In contrast to the more finished rhyming stanzas of Railroad Bill and the earlier heroic epics, note the simple, vivid ballad-in-the-making type of unrhymed song so common as a type of pick-and-shovel melody. Note the accuracy of the picture, its trueness to actual workaday experience, the phrase description. Such a song in the making and in the rendering defies description or competition as a folk-mirror. Differing somewhat and yet of the same general sort of characterization is the current story of Dupree, versions of which have been taken from Asheville, North Carolina, and various other places in Georgia and North Carolina. One of the most interesting aspects of this Dupree song is that it may be compared with the Atlanta ballad of the white Frank Dupree as popularly sung on the phonograph records. The story of the white culprit warns his young friends in the usual way and asks them to meet him in heaven. His crime was, first, snatching a diamond ring for his sweetheart, then shooting the policeman to death, then fleeing but coming back because he could not stay away from his “Betty.” There is little similarity of expression between the white version and the Negro one. Here is the more finished of the Negro songs.
Dupree
Dupree was a bandit,
He was so brave and bol’,
He stoled a diamond ring
For some of Betty’s jelly roll.
Betty tol’ Dupree,
“I want a diamond ring.”
Dupree tol’ Betty,
“I’ll give you anything.”