In 1957 or '58 a news item appeared about how a banjo player had slain his wife, or maybe girlfriend, by whacking her over the head with a banjo. This seemed to me an unbeatable song challenge, so I wrote the following, which I've spent the decades since busily suppressing. Mudcatters will no doubt feel I should have continued doing so, but what the heck, it's a bright sunny morning and here goes.

This is a song that raises the ultimate question: what instrument DOES the Lord like? I was sorta wondering ... harmonica? ... but nah. -- Bob

^^
THE MASTERTONE MURDER, or,
An Address to All Concerning Death by Banjo
by Bob Coltman
Tune: I Am a Roving Cowboy (basically Pike Country Breakdown, but done slower)

Come all of you young people, and listen to my song,
It is of poor Betty Sadler, and a foul and dreadful wrong,
It was in Cincinnati, eighteen-eighty was the year,
That Betty Sadler met her doom in the way that you shall hear.

It was a banjo player, Frank Jackson was his name,
He thought to marry Betty, and keep her just the same,
He played his banjo at the dances all around the town,
But one night they did argue and he knocked that poor girl down.

She swore he was unfaithful, and he said he was not,
He picked up his banjo, and he struck her on the spot,
He struck her with his banjo, on a place behind her ear,
And killed his darling Betty, the girl he loved so dear.

The policemen searched for Jackson, they looked both up and down,
They found him with his banjo, a-wand'ring round the town,
They put him in the jailhouse, and brought him to the trial,
Saying, You're the man killed Betty in that clawhammer style.

Yes, I'm the man killed Betty, and my banjo's been my doom,
Put me in the dungeon, in that dirty jailhouse room,
Hang me to the scaffold, and let my spirit fly,
For banjo-playing's been my fall, and for that I must die.

Come all you banjo players, the moral I will tell,
Don't play upon the banjo, or your soul will burn in Hell,
For the Lord don't like the banjo, and you'll end up like me,
Hung for killin' the girl you love, at the age of twenty-three.