“She shot her man, ‘cause he was doin’ her wrong”

Not in this case Frankie and Johnny, but Sarah Gray and William Taylor, in a song collected in Lincolnshire by the Australian composer Percy Grainger. The singer was a seventy-five year old Joseph Taylor, one of the finest English traditional singers ever recorded. Unusually for someone of his generation, we know just how good a singer Joseph Taylor was, as Grainger made cylinder recordings of him in 1908 which still survive today. His recording of this song is reproduced on Volume 6 of the Topic CD series Voice of the People.

Six For Gold