 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(July 2016) |
"Frankie and Johnny" (sometimes spelled "Frankie and Johnnie"; also known as "Frankie and Albert", "Frankie's Man", "Johnny", or just "Frankie") is a murder ballad, a traditional American popular song. It tells the story of a woman, Frankie, who finds her man Johnny making love to another woman and shoots him dead. Frankie is then arrested; in some versions of the song she is also executed.
The song was inspired by one or more actual murders. One of these took place in an apartment building located at 212 Targee Street in St. Louis, Missouri, at 2:00 on the morning of October 15, 1899. Frankie Baker (1876 –1952), [1] a 22-year-old woman, shot her 17-year-old lover Allen (also known as "Albert") Britt in the abdomen. Britt had just returned from a cakewalk at a local dance hall, where he and another woman, Nelly Bly (also known as "Alice Pryor" and no relation to the pioneering reporter who adopted the pseudonym Nellie Bly or Stephen Foster's Nelly Bly), had won a prize in a slow-dancing contest. Britt died of his wounds four days later at the City Hospital. [2] [3] [4] 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.[ citation needed ]
In 1899, popular St Louis balladeer Bill Dooley composed "Frankie Killed Allen" shortly after the Baker murder case. [5] The first published version of the music to "Frankie and Johnny" appeared in 1904, credited to and copyrighted by Hughie Cannon, the composer of "Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey"; the piece, a variant version of whose melody is sung today, was titled "He Done Me Wrong" and subtitled "Death of Bill Bailey". [6]
The song has also been linked to Frances "Frankie" Stewart Silver, convicted in 1832 of murdering her husband Charles Silver in Burke County, North Carolina. Unlike Frankie Baker, Silver was executed. [3] [7]
Another variant of the melody, with words and music credited to Frank and Bert Leighton, appeared in 1908 under the title "Bill You Done Me Wrong"; this song was republished in 1912 as "Frankie and Johnny", this time with the words that appear in modern folk variations:
Frankie and Johnny were sweethearts
They had a quarrel one day
Johnny he vowed that he would leave her
Said he was going away
He's never coming home
Also:
Frankie took aim with her forty-four
Three times with a rooty-toot-toot
The 1912 "Frankie and Johnny" by the Leighton Brothers and Ren Shields also identifies "Nellie Bly" as the new girl to whom Johnny has given his heart. What has come to be the traditional version of the melody was also published in 1912, as the verse to the song "You're My Baby", with music is attributed to Nat. D. Ayer. [8]
The familiar "Frankie and Johnny were lovers" lyrics first appeared (as "Frankie and Albert") in On the Trail of Negro Folksongs by Dorothy Scarborough, published in 1925; a similar version with the "Frankie and Johnny" names appeared in 1927 in Carl Sandburg's The American Songbag . [9]
Several students of folk music have asserted that the song long predates the earliest published versions; according to Leonard Feather in his Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz [10] it was sung at the Siege of Vicksburg (1863) during the American Civil War [11] and Sandburg said it was widespread before 1888, while John Jacob Niles reported that it emerged before 1830. [3] The fact, however, that the familiar version did not appear in print before 1925 is "strange indeed for such an allegedly old and well-known song", according to music historian James J. Fuld, who suggests that it "is not so ancient as some of the folk-song writers would have one believe." [12]
| "Frankie and Johnny" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Brook Benton | ||||
| from the album The Boll Weevil Song and 11 Other Great Hits | ||||
| B-side | "It's Just a House Without You" | |||
| Released | August 1961 | |||
| Recorded | July 1961 | |||
| Genre | Pop, R&B | |||
| Length | 2:27 | |||
| Label | Mercury | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Traditional, arranged by Brook Benton | |||
| Producer(s) | Shelby Singleton | |||
| Brook Benton singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
| "Frankie and Johnny" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Sam Cooke | ||||
| B-side | "Cool Train" | |||
| Released | July 1963 | |||
| Recorded | 1963 | |||
| Genre | R&B | |||
| Length | 2:38 | |||
| Label | RCA Victor | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Traditional, arranged by Brook Benton | |||
| Producer(s) | Shelby Singleton | |||
| Sam Cooke singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
At least 256 recordings of "Frankie and Johnny" have been made since the early 20th century. The very first recording was made in London in 1912 by American singer Gene Greene. [13] Later singers include:
A 1966 recording by Elvis Presley became a gold record as the title song of a Presley movie.
