For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday Jim is inviting us to play a song that is based on reality, a theme inspired by Badfinger (Max) of PowerPop. If you don’t follow Max’s blog you really should – his musical knowledge puts mine to shame, and he writes very well about other things too. Jim’s post Understanding Reality gives the background to the theme..

The first thing that struck me about this was its familiarity, and on digging back through my notes I found that we had enjoyed this theme back in March 2024, suggested on that occasion by Nancy, as Jim recognises in his post. My second thought was that I could simply repeat that post but I decided against that for two reasons: firstly, it would be lazy, and secondly that post is #8 in my all time top ten, and you can see it simply by clicking the link on the right. Talk about giving the game away!

So I’m going for something entirely different. Fancy a blood and gore story of a grisly murder? Even if you don’t, that’s what you’re getting! I’m playing you Breakfast in Mayfair from Babbacombe Lee, an album by Fairport Convention released in November 1971. This is actually a re-recording of the song which was made for a BBC2 documentary in 1974 and included on a re-release of the album in 2004, but as well as enjoying the benefit of vocals by Sandy Denny this also has an introduction of the reading of a newspaper piece by A.L. Lloyd (well known in the UK as a singer and collector of folk songs). Still with me? Let’s play the music, and I’ll fill you in with more detail afterwards:

And as they tell the story, sharing the lyrics for SLS is particularly appropriate:

The world has surely lost it’s head
The news is full of crimes
There’s robberies in The Telegraph
And there’s murders in The Times
And always more obituaries
And even one of these
Concerns the brutal slaughter
Of an Old Miss Emma Keys

The police have got their man, they’re sure
He never left the scene
Indeed he raised the hue and cry
A most unusual thing
An arsonist, a murderer, his soul will soon be frying
He’s young, but old enough to kill
But not too young for dying

Now it seems the populace will queue
To see him stand in court
To hear him speak his wicked lies
While smiling at his thoughts
This arrogant young ruffian is obviously guilty
Though no where does it say exactly
How or why he killed her

Forget it dear it’s not the first
There’s bound to be another
The way you carry on
You’ll have us thinking she’s your mother
This man called “Lee” has had his day
And soon he’ll be forgotten
So put that paper down before your breakfast goes quite rotten

Lyrics:  AZLyrics.com

Songwriter: Simon Nicol

The story told by the album is that of John Henry George “Babbacombe” Lee. There is a Wikipedia page about him here, if you want to know more, but the brief version is that he was famous for surviving three attempts to hang him for murder. Born in Abbotskerswell, Devon in 1864, Lee served in the Royal Navy, and was a known thief. In 1885 he was convicted of the murder of his employer, Emma Keyse, at her home at Babbacombe Bay near Torquay on 15 November 1884, with a knife. The evidence was weak and circumstantial, amounting to little more than Lee having been the only male in the house at the time of the murder, his previous criminal record, and being found with an unexplained cut on his arm. Despite this and his claim of innocence, he was sentenced to hang. After he survived three failed attempts at hanging – the gallows didn’t work – his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He became popularly known as “the man they couldn’t hang,” which was the title of the aforementioned documentary programme.

Lee was released from prison in 1907 and lived until 1945, though there is some mystery about that. After his release he exploited his notoriety, supporting himself through lecturing on his life. Accounts of his whereabouts after 1916 are somewhat confused, and one researcher even speculated that in later years there was more than one man claiming to be Lee. But it is now accepted that he died in Milwaukee, having emigrated to the US – I wonder if they’d let him in today? 

Dave Swarbrick, the band’s fiddle player, has explained that he conceived the album after discovering a file of old newspaper clippings in a junk shop; this file contained John Lee’s own copies of the newspaper articles and was bound by him, signed and dated 30 January 1908. The album comprised 15 tracks, plus a further two bonus tracks added later, including the one I played. All of the band contributed to the songwriting, and took it in turns to share the vocals. Sandy Denny had left the band by that time, but later rejoined and was present for the new recording of the song – just as well, as she was by a country mile their best singer!

And just for good measure, here is a lovely live performance from 2016, when the band played the whole album at their annual Cropredy Festival, with Simon Nicol on vocals:

An interesting footnote to the story is that the case was covered and examined in a 2021 episode of the BBC One series Murder, Mystery and My Family, in which  descendants of people imprisoned and hanged for long distant crimes attempt to get a modern day judge to agree that the convictions were unsafe. In this case, the verdict originally reached by the jury was upheld by the judge who decides for the programme. They should have played the album to him, it might have produced a better decision. But I never liked him anyway!

That’s my true story for today – an intriguing one, I think. Hopefully I’ll see you again for Tuesday Tunes? 🎶