Stripes. !
(I've seen some stars.!
I got some stripes.) !
!
Neither (incidentally)!
has anyone discussed the Bomb with the niggers:!
the incoherent feeling is, the less!
the nigger knows about the Bomb, the better: !
the lady of the house!
smiles nervously in your direction!
as though she had just been overheard!
discussing family, or sexual secrets, !
and changes the subject to Education, !
or Full Employment, or the Welfare rolls, !
the smile saying, Don't be dismayed.!
We know how you feel. You can trust us.!
!
!
Yeah. I would like to believe you.!
But we are not talking about belief.!
4!
The sons of greed, the heirs of plunder,!
are approaching the end of their journey: !
it is amazing that they approach without wonder, !
as though they have, themselves, become!
that scorched and blasphemed earth, !
the stricken buffalo, the slaughtered tribes, !
the endless, virgin, bloodsoaked plain,!
the famine, the silence, the children's eyes, !
murder masquerading as salvation, seducing!
every democratic eye,!
the mouths of truth and anguish choked with cotton, !
rape delirious with the fragrance of magnolia,!
the hacking of the fruit of their loins to pieces, !
hey! the tar-baby sons and nephews, the high-yaller nieces,!
and Tom's black prick hacked off!
to rustle in crinoline, !
to hang, heaviest of heirlooms,!
between the pink and alabaster breasts!
of the Great Man's Lady,!
or worked into the sash at the waist!
of the high-yaller Creole bitch, or niece,!
a chunk of shining brown-black satin,!
staring, staring, like the single eye of God:!
creation yearns to re-create a time!
when we were able to recognize a crime. !
!
Alas, !
my stricken kinsmen, !
the party is over: !
there have never been any white people, !
anywhere: the trick was accomplished with mirrors—!
look: where is your image now? !
where your inheritance, !
page 37 of 83
!
on what rock stands this pride?!
Oh, !
I counsel you, !
leave history alone.!
She is exhausted, !
sitting, staring into her dressing-room mirror,!
and wondering what rabbit, now, !
to pull out what hat, !
and seriously considering retirement, !
even though she knows her public!
dare not let her go.!
!
She must change. !
Yes. History must change. !
A slow, syncopated!
relentless music begins!
suggesting her re-entry,!
transformed, virginal as she was,!
in the Beginning, untouched, !
as the Word was spoken, !
before the rape which debased her!
to be the whore of multitudes, or, !
as one might say, before she became the Star, !
whose name, above our title, !
carries the Show, making History the patsy,!
responsible for every flubbed line, !
every missed cue, responsible for the life!
and death, of all bright illusions!
and dark delusions,!
Lord, History is weary!
of her unspeakable liaison with Time, !
for Time and History!
have never seen eye to eye: !
Time laughs at History!
and time and time and time again!
Time traps History in a lie.!
!
But we always, somehow, managed!
to roar History back onstage!
to take another bow,!
to justify, to sanctify!
the journey until now. !
!
Time warned us to ask for out money back, !
and disagreed with History!
as concerns colours white and black.!
Not only do we come from further back,!
but the light of the Sun!
marries all colours as one. !
!
Kinsmen, !
I have seen you betray your Saviour!
(it is you who call Him Saviour) !
so many times, and!
I have spoken to Him about you, !
behind your back. !
Quite a lot has been going on !
behind your back, and, !
if your phone has not yet been disconnected, !
it will soon begin to ring: !
informing you, for example, that whole generation, !
in Africa, is about to die, !
and a new generation is about to rise,!
page 38 of 83
and will not need your bribes, !
or your persuasions, any more: !
not your morality. No plundered gold—!
Ah! Kinsmen, if I could make you see!
the crime is not what you have done to me!!
It is you who are blind, !
you, bowed down with chains, !
you, whose children mock you, and seek another !
master,!
you, who cannot look man or woman or child in the !
eye,!
whose sleep is blank with terror, !
for whom love died long ago,!
somewhere between the airport and the safe-deposit!
box,!
the buying and selling of rising or falling stocks, !
you, who miss Zanzibar and Madagascar and Kilimanjaro!
and lions and tigers and elephants and zebras !
and flying fish and crocodiles and alligators and!
leopards!
and crashing waterfalls and endless rivers, !
flowers fresher than Eden, silence sweeter than the !
grace of God,!
passion at every turning, throbbing in the bush, !
thicker, oh, than honey in the hive, !
dripping!
dripping!
opening, welcoming, aching from toe to bottom!
to spine, !
sweet heaven on the line!
to last forever, yes, !
but, now, !
rejoicing ends, man, a price remains to pay, !
your innocence costs too much!
and we can't carry you on our books!
or our backs, any longer: baby,!
find another Eden, another apple tree,!
somewhere, if you can, !
and find some other natives, somewhere else,!
to listen to you bellow!
till you come, just like a man, !
but we don't need you,!
are sick of being a fantasy to feed you, !
and of being the principal accomplice to your!
crime: !
for, it is your crime, now, the cross to which you!
cling, !
your Alpha and Omega for everything. !
!
Well (others have told you)!
your clown's grown weary, the puppet master!
is bored speechless with this monotonous disaster, !
and is long gone, does not belong to you, !
any more than my woman, or my child, !
ever belonged to you. !
!
During this long travail!
our ancestors spoke to us, and we listened, !
and we tried to make you hear life in out song!
but now it matters not at all to me !
whether you know what I am talking about—or not:!
I know why are we are no blinded!
by your brightness, are able to see you, !
who cannot see us. I know !
page 39 of 83
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why we are still here. !
Godspeed. !
The niggers are calculating, !
from day to day, life everlasting, !
and wish you well: !
but decline to imitate the Son of the Morning, !
and rule in Hell. !
!
!!
James Baldwin!
Jimmy's Blues – Selected Poems!
c 1983, 1985!
St. Martin’s Press, NY!
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page 40 of 83
!
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FRANKIE & ALBERT / JOHNNY / LEAVIN’ HOME
1899
!!
Negro Shot by Woman!
After midnight, Sunday, Allen (Albert) 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…. The Police
pending investigation made no arrest. (Britt’s actual given was Albert Britt, but he was also known as “Allen.”)!
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 15, 1899!
!
NEGRO SHOT BY WOMAN!
Allen Britt, colored, was shot and badly wounded yesterday morning by Frankie Baker, also colored. The shooting occurred in Britt’s
room at 212 Targee Street, and was the culmination of a quarrel. The woman claimed that Britt had been paying attentions to
another woman. The bullet entered Britt’s abdomen, penetrating the intestines. The woman escaped after the shooting.!
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 16, 1899!
!
After midnight, Sunday, Allen (Albert) Britt, Colored, was shot and badly wounded by Frankie Baker, also Colored. The shooting
occurred at the woman’s home at 212 Targee Street, after a quarrel over another woman named Nelly Bly. Britt had been to a
Cakewalk at Stolle’s Dance Halls, where he and Nelly Bly had won a prize. His condition at City Hospital is serious. The Police,
pending investigation made no arrest.!
St. Louis Republic, October 16, 1899 !
!
AMID THE SUFFERING - FATHER McFARLAND’S DAILY ROUND OF THE HOSPITAL - A GIRL’S ATTEMPT AT SUICIDE.!
Allen Britt Died From a Knife Wound Inflicted by a Woman – Gus Freley (?) Fell Out of Bed.!
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. Britt 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 sweet heart 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.!
St. Louis Republic, October 19, 1899!
!
page 41 of 83
!
BluesLetter
The Monthly Magazine of the St. Louis Blues Society
includes excerpts from July 2013, Number 61 edition
The two lived together at Frankie’s rooming house at 212 Targee, where Frankie paid the
rent.
Albert’s parents lived the next block north, at 32 Targee, just south of Turpin’s Saloon at 9
Targee.
!
She was a beautiful, light brown girl, who liked to make money and spend it. She dressed very richly, sat for company in magenta
lady's cloth, diamonds as big as hen's eggs in her ears. There was a long razor scar down the side of her face she got in her teens
from a girl who was jealous of her. She only weighed about 115 pounds, but she had the eye of one you couldn't monkey with. She
was a queen sport. …. Frankie loved Albert all right. He was wise for his years but not old enough to be level with any woman.
Frankie was ready money. She bought him everything he wanted, and kept his pockets full. Then while she was waiting on company
he would be out playing around. !
Richard Clay, movie operator and former neighbor of Frankie Baker!
!Frankie usually slept in the back but on that Sunday night she got tired of waiting around for
Allen to come home. She went out into the night to look for ‘Albert’, as he liked to be called,
and found him in a hallway of the Phoenix Hotel, making up to a woman named Alice Pryar.
!Clay said he told Allen to stay away from Frankie because Alice was already his girlfriend and
“I thought it was wrong to have more than one main girl.” Clay said he was never sure what
prompted the
page 42 of 83
shooting (Father McFarland misspoke about a knifing) but thought it was, as the song goes, a
matter of jealousy, “a little mix-up between Frankie and Alice over Allen; just a thing that
happened.”
