Frankie and Johnny

[ E ]

Frankie and Johnny were lovers.
Oh, my good God, how they loved.
Swore to be true to each other
Just as true as the stars above.
	He was her man,
	But he done her wrong.

Frankie and Johnny got married.
They were happy as everyone knows
Till Frankie gave Johnny some money
To buy him some new clothes.
	He was her man
	But he done her wrong.

Johnny went down to the cat-house,
House with only two doors,
Spent all of Frankie's money
On the [cunts] and the parlor [whores] **Here the correspondent has carefully inserted dashes, seemingly one for each letter of the forbidden word.¯
	He was her man
	But he done her wrong.

Frankie went down to the corner
To get her a cool glass of beer.
She says, "Mister Bartender,
Has my lovin' man been here?"
	"Been her and gone,
	'Bout an hour ago."

"Ain't gonna tell you no story.
Ain't gonna tell you no lie,
Johnny went down to the cat-j\house
To call on Nellie Bly.
	If he's your man,
	He's a-doin' you wrong."

Frankie went down to the cat-house.
She didn't go there for fun.
Under her blue gingham apron
Was a Colt steel 44 gun,
	Lookin' for her man,
	What done her wrong.

Frankie, she went to the cat-house
Looked in the window so high.
There she saw her Johnny
In bed with Nellie Bly.
	He was her man,
	But he done her wrong.

Frankie bust into the cat-house,
Pistol in her hand,
"Stand back, ye [whores], on yer -------,
I'm a-lookin' for my man,	
	And I'll get him too,
	The son of a [bitch].

Johnny, he ran down the back stairs,
Hollerin', "Honey, don't shoot!"
But Frankie cut loose with her forty-four
And the gun went root-ta-toot-toot!
	She shot her man
	What done her wrong.

"Turn me over easy.
Turn me over slow.
Turn me over easy
That bullet hurts me so.
	I was her man,
	But I done her wrong."

Then came the funeral procession,
Moving easy and slow.
Frankie, she sat by the window
And watched the mourners go
	To bury her man
	What done her wrong.

"Rubber-tired buggy,
Double-seated hack
Take my Johnny to the cemetary
But bring his [pecker] back,
	Best part of the man
	What done me wrong."

Frankie, she sits in her parlor
Tellin' her sister Fan,
"Whatever you do, don't never
Marry no gamblin' man.
	[God damn] their souls.
	They'll do you wrong."

So if you should ever get married,
Don't think it's all fun.
Remember the tale of Frankie,
How she used her forty-four gun
	To shoot her man
	What done her wrong.

But if you marry a sportin' woman,
Be sure you treat her right.
Kick her [ass] out every morning,
Take her money every night,
	The [God damn cunt],
	She's a-doin' you wrong.

Donald C. Foster of Binghamton, New York, writing to Robert W. Gordon on April 14, 1925, noted hearing this for the first time in Ithaca, New York, in 1912 or 1913, sung by a fellow Cornell student in the back room of a local saloon. 
"The singer was a student whose name I can't remember, but he was a Southerner and if I am not mistaken a Texan.  The song was sung to an accompaniment of improvised chords on a piano and made such a hit that the singer was required to oblige with an encore -- and sang the whole thing through again!"  
Since that time, Foster wrote, he had heard other versions, including "three or four verses which tell of the arrest, trial and execution of Frankie via the electric chair, evidently late additions."  Foster's text is now Number 1020 in the Gordon "Inferno" at the Library of Congress' Archive of American Folk Culture.
The Canfield Collection has a letter written in 1926 offering a few stanzas of this ballad known "for years."
By 1920, wrote another of Hubert Canfield's correspondents, there were no less than 81 stanzas current at the University of Montana.