The earliest country recording of a Frankie song is Ernest Thompson's 1924 Columbia recording of "Frankie Baker", which is listed in Tony Russell's Country Music Records A Discography, 1921-1942, Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0195366211. Thompson was a blind street singer from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
As a jazz standard it has also been recorded by numerous bands and instrumentalists including Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Count Basie, Bunny Berigan, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Ray Brown (musician), and Benny Goodman. Champion Jack Dupree set his version in New Orleans, retitling it "Rampart and Dumaine".
Ace Cannon recorded an instrumental version for his 1994 album Entertainer.
| "Frankie's Man, Johnny" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Johnny Cash | ||||
| A-side | "Frankie's Man, Johnny" "You Dreamer You" | |||
| Released | 1959 | |||
| Genre | Country | |||
| Label | Columbia 4-41371 | |||
| Songwriter(s) | traditional, arr. Johnny Cash [14] | |||
| Johnny Cash singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Music video | ||||
| "Frankie's Man, Johnny" (audio only, mono) "Frankie's Man, Johnny" (audio only, stereo) on YouTube | ||||
| "Frankie and Johnny" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Single by Elvis Presley | ||||
| B-side | "Please Don't Stop Loving Me" | |||
| Released | March 1, 1966 | |||
| Recorded | May 14, 1965 | |||
| Studio | Radio Recorders, Hollywood | |||
| Genre | Rock and roll | |||
| Label | RCA | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Alex Gottlieb/Fred Karger/Ben Weisman | |||
| Elvis Presley singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
Johnny Cash released this song under the title "Frankie's Man, Johnny" as his third Columbia single [15] (Columbia 4-41371, with "You Dreamer You" on the opposite side) [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] in April 1959. [16]
"Frankie's Man, Johnny" reached #9 on the Billboard country chart [21] and #57 on the Hot 100., [15] [22] while "You Dreamer You" made it to #13 on the country chart [23] and didn't enter the Hot 100.
| Chart (1959) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| US Hot Country Songs ( Billboard ) [24] | 9 |
| US Billboard Hot 100 [25] | 57 |
| | This section needs additional citations for verification .(March 2013) |
The story of Frankie and Johnny has been the inspiration for several films, including Her Man (1930, starring Helen Twelvetrees), Frankie and Johnny (1936, starring Helen Morgan), and Frankie and Johnny (1966, starring Elvis Presley). Terrence McNally's 1987 play, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune , was adapted for a 1991 film titled Frankie and Johnny starring Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer.
In 1930, director and actor John Huston wrote and produced a puppet play titled Frankie and Johnnie based on the Frankie Baker case. One of Huston's main sources was his interview with Baker and Britt's neighbor Richard Clay. [26] [27]
Comedian Harry Langdon performed the song in his 1930 short The Fighting Parson, in a variant on his vaudeville routine originally performed in blackface. Mae West inserted her ballad into her successful Broadway play Diamond Lil. West sang the ballad again in her 1933 Paramount film She Done Him Wrong , which takes its title from the refrain, substituting genders. She also sang it many years later (1978) on the CBS television special Back Lot U.S.A. The song was used in the 1932 film Red-Headed Woman , in a scene where actress Jean Harlow's character is drinking and lamenting having been jilted by her married lover. It is also sung by a river boat crew in Bed of Roses , a film released the following year. Yvonne De Carlo sings the song while masquerading as an opera singer in the 1949 film The Gal Who Took the West . Moira Kelly sings it in the 1996 film Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story .
