"[...] Randolph says, 'In 1960, I supplied Alan Lomax with the oldest and best text of "Frankie and Albert" ever collected (Omaha, Nebraska, 1908), from a Negro pianist and guitarist, Palmer Jones, whose main dates of activity were in Birmingham, Alabama, about 1904. Lomax printed this in his Folk Songs of North America (1960)[...] with over thirty editorial [changes]...."

Palmer Jones was born in Alabama in about 1887 and e.g. cowrote the blues tune "Going South," copyright 1914. I don't know how we reconcile Randolph's comments with what Gershon Legman wrote in 1962:
"In Alan Lomax's[...] _The Folk Songs Of North America[...] a text is given of 'Frankie And Albert'[....] I obtained this song in the form of an unexpurgated pencil manuscript by[...] Palmer Jones[....] The manuscript was[...] handwritten in 1927[.... It] was given to me by the late Robert Carlton Brown, who got it from Hilaire Hiler, for whose father Palmer Jones had originally written it out."