!!
She [Frankie] called Albert outside [the Phoenix] and began quarreling with him. A crowd gathered and they listened to the row.
Albert would not go home with her. Finally she went on alone. It was nearly daylight when Albert followed. He found Frankie waiting
up for him. There was more quarreling as he got ready for bed. He admitted to Frankie that he had been with Alice in her room at
the hotel, he warned her he was ready to throw her over for good. She began to cry and said she was going to find Alice Pryar.
Albert said he would kill her if she tried to go. She started for the door and Albert threw a lamp at her. In the darkness Frankie shot !
him as he came after her with a knife. Albert made his way out of the house and down the street to the home of his parents at No.
32 [Targee.] His mother heard him calling. She came out and found him lying on the front steps in his pajamas. He told her what had
happened and she began to scream. “Frankie’s shot Allen! Frankie’s shot Allen!”!
John Huston, filmmaker, who also staged a theatrical version of Frankie and Johnny in 1930!
!!
A coroner’s inquest was apparently held but the records of the inquest are missing; an index
of such inquests at the St. Louis Public Library shows no inquest into the death of anyone
named Allen Britt.
!In the deposition from the lawsuit filed by Baker in 1935 against Republic Pictures for
defamation, and reprinted by the St. Louis Star-Times in 1939, Baker adds to Huston’s account
a bit, saying that after Britt came in and threatened her with the lamp she told him to get out
and go to his mother’s house.
He said he wasn’t going anyplace. Frankie says:
!!
I went straight to our home at 212 Targee Street and went to bed…. I wasn’t going to let his philandering worry me. I had had
experience. Albert wasn’t even at Alice’s house. They were together all right, but were at a party at a friend’s house. Albert was
drinking and, as always, was entertaining at the piano. That boy could play! …. About three o’clock Sunday morning, Allen came
in. Pansy Marvin (her 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 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 ran 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. …. I ain’t superstitious no more. I went to trial on Friday the 13th, and the bad luck omens
didn’t go against me. Why, the judge even gave me back my gun. Don’t know what I did with it. Guess I pawned it or gave it away.
Everybody carried a gun in those days. Guess I wasn’t so very guilty if the judge gave me back that gun, was I? You know, I was
afraid of Albert. He beat me unmercifully a few nights before the big blow-off. My eye was festering and sore from that lacin’ when I
went before Judge (William) Clark. He noticed it, too.!
Frankie Baker, deposition / interview with Dudley McClure, Portland, Oregon, Daring Detective Tabloid, 1935!
from We Did Them Wrong: The Ballad of Frankie and Albert!
by Cecil Brown!
in The Rose & the Briar, 2005, edited by Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus!
!!
In 1962, Bruce Redfern Buckley…produced what remains the most comprehensive study of the ballad. In his
dissertation, “Frankie and Her Men: A Study of the Interrelationships of Popular and Fold Traditions,” Buckley
examined 291 versions, of which 186 are complete, thirty-one are fragments, and eight are parodies. The song takes
different names; it is called “Frankie and Albert” when it is associated with the incident in St. Louis where a certain
Frankie Baker shot her lover, a certain Albert Britt. Buckley calls this the “Folk” type, and he dates it around 1899.!
The first publication of the song as sheet music was in 1904, under the title “He Done Me Wrong,” with the subtitle
“Death of Bill Bailey.” !
!
What Buckley calls the “Popular” type was published under the title “Frankie and Johnny” on April 10, 1912, by Tell
Taylor, with music and words by the Leighton Brothers. In 1942, Guy Lombardo used the famous lead line “Frankie
and Johnny were sweethearts” in a version written by Boyd Bouch and Bert Leighton. ….!
!
Richard Clay, a neighbor of Frankie Baker, lived at 34 Targee Street, and he knew both Frankie Baker and Albert
(Allen) Britt well. A film projectionist, Clay later met the director John Huston, to whom he told the details of the story.
page 43 of 83
In 1930, Huston published Frankie and Johnny, an illustrated book on the ballad; two years later, he wrote and
directed his first play: Frankie and Johnny. According to Clay, he was with Albert on the night Albert first met Frankie,
and he was with Albert as he was slowly dying in the City Hospital on October 16, 1899. Frankie was probably in her
early to mid-twenties—the sources conflict about her exact age—when she met Albert, a fifteen-year-old boy already
well known as a gifted ragtime pianist.!
!
In a later interview, Baker claimed she was born in May 1876, which would have made her twenty-three when she shot Albert. Dr.
E. I. Silk of the East Oregon Hospital, where she eventually died, affirmed that his records showed that she was born on May 30 but
did not specify the year. A subsequent search for her birth certificate was fruitless. Albert’s father testified under oath that, at the
time of the shooting, she was thirty or thirty-five. John Huston later wrote that she killed Albert while she was in her twenty-seventh
year. She appears to have acted older than her age, so it seems reasonable to conjecture that she was in her early to mid-twenties.
All that is certain is that she was older—and looked as if she was considerably older—than her lover and eventual victim.!
!
!
Soon after, they moved in together at 212 Targee Street; Albert’s parents lived at 32 Targee Street.!
Clay described the neighborhood where Frankie Baked lived with Britt as a spotting area. “This society was built
around the woman and her mack,” his friend John Huston later wrote. “New Orleans had already had her
maquereau, a colored exquisite, who made their percentage out of the sporting white’s weakness for black girls.”
Now it was St. Louis’s turn with the macks. “St. Louis became known as the toughest town in the West. Boogiejoints and bucket shops opened up on Twelfth, Carr, Targee, and Pine Streets. The fast colored men and
women lived up to their necks. Stagolee stepped out and made a legend of his Stetson hat. The girls wore
red for Billy Lyons. Duncan killed Brady. The ten pimps that bore the dead were kept on parade between the
infirmary and the graveyard.”!
!
Frankie Baker was born in St. Louis during Reconstruction. When she became a prostitute, she followed kin the
footsteps of many young black women. Yet according to Clay, by October 1899, she had already “gained notoriety by
her open handedness, good looks, and her proud and racy bearings.” She was “a queen sport in a society which for
flamboyant elegance and fast living ranks alone in the sporting west.” ….!
!
Richard Clay described Frankie Baker as “a beautiful, light-brown girl, who liked to make money and spend it. She
dressed very richly, sat for company in magenta lady’s cloth, diamonds as big as a hen’s egg in her ears.” Clay
remembered that Frankie had “a long razor scar down the side of her face she got in her teens from a girl who was
jealous of her. She only weighed about 115 lbs., but she had the eye of one you couldn’t monkey with. She was
queen sport.” ….!
!
In real life, Frankie begged Albert to follow her home…. According to Clay, “Finally she went on alone…. It was
nearly daylight when Albert followed. He found Frankie waiting up for him. There was more quarreling as he got
ready for bed. He admitted to Frankie that he had been with Alice in her room at the hotel, and he warned her that he
was ready to throw her over for good.” ….!
!
“She began to cry and said she was going to find Alice Pryar (Pryor),” Clay reported. “Albert said he would kill her if
she tried to go. She started for the door and Albert threw the lamnp at her. In the darkness, Frankie shot him as he
came after her with a knife.” …. !
After he was shot, according to Clay, Albert “made his way out of the house and down the street to the home of his
parents. His mother heard him calling. She ran out and found him lying on the front steps in his pajamas. He told
her what had happened, and she began to scream, ‘Frankie’s shot Allen!’” ….!
!
!
“Inside a few minutes,” Clay went on, “the word was all over (the neighborhood) that Frankie had gotten her man.”!
…. In a 1935 interview about the incident, in Portland, Oregon, after a long reflection, Frankie claimed she knew that
Albert was seeing another girl named Alice Pryor. He failed to call her one evening. “I went straight to our home at
212 Targee Street,” she told a reporter, Dudley L. McClure, “and went to bed…. I wasn’t going to let his philandering
worry me. I had had experience. Albert wasn’t even at Alice’s house. They were together all right, but were at a
party at a friend’s house. Albert was drinking and, as always, was entertaining at the piano. That boy could play!”!
…. “About three o’clock Sunday morning,” she said, “Allen came in. Pansy Marvin (her roommate and friend)
opened the door and let him in. I was in the front room, I 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
page 44 of 83
there and cursed and I says, ’I am boss here, I pay rent and I have to protect myself.’ He ruin 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.” ….!
!
“Why, the judge even gave me back my gun,” Frankie remembered. “Don’t know what I did with it. Guess I pawned it
or gave it away. Everybody carried a gun in those days. Guess I wasn’t so very guilty if the judge gave me back that
gun, was I? You know, I was afraid of Albert. He beat me unmercifully a few nights before the big blow-off. My eye
was festered and sore from that lacin’ when I went before Judge Clark. He noticed it too.” ….!
!
!
“I had nothing to cry about,” she told McClure. “I didn’t feel smart about it, either. I didn’t go to his funeral because I
couldn’t. I was in jail.” …. !
