“Frankie and Albert” or “Frankie and Johnny” is the title of a well-known American folksong that has its origins in a true crime story from St. Louis in 1899. The song tells the story of a woman, Frankie, who finds her lover, Johnny, with another woman and shoots him dead. In the song, Frankie is arrested, and in some versions, she is executed by hanging or electric chair.
“Frankie” was Frankie Baker, and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat the day after the shooting would report “Johnny’s” real name as Allen Britt. Britt was also called “Albert,” and early variations of the song included the name “Albert.” Baker was twenty-two and Britt was seventeen at the time of the lovers’ steamy relationship, quarrel, and his murder. Both were reportedly engaged in work in the red-light district of St. Louis, including nightclub performances, with Britt playing ragtime piano and Baker known for performing the popular cakewalk dance. She was allegedly also involved in prostitution, with Britt as her pimp.
The song, “Frankie and Johnny,” is generally thought to have been derived from Frankie Baker’s (shown above) killing of Albert Britt in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1899. Baker is said to have shot Britt in a jealous rage. Although Baker was found by a jury to have acted in self defense, she was haunted for the rest of her life by the popularity of the song about the killing and ended her life in an insane asylum. (Bettmann/Corbis)
Britt was allegedly involved with another woman named Alice Pryar (alternately spelled “Pryor”) while he was in the relationship with Baker. Early versions of the song refer to “Alice Pry,” which was eventually changed to “Nellie Bly.” Baker’s discovery of Britt with the other woman spurred the shooting. Baker shot Britt on October 15, 1899, sometime between 2 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. after a violent quarrel that spilled out of the rooming house and into the public street. According to the song, Frankie shot Albert with a .44, but in reality, she used a .32. News reports recount that Britt did not die from wounds resulting from the shooting until October 19, 1899. Many versions of the song refer to the victim as his parents’ only son, and according to lore, the title may have been changed from “Frankie and Albert” to “Frankie and Johnny” because of the family’s grief over having their son remembered in such a way.
Film director John Huston wrote a play in 1930 and reportedly interviewed Richard Clay, who had been Britt’s and Baker’s neighbor and spent Britt’s last hours with him. According to Clay, Baker had discovered Britt with Pryar and confronted him in public. When Britt refused to go home with her, Baker went back to her room alone, and Britt came in later that night, confessing that he had spent the time with Pryar and was leaving Baker for good to be with her. According to Clay, the altercation began when Baker set out to find and confront Pryar. According to Baker’s statement, she knew Britt was with Pryar, but was at home asleep when he returned. In her version of the event, Britt was the aggressor, threatening to throw a lamp at her and opening his knife as if to cut her. Claiming ownership of the lodging and declaring her intention to protect herself and her home, Baker reached under the pillow and, using the gun she kept there, shot him. She also reported that Britt had beaten her some nights before the shooting (Slade 2013).
The situation began to garner public attention when Britt staggered from Baker’s residence to his mother’s home on the same street. According to Clay, when he collapsed in front of her house, his mother screamed, “Frankie’s shot [Allen]!” It was not long before the entire neighborhood knew what had happened. Conjecture filled in the facts that were unknown. Britt died on October 19, and Baker went to trial on November 13, 1899. In a jury trial, it was determined that her actions were justifiable homicide in self-defense.
The song became popular in the saloons in African American neighborhoods around St. Louis very soon after the shooting—some accounts state that a ballad about the tragedy was being sold on St. Louis street corners within twenty-four hours of the incident, and all agree that the song was gaining in popularity before Britt died. The song would haunt Frankie Baker for the rest of her life. Baker reported that people would sing the song when they saw her on the St. Louis streets. To get away from “the constant annoyance and humiliation,” Baker left St. Louis in 1901 for Omaha, Nebraska. The song had already made its way there, so Baker relocated again. In her later years, Baker stated publicly that she could never get away from the “Frankie” of the song. She moved to Portland, Oregon, in an effort to escape the community that continued to remind her of the incident. Still, according to Baker, “It never died down” (Oswald and Kurre 1975).
