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One of the better known old time versions (aside from the Jimmie Rodgers recording) is ?Leaving Home? by Charlie Poole. I found it interesting how closely his lyrics follow the Leighton Brothers version. I'd love to know where he learned it (from an earlier recording or perhaps straight from the sheet music) but searching found nothing.
I?d be curious to hear others favorite Leadbelly versions, it seems he recorded it a handful of times.
Several of these topical songs share elements in common in their phraseology and imagery, this is true also of Frankie And Albert (Laws I 3) ? known also as Frankie And Johnny. The original event described in this narrative relates to a shooting in St. Louis on 15 October 1899. Under the former title there were two late 1920s commercial recordings by Mississippi songsters: Frankie by Mississippi John Hurt (OKeh 8560), in 1928; and Frankie And Albert by Charlie Patton (Paramount 13110), in 1929. A two-part Texas version entitled Frankie And Johnny, by Nick Nichols, was recorded in Dallas in 1929 (Columbia 2071-D). Like the facts behind Ella Speed, Leadbelly claimed to know something of the events described in this topical murder song, which he performed with two distinct accompaniments. These were his conventional strumming on the guitar, or with a knife or slider, a playing technique popular in the Shreveport area with black stylists such as the previously mentioned Oscar Woods.During the first phase of recording his oeuvre for the Lomaxes, Huddie seems to have developed a technique of introducing spoken interjections and explanations into his performances. This can best be observed by comparing his earliest (1933-1934) performances of both Ella Speed and Frankie and Albert (in which the spoken passages do not occur) and his 1935 recordings of these ballads. Leadbelly used this technique in several categories of his songs.