…Frankie Baker stayed in St. Louis for a year after the incident. Two months after Albert died, Frankie heard the
ballad for the first time. And as she walked down the street, people, “began singing it so she ran to Omaha in
humiliation.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 14, 1942)!
!
But she couldn’t settle ion Omaha, Nebraska, because the song had already arrived, and she was haunted by it. She
was attracted to Portland, Oregon, because she read about the Rose Festival. She always had had a love for
beautiful flowers. So she moved to Portland, but the ballad had arrived there, too.!
!
After some activity in prostitution ion the north end of Portland, and after having gone to jail several times, Frankie put
away her diamonds, fancy lace, and plumes for good. She opened her own shoeshine parlor and later worked as a
chambermaid as the Royal Palm Hotel. In the 1930s, after an illness that prevented her from working, and almost
penniless, she spent most of her time sitting alone in her white frame house at 22 North Clackamas Street.!
!
In 1935, when Republic Pictures released the film She Done Him Wrong, starring Mae West and Cary Grant, it
disseminated Frankie’s story to an even wider public than the ballad had done. “When the Mae West picture was in
town,” Frankie told a journalist, “men and women would gather in front of my place and point. Some of them would
come in and get a shoeshine, and probably ask me if I was a St. Louis woman. They even called my home and
asked me silly questions. I’m so tired of it all; I don’t even answer anymore. Autograph seekers pester me, too,
mostly by letters. Some of them enclose money, and those, of course, aren’t so bad. What I want though is peace—
an opportunity to live like a normal human being. I know that I’m black, but even so, I have my rights. If people had
left me alone, I’d have forgotten this thing a long time ago. Now they can start paying me.” ….!
!
When asked who Albert was, she replied, “He was a conceited piano player,” adding that “he had been staying at my
house off and on for a couple of years, although I knew he went out once in a while with Alice Pryor.” She was asked
if she wore diamonds as big as goose eggs. “Only an average size one,” she said. Did she buy Albert hundred-dollar
suits? “Not necessarily.” What ever happened to Alice Pryor? “I heard she passed out.”!
!
Representing Republic, Meyer H. Lavenstein of New York and Hugo Monnig of St. Louis wanted to show that the
song could not have been based on the Frankie Baker incident, and to prove that the song existed prior to 1899.
They called Sigmund Spaeth, an authority on popular songs and ballads. Fifteen years before, in 1927, Spaeth had
written a book in which he stated that the ballad “Frankie and Johnny” was based on the Frankie Baker incident. He
said that “St. Louis was the home of not only ‘Frankie and Johnny,’” but also of “Stagolee” and “King Brady.” Now,
after receiving an expert witness fee of $2,000, Spaeth took the opposite position, claiming that the song had not
originated in St. Louis and that Frankie Baker had not inspired its creation/ On Frankie’s side were Joseph L.
McLemore and Robert L. Witherspoom, and witnesses Charles Marshall, Mariah Jones, and Richard Clay. The
lawyers and witnesses for Republic were all white, and the lawyers and witnesses for Frankie Baker were all black.
The jury was composed of white men. The outcome of the trial was hardly surprising.!
!!
page 45 of 83
!
!
Attorney Robert Witherspoon, bottom row, second from left
Witherspoon
#10 Lewis Place, Witherspoon home
!
Dr. Fredda
!!
The film was screened for the jury, but since all the characters were cast as whites, the white jurors had a hard time
seeing how they could have been drawn from Frankie’s life. “Frankie Baker wasn’t to appropriate for her own use
one of the finest ballads of American folklore,” Monnig said in his closing argument. “If you give her a verdict,
she will have a claim against anybody who ever sand the song. Send her back to Portland, Oregon, and her
shoeshine business; for an honest shine, let her have an honest dime. Don’t make her a rich woman,
because forty years ago, she shot a little boy here in St. Louis.” Frankie had her day in court, and according to
one reporter, “brightened the lives of all St. Louisians in a dreary winter filled with bad news from the Pacific theater.” !
!
!
Back in Portland, Baker became a lifetime member of the Urban League. ….!
The Targee Street area was so notorious that it supported three ballad-makers, Tom
Turpin, W.C. Handy,
and Bill Dooley. …. Both Handy and Turpin were refined, educated musicians who expected that their ballads
would be played in the parlors of middle-class Americans and the concert halls of class-conscious music lovers. Bill
Dooley was different. He worked the street corners. He was not trained in music. …. In his “Frankie Killed Allen,” Bill
Dooley’s use of imagery is bold and his characterizations of Frankie and Albert are tragic and unforgettable. ….
Dooley’s talent…was to create unforgettable people in emotional situations that could be found anywhere in both folk
and popular cultures. …. One of the first to name Dooley the author of the “Frankie and Albert” ballad was Ira
Cooper, a reporter for The Palladium in St. Louis. Writing in 1899, Cooper claimed that the composer of the ballad
was an “itinerant” black man. “On the night following the shooting,” Cooper wrote, “Bill Dooley, a Negro pianist
and song writer, composed a sorrowful dirge which was played thereafter in many Negro saloons and
resorts.”!
!
In 1942, in Frankie Baker’s second suit against Republic Pictures, her attorney, Joseph L. McLemore, claimed that
the ballad was written by Bill Dooley. “Dooley,” McLemore said, “along with W.C. Handy, composer of ‘St. Louis
Blues,’ and Tom Turpin, were the most prolific writers of ballads in the Gay Nineties.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
page 46 of 83
February 17, 1942) …. Then McLemore described Dooley’s distribution practice: he would “sell his compositions
on the streets of St. Louis at 10 cents a copy.” The night after the murder, Dooley had already had a version
of the ballad performed, another observer reported; he was playing it himself on street corners.!
!
!
Dooley moved to Detroit, where he became a street-corner preacher; he was killed there in 1932.!
On the second day of the 1942 trial, Nathan B. Young, a St. Louis lawyer and amateur researcher of Negro folklore,
took the stand. He said that in the 1890s, when Dooley wrote “Frankie and Albert,” it was the practice of “Tin Pan
Alley” songwriters to “come here to St. Louis Negro clubs, listen to the improvised songs, then go back East and write
their own versions.”!
!!
!!
!!
SHOT HER MAN AT 212 TARGEE, ‘FRANKIE’ SAYS!
________!
!
!
!
‘…And So I Plugged Him’!
Didn’t Happen in Saloon as in ‘Humiliating’ Fictional Versions, She Relates.
!!
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!
!!
!
________!
“If I was a ‘queen sport,’ they didn’t call me that to my face,” snapped Frankie Baker, who calculates she may collect $200,000
on her contention that she is the original heroine of that old barroom ballad, “Frankie and Johnny.”
Frankie’s own account of how she shot to death her man who was doing her wrong, as given yesterday to a Post-Dispatch
reporter, was often at variance with the fictional version. That’s what “humiliates” her, she says.
So the 66-year-old Negro woman has come all the way from Portland, Ore., where she shines shoes for a living, to testify in
Circuit Court here against the distributors of a “Frankie and Johnny” movie, which, according to her attorneys, defamed her.
“It didn’t happen in any saloon,” Frankie declared. “It happened right here at 212 Targee street.” She was standing on a vacant
lot behind Municipal Auditorium. Of the former street, only an alley remains.
In the “rooming house” which once stood on the site—and this is verified by Coroner’s records—Frankie Baker on an early
October morning in 1899 shot to death Allen Britt. Her plea of self-defense won acquittal.
“Al was a conceited piano player—not a sporting man.” Frankie began. “He’d been staying at my house off and on for a couple
of years, although I knew he went out once in a while with Alice Pryor.”
On the fatal morning, Al flew into a rage when Frankie asked him where he’d been. He came at her with a knife. “But I always
say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” Frankie went on.
“So I reached under my pillow for my gun—I always kept it there—and plugged him. No, it wasn’t a .44. It was just a little old
Harrington & Richardson .38. And it couldn’t have gone root-i-toot-toot, ‘cause I only shot once.”
Did she have sparklers as big as goose eggs? Only as “average size” one. Did she buy Al $100 suits? “Not necessarily.” Did Al
say, “Roll me over easy?” Frankie….
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 13, 1942!
Frankie and Johnny WERE Sweethearts
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!
!
But, Says Frankie, It Was the Famous Song That “Done Her Wrong”!
!
No Other Woman, Says!
the “Heroine” of Mis-!
souri’s Classic Ballad,!
Claiming Damages From!
the Movies Which Drama-!
tized It; Johnny’s Name!
Was Al, the Shooting!
Wasn’t in a Barroom,!
Frankie Was Turned!
Loose, and, a Witness Sug-!
gests, She Wasn’t Flashy,!
But Just a Charming Girl!
With a Handy Gun!
“Frankie and Johnny were sweethearts,
They had a quarrel one day.
He was her man,
But he done her wrong.”
!
