Frankie and Johnny 1
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-04-24

Day 39 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series  (folksongindex.com)

The Frankie and Johnny song is of later development (after Frankie and Albert), with notes of violence and flashes of exasperation.

In many colleges are groups who sing Frankie songs in ragtime manner, with lackadaisical verses. As our American culture  advances, it may be that classes will take up the Frankie songs as seriously as a play by Moliere or  a Restoration comedy or the Provencal ballads of France. It may be said that the Frankie songs,  at best, are an American parallel of certain European ballads of low life, that are rendered by important musical artists from the Continent for enthusiastic audiences in Carnegie Hall, New York, or  Orchestra Hall, Chicago.

Some day, perhaps, we may arrive at a better common understanding of our own art resources and how to use them. While the Frankie story deals with crime, violence,  murder, adultery, its percentage in these respects is a good deal less than in the average grand opera.