As the song’s popularity grew, “Frankie and Johnny” began to be noticed by Hollywood, and in 1933, Republic Pictures released the movie She Done Him Wrong starring Mae West and Cary Grant. Recognizing her life on film, Baker sued Republic for $200,000 in damages and lost, unable to convince an all-white jury that the white characters were acting out part of her life. The public, however, made the connection, and according to Baker she was hounded by reporters and others seeking autographs and information.
Baker again sued Republic Pictures in 1942, after the studio released the 1936 film “Frankie and Johnnie” starring Helen Morgan as Frankie and Chester Morris as Johnnie. The film was screened in court, but again, the all-white male jury did not make the connection between the drama on screen and the tragedy in Baker’s real life. She lost in court again. Testimony during the trial contributed to the contradictions regarding the song’s origins. An authority on folklore and popular American music, Sigmund Spaeth, had previously published statements confirming that the ballad “Frankie and Johnny” had originated in St. Louis and was based on the relationship between Baker and Britt. On the stand, he claimed that the song was not from St. Louis and had no connection to Baker.
According to some sources, the story behind the song is that of Frances “Frankie” Stewart Silver who killed her husband Charles in North Carolina in 1832. Silver was executed for the murder.
Folk music scholars have reported versions of the song as early as 1830, with variations appearing in 1863 and claims that it was widespread in 1888. The strongest support for such claims comes from Rusty David, a researcher who suggests that the events that inspired the song happened sometime between 1865 and 1870 in the same area of St. Louis as Britt’s murder, and that the earlier song was revised to fit the more recent events. However, the familiar version does not appear in print prior to 1925, supporting the research of other scholars who assert that it is not as old as some believe it to be.
Although the first versions of the song began to appear quickly after the murder, the first variation, “Frankie Killed Allen,” is credited to Bill Dooley, a songwriter and singer from St. Louis. In 1904, Hughie Cannon, who became known for “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey,” copyrighted a version of the Frankie and Johnny story titled “He Done Me Wrong.” Another version of the song appeared in 1908 with the title “Bill You Done Me Wrong,” but the variation with lyrics most similar to modern versions was published in 1912 as “Frankie and Johnny” by brothers Bert and Frank Leighton and Ren Shields.
The lyrics “Frankie and Johnny were lovers” were first published in Dorothy Scarborough’s On the Trail of Negro Folksongs in 1925. Since that time, there have been more than 200 versions of the song recorded, crossing genres from blues to country to pop. In addition to variations of the song, Frankie and Johnny’s relationship has been subject matter for no fewer than twenty stage and screen performances, either as the feature story or embedded in a larger work.
Unlike the Frankie of the song, Baker did not die of hanging as a sentence for the shooting, but she was never able to escape the notoriety gained from the song and the events that inspired it. Baker died in 1950 in an Oregon state hospital for the insane at the age of seventy-three.
Joni L. Johnson Williams
See also Ballad; Blues as Folklore; Silver, Frankie; Stagolee
Further Reading
“Frankie Baker: He Done Her Wrong.” 2010. Murder by Gaslight website. March 21. http://www.murderbygaslight.com/2010/03/he-done-her-wrong.html. Accessed June 17, 2015.
Huston, John, and Miguel Covarrubias. 2015. Frankie and Johnny. Mineola, NY: Dover.
Oswald, Charles J., and Richard Kurre. 1975. “The Evolution of a Folk Song.” Cincinnati Inquirer (July 20): 157.
Slade, Paul. 2013. “It’s a Frame-up: Frankie & Johnny.” PlanetSlade website. http://www.planetslade.com/frankie-and-johnny.html. Accessed June 10, 2015.
Slade, Paul. 2015. Unprepared to Die: America’s Greatest Murder Ballads and the True Crime Stories That Inspired Them. London: Soundcheck Books.
York, Jake. 2005. Murder Ballads. Denver: Elixir Press.