For 40 years that appealing murder song, “Frankie and Johnny,” has rivaled “Sweet Adeline” in barrooms from coast to coast. And all that time
Miss Frankie Baker, a colored woman, now in her sixties, and proprietress of a shoe-shining parlor in Portland, Oregon, has modestly admitted
herself the straight-shooting heroine of the ballad, but complained that the rest of it “done her wrong.”
Now Frankie wants $200,000 damages for “defamation of character and invasion of her privacy” because the Republic Pictures Corporation
released a film version of that annoying song and thus, she claims, wronging her all over again.
This $200,000 claim may seem like a lot of money but it appears to be a sort of alleged accumulation of injuries to her feelings by two
generations of “whiskey tenors, beer baritones, booze bassos, and of late, stewed sopranos.”
Out of all these millions of singers Frankie only managed to bring suit against one, Mae West, who sang it in her famous picture, “She Done
Him Wrong.” But this never came to trial because Miss Baker’s counsel decided that it would be hard to prove that Mae, at this late date, had
added substantially to what millions of previous singers had allegedly done to Frankie’s reputation.
One of the inaccuracies of the song is that the young colored gentlemen whom Frankie found it necessary to shoot, was not named Johnny but
Allen (or Albert) Britt. However, she claims no damages for that error, explaining that the relatives of the deceased Mr. Britt were persons of
money and influence who were able to get the name changed before the song had really gotten its hold on bar society.
One of the so-called slurs the heroine resents is the scene of the bumping-off. In the early versions and most of the later ones, this liquidation
happens in a saloon. For instance, kin the very first one before Albert had been re-christened Johnny, the opening stanza runs as follows:
“Frankie went to a barroom, called for a glass of beer.
Hello, Mr. Bartender, has Albert been here?
He is my man, but he done me wrong.”
Bartenders in the gay nineties seem not to have been the diplomats they are today, because this one replies:
“I ain’t goin’ to tell you a tale that’s a lie,
Albert left here with a girl named Alice Fry.
He is your man but he done you wrong.”
Not only was such unrefined barroom atmosphere described in song but it was chosen as the setting by well-known artist, Thomas Hart Benton,
when he painted the famous killing, in a picture that hangs in the state capitol building in Jefferson City, Missouri.
Though all wrong, according to Frankie, that seemed to make it official, in the State of Missouri, so Frankie indignantly moved out to
California, with the hated song right at her heels.
Most of the songs had the correct happy ending of acquittal, but in others Frankie was grieved to learn that she had been convicted and hanged,
perhaps the most serious error of all.
Without any charge of political influence, Alice Fry’s name was changed to the better-known one, Nellie Bly. Miss Bly, a writer, who “had a
kick coming if anyone did” just laughed and let it ride.
The true locale of the tragedy was a three-room flat at 212 Targee Street, “inhabited by substantial colored people of St. Louis.” One room was
rented by Frankie. There she was often visited by a 17-year-old colored youth who died as Allen but has become immortalized as Johnny. The
front boudoir was tenanted by another colored girl, Pansy Marvin, and her man.
According to the account accepted by the coroner that Summer of 1899, the trouble was caused by Johnny dropping in at 2:30 A.M. and finding
his Frankie in the front room. No man was around but Johnny resented her being in the wrong room.
It was one of St. Louis’ hot Fall nights and Frankie, who had a headache, thought she might get a little more air in the front room.
That was all, except that she had taken with her a large .44-calibre revolver, presumably to cool her throbbing temples by laying the cold steel
against them. Anyway, it happened to be under the pillow when Johnny made his appearance.
At the inquest, Frankie was the second and last witness. Asked what her occupation was she replied”
“I works sometimes.”
The coroner did not ask what she worked at and let her relate the apotheosis of Albert in the following words:
“About three o’clock Sunday morning, Al Britt came in. Pansy opened the door and let him in. I was in the front room asleep and he walked in
and grabbed the lamp and started to throw it at me.
“I jumped out of bed and says, ‘What’s the matter with you, Al?’ And he says, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I says, ‘I’ve been sick and
come here where I could get more air,’ and he walked around the bed and started to cut me, like this, twice.
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“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 standing here, pillow lays this way, just run my
hand under the pillow and shot him. Didn’t shoot but one time, standing by the bed.”
Nobody disputed that she shot him only once, which was plenty, because Johnny staggered out of the flat, down stairs and managed to walk to
the doorstep of his parents’ home where he fell dying.
Yet, that disagreeable song says:
“Frankie took aim with her forty-four.
Five times it went root-i-toot,
As Johnny fell. Then Miss Frankie yelled:
‘Oh, you’re goin’ away and you’re goin’ to stay.
You’re never comin’ home?
I’m going to miss you, hon’ in the days to come,
When the wintry winds begin to blow.’”
Miss Baker resents the charge that she shot him five times, whereas it was only once, more in sorrow that in anger, and to prevent being carved.
One cheek already bore a knife-scar, inflicted not by a man, but a jealous woman.
Miss Pansy Marvin, the first and only other witness, confirmed her friend Frankie’s testimony as follows:
“It was about half past 2 o’clock in the night when he (Britt) came in there (the house on Targee Street) very angry and we asked him what was
the matter and he says, ‘Where is Frankie?’ And I says, ‘She is in the front room.’ Then he says, ‘What is she doing in there?’
“I says, ‘I don’t know,’ and he goes into the front room and grabbed the lamp off the table or off the mantelpiece and says to her: ‘What you
doing here?’
“She jumped up and stands in front of the door and says, ‘Al, I want you to go out of here.’ And he says, ‘What for?’ And she says, ‘ ‘Cause.’
“ He says, ‘I ain’t going to do it. What are you doing in the front room? Get out of there.’ And she says, ‘I’ll go anywhere I want to,’ and he
was in the middle of the room and she was standing in the door when he made a rush at her.
“He says, ‘If I catch you in that front room—‘ And he pushed at her with a knife and she says, ‘Don’t you cut me, Al.’ And he says, ‘Yes, I
will,’ and made a swipe at her and she hauled away and shot him.”
The coroner exonerated Frankie who walked home a free soul and thought that the end of the story, only to find that it was to go on forever, in
song, in painting at the State House and later, on the screen.
As for that rival, Alice Fry, who started as Alice Pry and finally became fixed as Nellie Bly, it seems that she really existed in the flesh, as Alice
Pryor.
At one of the recent preliminary hearings of the $200,000 suite at St. Louis, Richard J. Clay, a Negro moving picture operator, testified that he
had lived in the neighborhood at the time and knew all concerned in that epic shooting.
Clay revealed that he had warned his friend Al to “stay away from Frankie for his own good, because I never could see that idea. I thought it
wrong that a man should have more than done girl.”
Clay was then asked if Al “had a flock of women.”
“Not a flock, just Alice Pryor,” was the response. Frankie has been described as wearing diamonds “as big as hen’s eggs.” There are no such
decorations on her today and Clay states that he saw none then. Miss Baker also denies “this glittering generality.”
According to the version Mae West sang, Frankie was supposed to have admitted that she had done Johnny wrong but repented, and if he would
only not run away with Nellie Bly, offered to prove her heart was back in the right place by giving him all the money he needed.
It was after this liberal peace offer was scorned that the gun went “root-i-toot,” the incorrectly-counted alleged five times.
Miss Baker denies that she ever “done Al wrong” and won’t even admit that he went wrong with Alice Pryor, which is contrary to Clay’s
testimony.
No, it was just a misunderstanding about her being in the wrong room and would have been all right if Johnny had not been so ungallant as to
argue with a knife.
Clay gave all concerned, even his friend Al, such lovely characters that the cross-questioner finally said:
“Your theory then, is that these were just some charming people who happened to have a revolver around.”
“I don’t have no theory,” the witness replied gravely. “I just know they had a shooting outfit, that’s all.”
At the end of the hearings, Mr. Joseph L. McLemore, Frankie’s attorney, showed a letter from his client, out in Portland, announcing that her
reputation and privacy were being invaded on a new front. She wrote:
“I just turned on the radio and the first thing I heard was ‘Frankie and Johnny.’ It seems to me I ought to be entitled to some of that money.”
Besides the film corporation itself, others named in Frankie’s suit as having “done her wrong” are Helen Morgan, famous piano-sitter, who played
the role of Frankie in the picture; Chester Morris, who played Johnny; Jack Kirkland, author of the screen play and Lilyan Tashman, screen star
who died after the release of the picture.
Presumably the actors are held responsible on the theory that they should have looked up the facts of the event. just before the turn of the
century, and rebelled against the incorrect manuscript and the director’s commands.
Nobody would know that Miss Baker is the wronged Frankie of song and screen, if she didn’t keep complaining about it. But then, he was “just
the lovin’est man” and her heart is still in the grave with him, even if cruel necessity forced her to put him there, she can’t bear to have a simple
lovers’ quarrel twisted around in that sordid way.
It has been pointed out to the shoe-shine executive that poets and painters are not supposed to be too much hampered by facts. There is such a
thing as poetic and artistic license.
