Knoxville Girl: A Song History

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"Knoxville Girl" is the best-known American form of a murder ballad that folklorists catalogue as Laws P35 and Roud 263, sung on both sides of the Atlantic under such titles as "The Wexford Girl," "The Oxford Girl," "The Lexington Girl" and "The Cruel Miller."[1] Its ancestor is a long English broadside, "The Berkshire Tragedy, or The Wittam Miller." The Ballad Index cites a Bodleian Library copy estimated to date from around 1700, though other writers place the text in the mid-18th century.[1][2] The story has been tied to more than one real crime. Frank Purslow pointed to a Herefordshire murder of 1650, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger cited an American claim about a man hanged at Reading in 1744, and Paul Slade traces an earlier broadside, "The Bloody Miller," to a Shropshire killing of 1683.[2][3] Steve Roud cautions that none of these broadsides can be shown to be literally true.[2] An Ozark tradition links the song to an 1892 murder in Missouri, but the ballad is clearly older.[1]

Nineteenth-century photograph looking across a river toward the town of Knoxville, Tennessee

“View of Knoxville, Tenn., from the slope of Fort Dickerson,” photograph, 1864. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.

Roud also notes that the song went through more than ordinary folk change, describing "deliberate re-composition, apparently on more than one occasion."[2] Under the Knoxville title it was recorded by Arthur Tanner (Silvertone, 1926; Columbia, 1927) and by Lester McFarland and Robert Gardner (Brunswick, 1927).[1] A version called "Maxwell Girl" was recorded at Richmond, Indiana, in 1927.[1][2] The Blue Sky Boys recorded "Story of the Knoxville Girl" in 1937 or 1938 (sources differ), and the Cope Brothers recorded it for King in 1947.[1][3]

The Louvin Brothers, then recording for Capitol, cut the song in 1956 for their album Tragic Songs of Life.[3][4] Paul Slade hears the Blue Sky Boys' version behind their arrangement.[3] Issued as a single, the Louvins' "Knoxville Girl" became a moderate country hit early in 1959.[4]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "The Wexford Girl (The Oxford, Lexington, or Knoxville Girl; The Cruel Miller) [Laws P35]".
  2. Mainly Norfolk: "The Miller's Apprentice / The Oxford Tragedy / The Oxford Girl / Wexford Town (Roud 263; Laws P35)".
  3. Paul Slade, PlanetSlade: "Murder Ballads: Knoxville Girl".
  4. WMKY (Morehead State Public Radio): "Louvin Brothers".