Arch and Gordon (Careless Love parody)- W.C. Handy (KY) c.1896
[From: "Father Of The Blues: An Autobiography" by W. C. Handy, 1941. The following excerpt of the parody "Arch and Gordon" from Handy's autobiography gives one stanza and most of another one. This is the earliest version with the "careless love" refrain.
The details of the double homicide that "Arch and Gordon" was based on were provided by Cohen:
On Tuesday, April 30, 1895, Gordon surprised his wife and Arch Brown in flagrante delicto— specifically, in bed at Lucy Smith's establishment. Gordon shot several times, wounding Brown in the left arm. Brown rolled out of and headed for the dresser Gordon emptied his pistol into Brown, and Brown shot Gordon twice. Gordon grabbed Brown's gun and shot him with that. Then Gordon shot his wife, who had attacked him. She stumbled out the door and died on the back porch. Police apprehended Gordon a few blocks away. Gordon was tried and convicted of justifiable homicide and freed on May 9. Folklorist D. K. Wilgus collected two fragmentary versions of the ballad in Kentucky in the 1950s, but it has not turned up elsewhere. [American Folk Songs: A Regional Encyclopedia; Norman Cohen - 2008]
Arch and Gordon - collected in 1956 from Mrs. Wills Cline; printed 1960 in Kentucky Folklore Record.
When Archie went to Louisville,
Not thinking he would be killed
Arch say Gordon I didn't mean no harm,
When Gordon shot him in his right arm
When Gordon made his first shot,
O''er behind the bed Arch did drop.
Hush now Guvnor, don't you cry,
you know your son Arch has to die.
You see what sportin' life has done,
it has killed Guvnor Brown's only son."
Here's Handy's abbreviated text. The excerpt is from his 1941 autobiography.
R. Matteson 2017]
"It was based on the Careless Love melody that I had played first in Bessemer in 1892 and that had since become popular all over the South. In Henderson I was told that the words of Careless Love were based on a tragedy in a local family, and one night a gentleman of that city's tobacco-planter aristocracy requested our band to play and sing this folk melody, using the following words:
You see what Careless Love has done,
You see what Careless Love has done
You see what Careless Love has done,
It killed the Governor's only son.
We did our best with these lines and then went into the second stanza:
Poor Archie didn't mean no harm,
Poor Archie didn't mean no harm,
Poor Archie didn't mean no harm
-But there the song ended. The police stepped in and stopped us. The song, they said, was a reflection on two prominent families. Careless Love had too beautiful a melody to be lost or neglected, however, and I was determined to preserve it.