Frankie feels that they have gone too fast and too far and their licenses should be revoked like that of a motorist for reckless driving.
She’s sick and tired of being a perpetual hit-and-run victim, as it were, and would like to have some kind of a stop put to the whole thing.
“It isn’t pleasant to be reminded constantly of something that’s been dead and buried,” she says.
But the legend of Frankie and Johnny has been glorified (?) in some twenty song versions, authorities on the subject have discovered. And how
many more bootleg versions are also current they are not even prepared to state.
Enough, at any rate, to present Frankie with quite a problem if she ever expects to right the wrong she claims they done her.
The Milwaukee Sentinel, December 17, 1939 copyright 1939, by American Weekly, Inc. Great Britain Rights Reserved.!
!
shooting: Oct. 15, 1899
!
trial: Nov. 13, 1899
!
verdict: Not guilty - justifiable homicide in self-defense!
page 49 of 83
!
I ain’t superstitious no more. I went to trial on Friday the 13th, and the bad luck omens didn’t go against me. Why, the judge even
gave me back my gun.!
Frankie Baker!
!
Disc 1
1 Champion Jack Dupree
6 Big Bill Broonzy
9 Doc and Merle Watson
12 Ethel Waters
15 Louis Armstrong
17 Blind John Davis
21 Johnny Cash
23 James Itveld
!!
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie & Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie’s Man Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
!
THE CITY DISPENSARY
The City Dispensary is situated in the City Hall Building, corner of Eleventh and Chestnut Streets, and is one of our most
important public charities. It is under the direction of Drs. Love and Robinson, one of whom is in constant attendance
night and day. During the year 1874, 33.460 patients were examined and treated at this dispensary. Patients are not only
sent to the different hospitals by the doctors in charge, hut the poor and indigent of the city prescribed for, and medicine
furnished to them.
!
!
!
City Hospital after 1896 tornado. Allen Britt came here from the Dispensary, after 1899 shooting; he died here 4 days later. Richard
Clay sat with Allen while he died here.
Billy Lyons was also brought here, and died, after being shot by Lee Shelton in 1895!
Four Courts Building, built in 1871 !
(from Clark to Spruce, on 12th between 12th and 11th, just south of current Justice Center – where Fire Station is)!
Frankie was held here after her arrest, as was Lee Shelton after he shot Billy Lyons.!
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!
Some of the equipment used for executions was placed on the police exhibit at the 1904 World Fair. !
!!
!
The amphitheatre was reached by passing through the main building of the Four Courts Building and forms the City of Saint Louis
Jail which was a shell of iron of the most approved pattern. The jail was in the immediate rear of the building and had a capacity of
325 prisoners. The jail structure was built in circular form with the cells arranged next to the walls on the east, west and south side,
thus leaving room for a large court to afford the prisoners ample room for exercise. Rooms of detention for females were in an area
on the third floor of the Four Courts Building. !
Between the jail and morgue on Spruce was the open jail yard with the gallows, a grim gibbet, used for executions. The gallows
was a building that had an arched roof and stood on stilts. The area below the floor of the scaffold was plainly visible. The
execution party would have to first walk across the yard and then up a seven wooden steps. The Saint Louis City Sheriff read the
death warrants and a noose was placed around the prisoner's neck. The gallows' trapdoor where the prisoners stood dropped and
the execution was completed. Physicians declared the person dead and their bodies were removed to the Morgue in the same
complex. All executions were performed by the City Sheriff and within the jail yard, with a glimpse from the cell windows of the
jail. Executions by hanging were regular public events during the first half of the United States history. On these momentous
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occasions invitations not to exceed two hundred were issued to those to whom the Sheriff seen fit. In the 1890s, about 90 percent
of all executions were held in the county or city in which the offense was committed. That put arrangements into the hands of
sheriffs, who could make the gallows for hanging as public as they cared to. !
!
!
photo circa 1902 !
Disc 2
6 Sam Cooke
10 The Kai Winding Septet
14 Lena Horne
17 Isham Jones Orchestra
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
(Various artists – The Best of Frankie & Johnny)
19 Lead Belly
23 Benny Goodman
!!
Disc 3!
3 Bob Dylan
5 Jerome Moross: Diane Kesling
15 The Ink Spots
17 Charley Patton
19 Jerome Moross: Melissa Barrick
Rag
21 Furry Lewis
24 Jimmie Rodgers
Frankie & Albert
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Albert
Frankie and Johnny: Fox-Trot 6 Murder
Frankie & Johnny
Frankie And Albert
Frankie and Johnny: Bartender’s
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
page 52 of 83
Disc 4
8 Mississippi John Hurt
Frankie
(on Blues Volume 1)
11 J.J. Johnson
14 Elvis Presley
18 Guy Lombardo And His Royal Canadians
21 Alice Stewart
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Leavin’ Home
Disc 5
7 Josh White
12 Mance Lipscomb
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Albert (#)
Disc 6
1 Brook Benton
8 Ace Cannon
12 Taj Mahal
17 The M&B Jam Session 1984
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie and Albert
Frankie & Johnny
!
!
(under Various Artists, The M&B Jam Session 1984)
21 Johnny Silvo & Diz Disley
Frankie And Johnny
!!
!
!
!
!
1902, Hughie Cannon: !
!
!
Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home!
Disc 7
3 Milt Jackson
6 Sleepy LaBeef
11 Les Paul (and Mary Ford)
14 Tiny Grimes
(with Bill Jennings, Ray Bryant)
16 Gene Autry
Disc 8
!
!
!
!
!
!
1904, Hughie Cannon:!
He Done Me Wrong (Death of Bill Bailey)
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie & Johnny Boogie
(Previously Unreleased)
Frankie And Johnny
page 53 of 83
1 Mae West
3 Hank Snow
5 Charlie Feathers
!
!
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
1912
The Leightons, Bert and Frank, began as a pair of minstrels who performed in blackface to the accompaniment of guitar and banjo
before moving on to composing Tin Pan Alley songs performed on record by themselves and others. They might be better described
as song-hunters than composers because almost all their songs, as was the practice of the time, were bought cheaply, or outright
stolen, from naive black and white singers and copyrighted, a business matter Tin Pan Alley regarded as unremarkable. Perry
Bradford, composer and pianist on ‘Crazy Blues,’ spent much of his time fighting lawsuits in copyright court.!
page 54 of 83
!
That song got it all wrong. It was just an old Harrington and Richardson .38 and I only shot once.!
Frankie Baker!
7 Burl Ives
9 David Frizzell
11 The Four Renegades
12 Sandy Posey
14 Georgie Auld And His Orchestra
16 Claire Lane
18 Sonny Stitt, Lou Levy, Leroy Vinnegar, Mel Lewis
20 Freddie Hughes
22 Anita O’Day
!
!
!!
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
The New Frankie And Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
If America has a classical gutter song, it is the one that tells of Frankie and her man.!
Carl Sandberg, 1927!
1928!
!
Mae West, Diamond Lil - Broadway debut, April 1928!
set in 1890s!
Mae West’s character, named Lady Lou, sang a number of songs, including Frankie and Johnny.
(ref: Lady Lou vis a vis Mama Lou, singer at Babe Connors’)!
!
!!
Only MAE WEST knows and can tell the startling story of a woman like DIAMOND LIL – a scarlet woman for whom love was only a
pastime but diamonds were a career. !
page 55 of 83
Ancient Babylon in all its glory had no Queen of Sin to equal DIAMOND LIL. Other ages and civilizations brought forth Th____
and Moll Flanders. But it took New York to produce the reigning queen of Gus Jordan’s glittering sin palace. And it takes Mae West
to give the supreme portrait in unblushing words.!
A whole city paid homage to Diamond Lil – gangsters and g______, sheriffs and cops, millionaires from uptown and bums from the
Bowery. Lil knew them all and how to rule them. She made them pay in a shower of white lie(?).!
advertisement for Diamond Lil, 1928 (a few gaps and uncertainties in transcription due to legibility of original source)!
1928
e. e. cummings, Him
(slang for Frances) and Johnny is the male. "Ashcan school" painter John Sloan (1871-1951) made an etching of the performance
of this Frankie and Johnny scene. Sloan's etching depicts actors Hemsley Winfield and Goldye Steiner singing "Frankie and
Johnny." Steiner, as The Ground, holds a doll representing the dead Johnny. !
!
!
!!
!
Joan Sloane, illustration, Hemsley Williams and Goldye Steiner in The Frankie and Johnnie scene from Him!
1930!
!
Frankie and Johnny by John Huston, illustrations by Miguel Covarrubias!
!