The 1933 pre-Code film Arizona to Broadway features drag performer Gene Malin singing this song as he portrays Ray Best, a female impersonator and Mae West type. [28] Malin's performance is considered one of the earliest performances, if not the earliest, of a female impersonator on film. [29] [30]
A dazzling musical number from the 1956 MGM film Meet Me in Las Vegas featured Cyd Charisse and dancer John Brascia acting out the roles of Frankie and Johnny while Sammy Davis Jr. sang the song. Mia Farrow, in the role of Jacqueline De Bellefort, sang/hummed a drunken rendition of the song in the 1978 version of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile , just before she attempts to shoot her former lover, Simon Doyle, played by Simon MacCorkindale.
Noah Baumbach's 1997 film Highball features a scene where this song is sung as a karaoke tune.
The climax of Robert Altman's 2006 film A Prairie Home Companion is Lindsay Lohan's rendition of the song with quasi-improvisatory lyrics by Garrison Keillor.
The tune is often used for comic effect in animated cartoon shorts, such as the 1932 Disney cartoon The Klondike Kid (starring Mickey Mouse) and various ones produced by Warner Bros. or MGM in the 1940s and 1950s, as a theme or leitmotif for a meretricious or zaftig woman. The song was the basis of a 1951 UPA cartoon Rooty Toot Toot , directed by John Hubley. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject.
The song's intro is featured in the 1929 film Weary River . It is sung by the main character Jerry Larrabee played by Richard Barthelmess. The character is a gangster reformed by music. Weary River costars Betty Compson, who played Alice Gray, the faithful sweetheart of Larrabee, who did not like him singing Frankie and Johnny. A remarkable feature of this film is part silent film and part talkie. The film which was directed by Frank Lloyd, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Directing.
"Frankie and Johnnie" is parodied in act two, scene five of E. E. Cummings' 1927 play Him . [31]
In Never Kick a Woman , a Popeye the Sailor cartoon short released by Fleischer Studios on August 30, 1936, the song plays in the background when a sexy female boxer, based on film star Mae West, appears and attempts to steal Popeye away from Olive Oyl.
In Robert A. Heinlein's 1954 science fiction novel The Star Beast , Mr Kiku sings lyrics from Frankie and Johnny in three instances, the final being in the penultimate paragraph--- "This story has no moral, this story has no end. This story only goes to show that there ain't no good in men."
Chicago's Redmoon Theater Company presented an adaptation of the Frankie and Johnny story at Steppenwolf Theater in 1997. [32] The soundtrack was composed by Michael Zerang and performed by Fred Armisen, Fred Lonberg-Holm, and Jeremy Ruthrauff. [33]
The song was sung in a saloon by a leading lady in an episode of the TV show Cheyenne .
In The Beverly Hillbillies episode “The Clampetts Go Hollywood,” Granny sings a rendition of Frankie and Johnny.”
The song is briefly referenced in the Fantastic Four episode "When Calls Galactus", in reference to the characters of Frankie Raye and Johnny Storm.
Frankie's Man, Johnny You Dreamer You 41371.
"Mack the Knife" or "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their 1928 music drama The Threepenny Opera. The song tells of a knife-wielding criminal of the London underworld from the musical named Macheath, the "Mack the Knife" of the title.
Albert Louis Hammond OBE is a British-Gibraltarian singer, songwriter and record producer. A prolific songwriter, he also collaborated with other songwriters such as Mike Hazlewood, John Bettis, Hal David, Diane Warren, Holly Knight and Carole Bayer Sager. Hammond's son Albert Hammond Jr. is a guitarist in American rock band the Strokes.
"Danny Boy" is a song with lyrics written by English lawyer Frederic Weatherly in 1910, and set to the traditional Irish melody of "Londonderry Air" in 1913.
Since its inception in 1962, the James Bond film series from Eon Productions has featured many musical compositions, many of which are now considered classic pieces of British film music. The best known piece is the "James Bond Theme" composed by Monty Norman. Other instrumentals, such as "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", and various songs performed by British or American artists such as Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger", Nancy Sinatra's "You Only Live Twice", Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die", Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better", Sheena Easton's "For Your Eyes Only", Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill", Tina Turner's "GoldenEye" also become identified with the series.
