Letters from Radio Quotidia the Blues 3

Welcome to Radio Quotidia, episode 3 of The Blues, 12 minutes of music and musings. Quentin Bega here at the helm. I’m broadcasting from our studio located somewhere in the depths of Quotidia inside a digital onion. My aim to keep you entertained for a while. The theme this month is the blues.

But today, it is turned blood-red with two tales of murder inflicted by one intimate partner on the other. Found in various music genres, the murder ballad horrifies and fascinates equally. The horror is rooted in our abhorrence of the act that cannot be taken back- extinguishing a human life for whatever reason. The fascination often arises from our recognition that there but for the grace of God go I. Who among us has not seen red at a real or perceived betrayal of one we loved or trusted implicitly?

In early December 1966 I saw Jimi Hendrix on the popular UK music show, Ready Steady Go performing Hey Joe. Hendrix was in a different league to the guitar-slingers of the time: an exotic black god dressed in plumage that would make a troupe of tropical parrots dowdy in comparison. His piratical swagger and pyrotechnical display of blazing fretboard magic ensured that all the British rock establishment came to pay homage. Here’s my version now, which makes no attempt to duplicate Hendrix’s guitar lines but rather adopts a more country blues vibe: [insert song]

Overwhelmingly, it’s men who are the killers in this scenario, but they don’t have a monopoly on such murders. The femme fatale is a literary trope- developed by men I would suspect- to shift the blame of the consequences of amorous entanglements onto the woman who uses her charms which are really magical spells to entrap her male victim into making disastrous choices. However, that is a bit of a digression. The song I wish to cover next depicts a murder ignited by a jealous rage. It has a long history having been recorded by at least 256 artists since the early 20^th Century according to my muse, Wikipedia.

I refer to Frankie and Johnny. 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 a 22-year-old woman, shot her 17-year-old lover Allen Britt in the abdomen. Britt had just returned from a cakewalk at a local dance hall, where he and another woman, Nelly Bly, 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-defence; she was acquitted and died in a Portland, Oregon mental institution in 1952.

Other instances of this particular scenario exist, of course, where the killer receives the penalty that has been around since the Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu was promulgated some four thousand years ago where, if you take someone’s life, you forfeit yours. I listened to a few of the more popular of the 256 recordings of the song and IMHO the version recorded by Jimmie Rodgers in 1929 is by far and away the best. I read somewhere that Bonnie Parker of Bonnie and Clyde fame had all his records- figures! Here I try to keep close to the spirit of the Jimmie Rodgers original by utilising banjo, fiddle, guitars, and vocals in a bluegrass-country blues fusion, but I don’t, and count yourselves lucky here, attempt to recreate the yodelling! [insert song]

Next week, you can thank your lucky stars that you are not like the protagonist of the first song on offer where he laments, if it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all. And if you find yourself saying, Snap! My commiserations. The second song is another country blues composition. And if, like the title, you tell me you’re sitting on top of the world– commiserations likewise. To conclude and to give you pause should your mood be especially dire, may I recommend Dorothy Parker’s poem Resume,  Razors pain you;/Rivers are damp;/Acids stain you;/And drugs cause cramp./ Guns aren’t lawful;/Nooses give;/Gas smells awful;/You might as well live.//

Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone- Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 9 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.