!
from dust jacket: (italicized words are uncertain due to legibility)!
page 56 of 83
In addition to Mr. Huston’s adaptation of the song for the stage, shortly to be produced in New York by Jed Harris, twenty versions of
this ballad are included in the book, with the complete history of the song tracing the true incident upon which it is founded, revealed
here for the first time. Frankie and Johnny cannot perhaps boast the age of the Kentucky mountain songs, but there is in it most of
the essence of the America in which the “Frankie and Johnny” kind of people loved and fought out their lives than any song of
whatever origin. …. Frankie made and spent lots of money: she wore diamonds as big as hen’s eggs in her ears. The macks of her
time were splendidly costumed; mirrors set in their shoes, diamond suspender clasps, and watch ribbons. There are many who can
sing Frankie and Johnny, but very few who know about its origins or have any idea of the gay opulence of the milieu where it came
into existence: Mssrs. Covarrubias and Huston have ably seen to it that those who are curious to know more can now be satisfied.!
page 57 of 83
!
!
!
!
page 58 of 83
!!
1932
demolition of Targee Street
!
!
!
Site of future Kiel Opera House and Auditorium!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
!!
page 59 of 83
!
1933
Mae West, She Done Him Wrong
!
The film script was adapted by Harvey F. Thew and John Bright from the Broadway play Diamond Lil by Mae West.!
Louise Beavers was the only African American actress to be brought aboard the film by Mae West personally. She wanted a black
woman to appear opposite her; when she did stage and screen work, West made it a point to act with Black American actors and
actresses, helping to break racial discrimination in entertainment. West's stage shows resulted in her arrest for saucy material
and her having black actors on stage was extremely controversial. With this film, she and her Paramount bosses called the shots:
black stars appeared in a few of her films after this.
!
!
note HOT TIME reference !
Mama Lou’s song at Babe Connors’
!
Disc 9
3 Bo Weevil & Rottin Cottin
6 Tiny Grimes
!
Mae West by Covarrubias
!
Lady Lou…Mama Lou at Babe Connors’
!
Frankie and Albert
Frankie and Johnny
(with Jerome Richardson, Ray Bryant, Wendell Marshall, Arthur Taylor)
7 Pete Seeger
8 Joel Mabus
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Albert
page 60 of 83
10 Booker T. Sapps & Roger Matthews
Frankie And Albert (Cooney And
13 John-Alex Mason
16 Hans Theessink
Frankie And Albert
Frankie & Albert
Delilah)
!
!
!!
I’m so tired of it all, I don’t even answer any more. What I want is peace – an opportunity to live like a normal human being. I know
that I’m black but, even so, I have my rights. If people had left me alone, I’d have forgotten this thing a long time ago.!
Frankie Baker, c. 1933!
19 Jewell Long
21 Applesauce
Frankie and Albert
Frankie And Albert
Disc 10
1 Dinah Shore
Frankie and Johnny (1952-05-05)
!
(Suspense, Vol. 213)
2
3
4
5
Joe Callicott
Gerald Wiggins
Greenwood Country Singers
Sammy Davis, Jr.
Frankie and Albert
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
page 61 of 83
7 The Drifters Caravan
8 Street Corner Renaissance
9 Snakefarm
10 Roscoe Holcomb
12 Frank Wess
13 Lee Rocker
14 Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group
!!
!
Frankie soon started to tire of her new notoriety, and left
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie & Johnny
Frankie & Johnny
St Louis in 1890. !
She moved first to Nebraska and then to Oregon, but found the song followed her everywhere she went. After a few years working
as a prostitute in Portland and several arrests, she opened a shoeshine parlour there around 1925. The ballad never quite went
away - Mississippi John Hurt, Riley Puckett and Jimmie Rodgers all recorded it between 1928 and 1932 - and the first film
adaptation came out in 1930, but for a while she was left in peace. !
!
In 1933, all that changed. !
Republic Studios' She Done Him Wrong was Mae West's first starring vehicle, and also the film which kick-started Cary Grant's
career. Based on West's play Diamond Lil, it contains many of her best lines, as well as West's own rendition of Frankie & Johnny.
When the film reached Portland, Frankie found strangers gathering outside her home to point at her and stare. "I'm so tired of it all, I
don't even answer any more," she told a reporter. "What I want is peace - an opportunity to live like a normal human being. I know
that I'm black but, even so, I have my rights. If people had left me alone, I'd have forgotten this thing a long time ago." - Paul Slade!
!
page 62 of 83
!!
!
!
!
22 North Clackamas Street, Frankie Baker’s former home in Portland, Oregon, May 1957!
Frankie Baker's house has since been torn down. Where it once stood is a parking lot that is attached to the much bigger grounds
called The Rose Quarter Commons. On the grounds is the Rose Garden Arena, home of the NBA team Portland Trailblazers. It is a
bit of an ironic twist, considering the apartment complex in St. Louis where Frankie shot Allen is now also part of a large sports
arena, the Scottrade Center, home of the NHL St. Louis Blues.!
!
!
1933!
An aerial view of construction of the auditorium in April 1933, showing the steel superstructure of the future opera house (Kiel /
Peabody) and the first rows of the auditorium. It was built atop the former Targee Street. (Post-Dispatch) Album ID: 1097258 Photo
ID: 32136860 (212 Targee would put Allen Britt’s residence in the second block south of Market, so below the auditorium.)!
!
The two lived together at Frankie’s rooming house, where Frankie paid the rent. !
The apartment was at 212 Targee, 2nd block south of Market; where Kiel Auditorium was built and where Scottrade is now. !
Targee was essentially an alley running from Market to Clark between 14th and 15th. !
!
!
!
Turpin’s Saloon was in the first block south of Market, at 9 Targee, where Kiel Opera House – now Peabody – was built.!
Allen Britt’s parents also lived in that block, just south of and across from Turpin’s, at 32 Targee.!
page 63 of 83
Disc 11
5 King Oliver
Frankie & Johnny – Take 2
Disc 12
2 Dirty Dishes
6 Fred Buscaglione
14 Ted Lewis
Frankie & Johnny
Frankie & Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
!
!!
1936 ! Helen Morgan and Chester Morris star in Frankie and Johnny!
!
!
!
page 64 of 83
!
!
!
Helen Morgan
Helen Morgan, the “famous piano-sitter”
!
Chester Morris
!
1936 ! Thomas Hart Benton completes mural, House Lounge, Missouri State Capitol!
The painting is a small part of Benton’s masterwork, “A Social History of the State of Missouri.” It spans
completely around the room known as the House Lounge and contains 13 panels that cover the state’s history
from its founding to the Depression.!
!
!!
page 65 of 83
!!
!
!
!
!
!
1938 !
!
Jerome Moross: The Ballad of the Scandalous Life of Frankie and Johnny!
Frankie and Johnny (or The Ballad of the Scandalous Life of Frankie and Johnny, to give it its full title) is a ballet score on a libretto
by Michael Blankford and the composer based on an actual event that occurred in St Louis in 1899. This is a somewhat hybrid work
in which a female vocal trio acts in the manner of a present-day Greek Chorus embodied here by Salvation Army girls wandering
about the stage and playing tambourine, bass drum and cymbals while narrating the events of the story. The music is
page 66 of 83
quintessentially American, tuneful, colorful and superbly scored, often alluding to some forms of popular music. A most enjoyable
and entertaining work, though it has its moments of real emotion as in the final Funeral Party One-Step which concludes the piece in !
simple, moving terms. !
!
!!
!
!
!
!
1 Frankie and Johnny: Introduction!
!
2 Frankie and Johnny: Bawdy House Stomp!
3 Frankie and Johnny: Frankie and Johnny Blues!
4 Frankie and Johnny: Beer Parlour Rag!!
5 Frankie and Johnny: Bartender’s Rag! !
6 Frankie and Johnny: Frankie’s Tune! !
7 Frankie and Johnny: Fox-Trot Murder! !
8 Frankie and Johnny: Funeral Party One-Step!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
Denise Edds!
Melissa Barrick!
Melisssa Barrick!
Denise Edds!
Melissa Barrick!
Melissa Barrick!
Diane Kessling!
Melissa Barrick!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
page 67 of 83
!
Frankie Baker in St. Louis in October 1939, one year after she filed her lawsuit downtown. She sought $200,000 in damages for
defamation and anguish. By then, Baker ran a shoe-shine parlor in Portland, Oregon. She was in St. Louis for depositions in the
case. (Post-Dispatch) Album ID: 1097258 Photo ID: 32136844 !
!
!
20 Yellow Moon
22 Stephen Dreyfuss
!
Disc 13
1 Al Bernard
4 Whistlin’ Alex Moore With Nick Nichols
Courtroom Scene)
6 Maggie Worsdale
9 The Sandy Smith Group
11 Earl Ray
13 Mario Aguirre
17 The Solace Bros.
18 The Wiyos
19 Harvey Reid
!
Frankie&Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie And Johnny (The
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie and Johnny – Original
Frankie and Johnny (Live)
Frankie & Johnny
Leaving Home (Frankie and Johnny)
Frankie & Johnny
page 68 of 83
!
Nathan B. Young, a lawyer in St. Louis and authority on black folklore, testified for Baker in 1942. The photo was taken that year.
