In 1921, an unemployed petty criminal named Frank DuPre ran into a pretty young woman, "Betty Andrews," playing piano in the place where he was staying. Both were about eighteen. They hit it off instantly. So instantly that, less than a week later, he decided to steal a $2500 diamond wedding ring to cement their relationship.

Unfortunately, he was too incompetent to manage the robbery cleanly. As he tried to escape the jeweler's, the shop's security guard moved to stop him -- and a desperate DuPre pulled a pistol and shot him to death, then shot and wounded another man outside. He fled to Tennessee to pawn the ring, then to Detroit -- but he was too foolish to cover his tracks, and was apprehended, sent back to Georgia, convicted of murder, and hanged in 1922. He was barely nineteen.

This became the subject of at least two folk songs, "Frank Dupree" (Laws E24, written by Andrew Jenkins, and banal), now largely forgotten, and the genuinely-traditional and still-popular bluesy "Dupree" (Laws I11), perhaps now better known as "Betty and Dupree." Over the years, many folk songs have been investigated, but this one, oddly, never gained much attention until, almost a century after the fact, Tom Hughes decided to investigate. The result is this book.

It's thin, but it's impressive. I think Hughes has found out most of what can be learned. He investigated DuPre's rather sad family history, and his father's early death just three years after his son's execution. He found details about DuPre's criminal history and his escape attempt. He even managed to find out something about the life of Betty.

That's the one really big hole that I still wish could be filled. What was it that brought these two star-crossed lovers together? DuPre was uneducated, young, and unemployed; several examiners thought him mentally subnormal. Betty seems to have been strange herself, with wild emotions and an inability to follow instructions. Even for eighteen-year-olds, their actions were incredibly reckless. What caused it? And what did Betty do in the next fifty years? What did she think about all those recordings of her story, some (those based on the Jenkins song) purely moralizing and with no basis in fact, others a little more reliable and more sympathetic but still based on third-hand evidence? We can't know; by the time she turned twenty, she was forgotten and all but buried away, and never talked to anyone seeking the history of the song. There are hints about her in what we know, but they are only hints.

But that's not Hughes's fault. The only fault I can find with this book is that I wish it had more photos, and that it had done a better job of reproducing those it does contain. This book may leave you wanting more -- but this is all there is to be had. ( )