{"id":723,"date":"2016-04-03T07:00:50","date_gmt":"2016-04-03T11:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=723"},"modified":"2024-02-17T12:31:11","modified_gmt":"2024-02-17T17:31:11","slug":"goodnight-irene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/goodnight-irene\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodnight, Irene (Lead Belly and others)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Goodnight, Irene\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZGpsoznOzaA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Another song I&#8217;ve always known &#8212; I&#8217;m sure we sang it in school, I&#8217;m sure we sang it at the children&#8217;s sing-along evenings in Woods Hole, I&#8217;m sure I heard it sung by Pete Seeger, and the Weavers, and lots of other people, before I knew who Lead Belly was. Along with &#8220;Tennessee Waltz,&#8221; &#8220;Goodnight, Irene&#8221; was one of the two biggest hits of 1950, reaching the <em>Billboard<\/em> magazine Top Ten in versions by the Weavers, Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, and Ernest Tubb with Red Foley &#8212; for people who haven&#8217;t heard all of those, I recommend checking out the Tubb\/Foley record, which sounds a good deal folkier <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-731 size-full alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/leadbelly-and-martha.jpg?resize=300%2C226&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"226\" \/>than the Weavers with their elegant string section.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, once I heard Lead Belly&#8217;s version, I adopted it, and sing all the downbeat verses and &#8220;I&#8217;ll get you in my dreams&#8221; rather than &#8220;I&#8217;ll kiss you&#8230;&#8221; Some scholars have argued that he is actually saying &#8220;I&#8217;ll guess you in my dreams,&#8221; which they say is a regional\/rural term meaning &#8220;imagine,&#8221; but the main reasoning behind that argument seems to be that they don&#8217;t like to think of him singing about &#8220;getting&#8221; a girl in his dreams, which they consider unromantic &#8212; a pretty damning commentary on the scholarly concept of romance.<\/p>\n<p>There is also a scholarly discourse about the roots of the song, but it doesn&#8217;t really add much to the story. Basically, there were various waltzes called &#8220;Irene&#8221; in the 19th century, including one called &#8220;Irene, Good Night,&#8221; by the black pop\/minstrel song composer <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-4966 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Gussie-Davis-Irene-Good-Night-cover-e1708190944784.jpg?resize=234%2C303&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"234\" height=\"303\" \/>Gussie Davis, which has a somewhat similar melody, though no shared lyrics beyond the title phrase. My relatively informed guess is that Leadbelly&#8217;s uncle, who taught him the song (or someone else, who passed it on to Lead Belly&#8217;s uncle), heard the Davis song, liked it, but didn&#8217;t remember much of it, so came up with their own song, inspired by it, but quite different.<\/p>\n<p>That was (and is) very common in oral cultures &#8212; someone will hear a song they like, and keep singing a snatch of it, and eventually it gets melded with other bits and pieces, and ends up bearing little or no resemblance to the earlier model. (A good example is &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/fishing-blues\/\">Fishing Blues<\/a>,&#8221; which almost everyone knows in a version Henry Thomas created from his vague memory of Chris Smith&#8217;s sheet music composition.) As for the bits and pieces, the &#8220;Sometimes I live in the country&#8221; verse was collected in Tennessee in 1909, so presumably was floating around the South by the turn of the century, and it wouldn&#8217;t surprise me if others were as well.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, it&#8217;s a beautiful tune, with a lyric that both fits and undercuts the gentleness of the melody &#8212; having been a romantic young man myself, I recognize the pleasure of contemplating suicide if one&#8217;s love is rejected, and god knows it was a cliche of romantic fiction back to Goethe&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Werther,<\/em> but most modern songwriters steer away from that particular romantic fantasy.<\/p>\n<p>And for those who want to hear a snatch of the original, here it is:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Lead Belly Sings &quot;Goodnight Irene&quot;\" width=\"474\" height=\"356\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xn50JSI0W-E?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another song I&#8217;ve always known &#8212; I&#8217;m sure we sang it in school, I&#8217;m sure we sang it at the children&#8217;s sing-along evenings in Woods Hole, I&#8217;m sure I heard it sung by Pete Seeger, and the Weavers, and lots of other people, before I knew who Lead Belly was. Along with &#8220;Tennessee Waltz,&#8221; &#8220;Goodnight, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/goodnight-irene\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Goodnight, Irene (Lead Belly and others)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Goodnight, Irene (Lead Belly and others) - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/goodnight-irene\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Goodnight, Irene (Lead Belly and others) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Another song I&#8217;ve always known &#8212; I&#8217;m sure we sang it in school, I&#8217;m sure we sang it at the children&#8217;s sing-along evenings in Woods Hole, I&#8217;m sure I heard it sung by Pete Seeger, and the Weavers, and lots of other people, before I knew who Lead Belly was. 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Haven't they read Woody's books and looked at his drawings? Don't they know a love song when they\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/pete-seeger-little-boxes-cbs-5.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":784,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/living-in-the-country\/","url_meta":{"origin":723,"position":2},"title":"Living in the Country (Pete Seeger)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Pete Seeger isn't normally remembered for his instrumental skills, but that's mostly because he had so many other skills that took precedence. He was a terrific banjo player and guitarist, and the single most influential player in the early folk revival -- the main reason he wasn't even more influential\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Seeger-with-guitar-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":618,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/eddystone-light\/","url_meta":{"origin":723,"position":3},"title":"Eddystone Light","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"March 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the pleasures of this project is learning the background of songs I've known all my life. 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