Young testified that Tin Pan Alley songwriters often came to St. Louis, listened to the home-grown music at local clubs and then
returned to New York to publish the songs. Young said the Frankie and Johnny hit the streets of St. Louis shortly after Baker shot
Britt. Young later founded the St. Louis American newspaper and served as the city's first black municipal judge. In 1937
he published Your St. Louis and Mine. He died in 1993. (Post-Dispatch) Album ID: 1097258 Photo ID: 32136856 !
!
Disc 14
3 Gloria Hart With Art Cassel
6 Ron Morris
9 Anne Marie Finnie
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
(Mae West and Sophie Tucker)
13 J. Wilson
Frankie And Johnny
(Field Recordings Vol. 1: Virginia 1936-1941)
16 Junior Watson
Frankie and Johnny
19 The Baker Street Irregulars (Brian McKnight)
The Ballad of Frankie and Johnny
!
!
!
Disc 15
1 Mason Porter
1942, Frankie Baker, lawyer Joseph McLemore (left), and others
Frankie And Johnny
page 69 of 83
2 Bertice Reading
Frankie And Johnny
(on The Jazz Train – Various Artists)
4 Candy Johnson
5 The Champs
10 Helen Morgan
11 Ted Daigle / Daige
12 Al Bowlly
14 Slim Harris & Jerry Durham
Frankie and Johnny
Theme from Frankie & Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie’s Man, Johnny (Studio)
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie & Johnny
(Various artists - Rock Jump Rock)
15 Patrick Verbeke, Steve Verbeke
17 George Melly
19 The Houserockers
Frankie & Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie & Johnny
!
!
Frankie Baker returns to the area of Targee Street while her trial was underway in 1942. With her is her lawyer, Joseph L.
McLemore. The scene is a vacant lot just south of the Municipal (later Kiel) Auditorium, which was built over the site of the rooming
house at 212 Targee where she shot Allen Britt. Targee was a narrow lane that ran south from Market Street between 14th and 15th
streets. It was named after volunteer fire Capt. Thomas Targee, the hero of the Great Fire of 1849. Targee had lived where the street
ran. The city had renamed it Johnson Street before the wrecking crews leveled the neighborhood about 1930 to build the auditorium
and opera house. (Post-Dispatch) Album ID: 1097258 Photo ID: 32136859 !
page 70 of 83
!
Disc 16
1 The Double Horseshoes
Frankie & Johnny
(Country Classics)
4 Nate Najar & John Lamb
8 Mike Shaw & Sons of the Drifting Sands
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
(Various Artists – Nau Voo Rock and Roll)
12 Kazik
13 Abby’s Agenda
14 Tex Morton
Frankie&Johnny
Frankie & Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
(Wandong Country Live)
17 The Half Moon Jug Band
20 Wilf Carter
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
(Various artists - Golden Memories of Country Music)
22 Morgana King
24 Tom Carter & The Ramrods
!!
(Various artists - More Boppin’…More Rockin’)
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
!
!
page 71 of 83
Frankie Baker in St. Louis on Feb. 13, 1942, for her trial. The jury ruled against her. (Post-Dispatch) Album ID: 1097258 Photo ID:
32136863 !
!
!
Disc 17
1 Thomas Fraser
2 Thomas Fraser
3 Dicky Wells, Rex Stewart
Frankie & Johnny / Careless Love
Frankie & Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
(under Rex Stewart, Dicky Wells)
4 Roy Hubbs
5 Rich Langen
7 Gene Martin
Frankie & Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
(Various Artists – Reader’s Digest Music: Folk & Country Classics)
9 Charlie Gracie & The Wildcats
Frankie and Johnny
(Various artists – Rare Rockabilly Rebels)
10 John Morgan Band
Frankie and Johnny
(Various artists – In the Mood for Jazz Trumpet)
11 Joey And The Showmen / Johnny Hallyday
Frankie Et Johnny
(Les Rocks Les Plus Terribles)
14 Pig Farmer
15 Gigi Gryce Quintet
Frankie and Johnny
(feat. Richard Williams & Richard Wyands)
16 GG Gibson & Tim Broadbent Band
17 Funkharp
18 Fate Marable’s Society Syncopators
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie & Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
(Various artists – Midnight Stomp: Kansas City Jazz 20’s)
19 Mattia Donna
!
!
Frankie et Johnny
(Various artists – Boob Boom Fred)
!
!
!
page 72 of 83
Disc 18
1 Steven Mead
2 Le Grand Orchestre Du Splendid
3 Bob Milne
4 The Legends
5 George Wallington, Donald Byrd & Jackie McLean
6 Christian Maucery
7 Warren Wolf
8 Bill Reid & The Fewer Sorrows Band
9 The Ventures
10 Frank Crumit
11 Glenna Bell
12 Frank MacChia
13 Hayden Thompson
14 Roger Smith
15 Bob Jackson And The Strange Ones / Bob Strange
16 Leroy Barbour
17 Reagan Hudson
19 The Haircuts & The Impossibles
!
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie et Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie Digs Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
The New Frankie & Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie and Johnnie (Live)
Frankie and Johnnie
Frankie and Johnny
page 73 of 83
!
Sigmund Spaeth, a national authority on American folk music and a regular commentator during the early days of radio, with his
1926 book on the subject. In the book, he outlines the St. Louis origins of the Frankie and Johnny ballad. But in 1942, he testified for
Republic Pictures, arguing that the song had many versions dating to the Civil War. Asked about the conflict between his testimony
and his book, Spaeth said bluntly, "I've changed my mind since then." (Post-Dispatch) Album ID: 1097258 Photo ID: 32136857 !
!
Disc 19
2 Acker Bilk & His Paramount Jazz Band
Frankie and Johnny
(Various artists – It’s Trad, Dad! Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
4 King Oliver
Frankie & Johnny
(Various artists – The Best of Frankie & Johnny)
!
!
!
Sigmund Spaeth (center) with lawyers for Republic Pictures in the St. Louis courthouse on Feb. 17, 1942. They are (left) Meyer H.
Lavenstein of New York and Hugo Monnig of St. Louis. (Post-Dispatch) Album ID: 1097258 Photo ID: 32136858 !
page 74 of 83
Frankie Baker wants to appropriate for her own use one of the finest ballads of American folklore. If you give her a verdict, she will
have a claim against anybody who ever sang the song. Send her back to Portland, Oregon, and her shoeshine business; for an
honest shine, let her have an honest dime. Don’t make her a rich woman, because forty years ago, she shot a little boy here in St.
Louis. !
Hugo Monnnig, lawyer for Republic Pictures, 1942!
!
8 Bill Ramsey
Frankie and Johnny: St. James
Infirmary Blues
(Various artists – Jazz 57: II Festiwal Muzyki Jazzoweg, Sopot, 21957)
10 Pete Candoli
13 Marcus D‘Amico
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
(Various artists – The Poetry of America)
14 Fred Frees
16 Toby Walker
20 Count Basie & His Orchestra
22 Ted Daigle
24 Interstate Cowboy
!
Disc 20
1 Tod Demuth
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie And Johnnie (live in Budapest)
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie & Johnny
Frankie and Johnny
(Various artists – Oldtime Jazz 5)
3 Stevie Wonder
6 Duke Ellington
8 New Lost City Ramblers
10 101 Strings
12 Frank Crumit Paul Biese Trio
14 Richard Ray Farrell
Soler)
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Leaving Home (Frankie and Johnny)
Frankie and Johnny
Frankie And Johnny
Frankie & Johnny (with Alberto
!
Disc 21
1 Margaret Whiting
!
Frankie and Johnny (1957-02-03)
(Suspense, Vol. 315)
Disc 28
1 Denise Edds
2 Melissa Barrick
House Stomp
3 Melisssa Barrick
Blues
4 Denise Edds
Rag
5 Melissa Barrick
Frankie and Johnny: Frankie & Johnny
6 Melissa Barrick
Frankie and Johnny: Frankie’s Tune
7 Diane Kessling
8 Melissa Barrick
Step
Frankie and Johnny: Fox-Trot Murder
Frankie and Johnny: Funeral Party One-
Frankie and Johnny: Introduction
Frankie and Johnny: Bawdy
Frankie and Johnny: Beer Parlour
Frankie and Johnny: Bartender’s Rag
!
page 75 of 83
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movie and soundtrack, 1966!
!
But everybody that knows anything at all about "Frankie and Johnnie" is likely to have a version of his or her own, and there is
nothing so rabid for righteousness, so bristling with self-defense, as the dyed-in-the-wool Frankie-and-Johnnie fan.!
Sigmund Spaeth, Read 'Em and Weep: The Songs You Forgot to Remember, 1927!
!
!
!
odds and ends : Tillie Griffin!
Seventy-three-year-old Tillie Griffin, a lodge leader and social hostess at Homer G. Phillips Hospital, testified at the
defamation trial that she lived next to Baker and heard one shot and not the three mentioned in the song.!
The song originally was "Frankie and Al," a number of sources say. Allen Britt's father George Britt testified at the
defamation trial. Britt's family insisted that it be changed to "Frankie and Johnny."!
!A Look Back
!
