I’m pretty fond of Rodgers and Hart’s To Keep My Love Alive, from their Broadway adaptation of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee. The setup: “I married many men,/ A ton of them,/ And yet I was untrue to none of them/ Because I bumped off every one of them/ To keep my love alive.” Singer then goes on to describe her string of murders. “Sir Thomas had insomnia/He couldn’t sleep at night./ I bought a little arsenic./ He’s sleeping now all right.”

Finally, one of the great jazz singer Mose Allison’s best songs is Parchman Farm, in which a prisoner complains that he’s “sittin’ over here on Parchman (Prison) Farm but I didn’t do anybody any harm.” He continues to elaborate on that theme — his innocence — until the splendidly ironic last two lines of the lament: “I’m gonna be here for the rest of my life, here on the Farm for my natural born life/ … An’ all I ever did was shoot my wife.”

The story is that Allison visited a friend banished to the Louisiana Farm and removed the song from his repertoire, no longer finding it amusing.

And Jacqueline, I’ll add Frankie and Johnny to the MS Playlist. Thanks!

Kate Stine
Editor in chief

Jacqueline Seewald
THE INFERNO COLLECTION
Five Star/Gale

As for the playlist, well, a Jersey girl predictably has her pick from the Springsteen catalog, including nearly all of the Nebraska album (“Johnny 99 ,” “Highway Patrolman,” as well as the title track.) For obvious reasons, my favorite is “Meeting Across the River,” “Born to Run”’s B-side, about a petty criminal heading out for a big score–after hocking his girlfriend’s radio! It even spawned a 2005 book: “Meeting Across the River: Stories Inspired by the Haunting Bruce Springsteen Song.” (Wish I could say that it inspired my own “Across the River,” but the connection wasn’t conscious.)

And from my Baby Boomer youth, “Ode to Billie Joe”. Since 1967, I’ve been dying to know what “me” and Billie Joe MacAllister threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge before he jumped.
Or did he? Bobbie Gentry ain’t talkin’ and forget that Robby Benson movie.

2. Gary, I have to get “Hey, Joe,” I don’t think I’ve ever heard it.

3. Jeff, I’ve always wondered who DID shoot the deputy. The song seems to imply someone did…

4. I’ve come up with a few other nominations:

R Dean Taylor’s”Indiana Wants Me.” Cheeseball classic sung in the form of a fugitive’s mournful letter to his girlfriend. The chorus “Indiana wants me, Lord, I can’t go back there” figured prominently in my Hoosier youth.

“Miss Otis Regrets (She’s Unable To Lunch Today)” by Cole Porter. Miss Otis has been lynched so can’t make an appointment; regrets conveyed by her maid. A rare example of good manners in a crime song.

“Polly” by Nirvana.
Supposedly inspired by a real-life kidnap and rape of a teenage girl, this creepy song is from the criminal’s perspective. I bet most people never realize the subject (I didn’t for years) since Kurt Cobain mumbles so much.

“O Valencia!” by The Decemberists. A Romeo & Juliet from two different gangs fall in love with fatal results. Several other songs in The Crane Wife DVD dealt with crime: “The Landlord’s Daughter” (rapist threatening victim); “You’ll Not Feel the Drowning;” The Perfect Crime #2″ (sample lyric: Sing, muse, of the passion of the pistol.) I don’t get the appeal of this group, they sound like self-enchanted grad students to me — still for criminal subject matter they’re hard to beat.

- “I Shot the Sheriff” by Eric Clapton (writ. Bob Marley)

- “I Fought the Law and the Law Won” by the Clash (or the Bobby Fuller Four)

- “Murder by Numbers” by the Police

- “Smoking Gun” by Robert Cray