"You're All I Need to Get By" is a song recorded by the American R&B/soul duo Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell and released on Motown Records' Tamla label in 1968. It was the basis for the 1995 single "I'll Be There for You/You're All I Need to Get By" from Method Man and Mary J. Blige.
"Blues in the Night" is a popular blues song which has become a pop standard and is generally considered to be part of the Great American Songbook. The music was written by Harold Arlen, the lyrics by Johnny Mercer, for a 1941 film begun with the working title Hot Nocturne, but finally released as Blues in the Night. The song is sung in the film by William Gillespie.
"Sixteen Tons" is a song written by Merle Travis about a coal miner, based on life in the mines of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. Travis first recorded the song at the Radio Recorders Studio B in Hollywood, California, on August 8, 1946. Cliffie Stone played bass on the recording. It was first released in July 1947 by Capitol on Travis's album Folk Songs of the Hills. The song became a gold record.
"Hurt" is a song by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails from its second studio album, The Downward Spiral (1994), written by Trent Reznor. It was released on April 17, 1995, as a promotional single from the album. The song received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Song in 1996. In 2020, Kerrang and Billboard ranked the song number two and number three, respectively, on their lists of the greatest Nine Inch Nails songs.
"(Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend" is a cowboy-styled country/western song written in 1948 by American songwriter, film and television actor Stan Jones.
"I Walk the Line" is a song written and recorded in 1956 by Johnny Cash. After three attempts with moderate chart ratings, it became Cash's first #1 hit on the Billboard charts, eventually reaching #17 on the US pop charts.
"Can't Take My Eyes Off You" is a 1967 song written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio, and first recorded and released as a single by Gaudio's Four Seasons bandmate Frankie Valli. The song was among his biggest hits, earning a gold record and reaching No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 for a week, making it Valli's biggest solo hit until he hit No. 1 in 1975 with "My Eyes Adored You".
"The Battle of New Orleans" is a song written by Jimmy Driftwood. The song describes the Battle of New Orleans from the perspective of an American soldier; the song tells the tale of the battle with a light tone and provides a rather comical version of what actually happened at the battle. It has been recorded by many artists, but the singer most often associated with this song is Johnny Horton. His version scored number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959. Billboard ranked it as the No. 1 song for 1959, it was very popular with teenagers in the late 1950s/early 1960s in an era mostly dominated by rock and roll music.
"My Eyes Adored You" is a 1974 song written by Bob Crewe and Kenny Nolan. It was originally recorded by The Four Seasons in early 1974. After the Motown label balked at the idea of releasing it, the recording was sold to lead singer Frankie Valli for $4000. After rejections by Capitol and Atlantic Records, Valli succeeded in getting the recording released on Private Stock Records, but the owner/founder of the label, Larry Uttal, wanted only Valli's name on the label. It is from the album Closeup. The single was released in the US in November 1974 and topped the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1975. "My Eyes Adored You" also went to number 2 on the Easy Listening chart. Billboard ranked it as the No. 5 song for 1975.
"When Something Is Wrong with My Baby" is a classic hit song, a soul ballad, written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter. It was first released in 1967 by Sam & Dave on Stax Records.
"That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day)" is a 1949 popular song with music by Beasley Smith and words by Haven Gillespie.
"Somewhere", sometimes referred to as "Somewhere (There's a Place for Us)" or simply "There's a Place for Us", is a song from the 1957 Broadway musical West Side Story that was made into films in 1961 and 2021. The music is composed by Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
"You Dreamer You" is a song written and originally recorded by Johnny Cash.
"The Sons of Katie Elder" is the theme song for the 1965 Paramount western of the same name starring John Wayne. It was written by Ernie Sheldon (words) and Elmer Bernstein (music).
"Mister Garfield" is a traditional song sometimes credited to Ramblin' Jack Elliott.
Azure-Te is a blues ballad written in 1952 by lyricist Donald E. Wolf for a Wild Bill Davis tune that reached number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in September 1952 when covered by Frank Sinatra.
The full text of two variations of "Frankie and Johnny" at Wikisource