Al Bernard also made a recording of Frankie and Johnny.
Frankie shot Johnnie in St. Louis, but didn't win her lawsuit
October 17, 2010 St. Louis in Blues Folk Songs –– the big 3!
page 76 of 83
BY TIM O'NEIL • to'[email protected]
!
ST. LOUIS • Frankie Baker and Allen Britt had a lovers' spat. He went to a piano bar. She went home alone and angry, telling a
neighbor she might "blow up" two rival women. At 2:30 a.m., Britt stumbled up the back staircase of a rooming house at 212 Targee
Street and burst into the apartment. Baker yelled at him to leave. He threw an oil lamp and pulled a knife. She grabbed a .32-caliber
pistol from beneath her pillow and fired once, striking him in the abdomen.!
!
Walking slowly downstairs, Baker told neighbor Tillie Griffin there had "been a little trouble." When Britt died four days later in City
Hospital, Baker was locked up in the old Four Courts Building, 11th and Clark streets. A judge later freed her, citing self-defense.!
Details of the Oct. 15, 1899, shooting were recited again in 1942 in St. Louis Circuit Court. By then, the world knew that Britt had
done his woman wrong. Songwriters changed his name to the catchier Johnnie when they published the ballad of "Frankie and
Johnnie."!
!
Britt was a good piano player and a dandy. Baker was known for good looks, flashy clothes and skill at the "cakewalk," a black
dance craze. Targee Street, a glorified alley barely two blocks long, ran south from Market Street between 14th and 15th streets.
W.C. Handy, composer of the "St. Louis Blues," worked and wrote songs there.!
!
!
Baker left St. Louis in 1901, claiming later she was haunted by the songs. The Targee neighborhood declined after the Ragtime era
and was demolished about 1930 to make way for the Municipal (later Kiel) Auditorium, now site of the Scottrade Center.!
Newspaper articles in 1899 were brief, all the more reason for songwriters to stretch their imaginations in dozens of versions of the
famous ballad. Baker gave her side in February 1942, when she returned to St. Louis for her lawsuit against the producers of a 1936
movie about the old story. Baker said seeing it on the big screen, after all those years of avoiding the song, was too much.!
!
Former neighbor Tillie Griffin and Nathan B. Young, local lawyer and music enthusiast, testified they first heard the song only weeks
after the shooting. Young said it was the product of local songwriter Jim Dooley. Republic called it a song for the ages, and the
studio had the big guns, including Sigmund Spaeth, a national authority on music who had written in 1926 of its St. Louis roots. "I've
changed my mind since then," Spaeth testified, saying the song dated to the Civil War. Baker lost, and died in Oregon in 1952.!
The murder 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 (1876 – 1952), 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, Stolles Dance Halls, at 13th and Biddle, where he
and another woman, Nelly Bly (also known as "Alice Pryor"), had won a prize in a slow-dancing contest. Britt died of his wounds four
days later at the City Hospital. On trial, Baker claimed that Britt had attacked her with a knife and that she acted in self-defense;
she was acquitted and died in a Portland, Oregon mental institution in 1952.!
page 77 of 83
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The Multnomah County Poor Farm / Edgefield Manor!
In 1854 the territorial legislature gave the counties the responsibility of caring for the poor. 1868 saw the first pauper's farm open in
the west hills of Portland, Oregon. This facility, called Hillside Farm, occupied 160 acres (65 ha) near Canyon Road in Portland's
West Hills; the site is now part of Washington Park. Hillside Farm was closed down due to the "deplorable" condition of the building,
and the Multnomah County Poor Farm was built to replace it. In November 1911, 211 residents moved to the new farm in Troutdale.
This new facility was the largest county-funded relief institution in Oregon. In 1934 an infirmary wing was built to care for the aging
population of the farm. In 1935, its population peaked at 614.[3] The farm would eventually encompass 345 acres (140 ha). During
1939, a doctor's duplex was built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA also added an incinerator, sprinkler
system, and sun porch in 1940. In 1947, the name of the institution was changed to the Multnomah County Home and Farm. In the
late 1950s, the farming operation ceased and the name was changed to the Edgefield Manor. In 1964, the former tuberculosis
hospital's name was changed to Edgefield Lodge for emotionally disturbed children. The main building became a nursing home,
which was named Edgefield Manor. Farm operations also were discontinued during this time. The entire complex was declared as
the Edgefield Center by county commissioners in 1964. In 1972, the county proposed closing the entire Edgefield facilities down.
1982 saw the last three patients being relocated somewhere else. During 1985, county committees decided to remove all buildings
from the area except for the jail. The reason was to market the land to potential buyers. In 1986, the Troutdale Historical Society
challenged the decision to destroy all the buildings. They claimed that the buildings had historical importance and needed to be
preserved. In 1990, Edgefield was named to the National Register of Historic Places. That same year, the facility was purchased by!
McMenamins.!
!
page 78 of 83
!
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painting by Myrna Yoder hangs near the west stairwell on the first floor at Edgefield!
from the McMenamins website!
Here's the original story of Frankie Baker, former Edgefield resident, most commonly associated with the ballad "Frankie and
Johnny" as well as several Hollywood movies starring the likes of Mae West and Cary Grant, Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino. While
some say the song originated in the 1850s prior to the Civil War, it was attributed to Frankie Baker after her fatal dispute with a suitor
in 1899.!
!
!!
The song itself has been recorded by everyone from Lead Belly to Johnny Cash, Lena Horne to Lindsay Lohan, Stevie Wonder to
Jack Johnson. While Frankie Baker never earned a cent from the various films or song recordings, her legacy lives on at Edgefield.!
Allen Britt's brief experience in the art of love cost him his life. He died at the City Hospital Wednesday night [actually 2:15am on
Thursday October 19] from knife wounds inflicted by Frankie Baker, an ebony hued cakewalker. Britt was also colored. 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 Baker is locked up at the Four Courts.!
St. Louis Dispatch, October 19, 1899!
!!
page 79 of 83
What the sensational article above doesn't mention is that Britt actually stabbed her after a quarrel and so she shot him in selfdefense. She carried the knife scar to prove it.!
!
Although she was acquitted of murder, Frankie Baker left St. Louis to escape the notoriety of the incident and eventually landed in
Portland, Oregon. She operated a shoeshine business for 14 years in NW Portland and later worked as a chamber maid. She
continued to endure a certain level of infamy, even from neighborhood children, who would dance outside her window, singing
"Frankie and Johnny." !
!
!
Despite all the attention and the movies and the song itself, Baker never made a dime from her story. She even tried suing Republic
Pictures and Mae West over the film She Done Him Wrong (1933), to no avail.!
Despite her tough circumstances, Frankie Baker gave her time to others. In 1949, she became the first life member of the Urban
League of Portland. "The unfailing support which you...have given to the league in spite of your own limited financial circumstances
has been an inspiration to our board and staff," said the executive secretary of the organization.!
!
Just months later, the destitute Frankie Baker became a resident at the Multnomah Farm (today's McMenamins Edgefield).
However, after incidents at the poor farm in which she "frightened and attacked persons," she was deemed to be insane and a
danger to others. !
!
!!
!!
On April 28, 1950, she was transferred to Eastern State Hospital, where, hospital attendants said, she was a docile patient. She died
there in 1952.!
!
Frankie Baker, 1876 – January 1952!
!
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page 80 of 83
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Allen Britt, 1882 – October 1899 !!
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!
Allen Britt was born in Kentucky, according to his death certificate. It is believed that he is the character !
referred to as Johnny in the popular song Frankie and Johnny. The song, composed by Bill Dooley, was !
originally titled Frankie and Al (or Albert), until Britt's father became enraged that his son's name was !
being used in the song, and the name Johnny was used instead. Allen Britt was a piano player, he was !
shot on October 15, 1899, and died a few days later at the City Hospital in St. Louis, MO. He is buried in !
an unmarked grave in St. Peter's Cemetery in St. Louis. Britt was shot by his girlfriend, Frankie Baker!
(1876-1952), after the two got into a fight. Britt's name is also given as Albert in some sources. He was !
the son and only child of George and Nancy Britt (both from Tennessee), the family had moved to St. Louis !
in 1891. Frankie Baker, born in St. Louis, was acquitted of shooting Allen Britt and she left St. Louis, !
eventually settling in Portland, OR, where she shined shoes for a living. She had two unsuccessful law !
suits, one against Mae West and Paramount Pictures for the use of her name in the film She Done Him!
Wrong, and in 1938 she sued Republic Pictures for their 1936 film Frankie and Johnny. After Baker lost !
the suit, Republic Pictures claimed ownership of the story. Frankie Baker became sick later in life and !
also suffered from mental illness. She was placed in the East Oregon Hospital where she died. Frankie !
Baker and Allen Britt's family did not benefit from the popularity of the story "Frankie and Johnny." !
University of Kentucky Libraries!
page 81 of 83
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October 31, 1949!
page 82 of 83
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page 83 of 83

st. louis in song the big 3

Transcription

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