Schoolteacher stood there at the side of the path, his rifle lying across his Heading his winded animal up through the pass which led to Tennessee andįreedom, a quiet voice spoke out of the laurel bushes. Off the track, galloped off in the opposite direction. Still, wrapped in her scarlet cloak and the cloak all muddy."Ĭontinues, "he saddled up the same old nag he'd ridden home from the warĪnd took off for the Tennessee line. There in the shallow grave lay his sweetheart, white and He climbed the hill andĬlawed away the earth. Rain.he noticed a gleam of red against the rocks. Schoolteacher kept looking around asking questions. Nobody knew what had become of her, least of all Dula. Invited her to go for a walk in the hills, and that night she didn't turn up for Girlfriend had been seeing several other men in his absence, one of whom was a "dad-burned Yankee schoolteacher." and Alan Lomax's 1947 book, "Folk Song: USA," which was purchased by thousands of schools and libraries across the country and remains a standard text in the industry.Īccording to Alan Lomax in that book, Tom Dula (Dooley's real name) fought in the Civil War with Zeb Vance's cavalry, had seen Gettysburg andįinally made it home to the North Carolina mountains, only to find that his
One of the most widely circulated accounts of the Tom Dooley-Laura Foster tragedy is the one that appeared in John A. There was one thing more myth-laden than the history of the song "Tomĭooley" and where the Kingston Trio might have learned it-and that's the Learned the song proved less than reliable.Įarly into my research, however, I discovered Likewise, the various published accounts of where the Kingston Trio Means the last word on the subject of where the Kingston Trio learned "Tomĭooley" (or, for that matter, on where in fact the copyrights trulyīelonged). But as I was to discover, this, too, was by no Tennessee hill-folk." So neither of these was much help in identifying theĬopyrights being assigned to Frank Warner who collected the song and to John andĪlan Lomax who published it. While the LP's liner notes simply refer to it as "a classic 'do' of the Says "Tom Dooley" was "Traditional, arranged by Dave Guard," The label on the Kingston Trio LP on which the song first appeared Of popular music, I became curious about where the Kingston Trio might have Given the song's seminal role in the history Influence on American popular music without which there would be no blues, jazz, (which was the first hit "race" recording and as such ushered in the black "Tom Dooley" is one of the most important recordings of the 20thĬentury, second only perhaps to Mamie Smith's 1920 "Crazy Blues" In motion, a claim can be made that the Kingston Trio's In light of the many trends this one song set
Recording industry of the day but Western society at large. Phonographs that could play them and, most important, paved the way forĬountless singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan who found in this basicallyĭo-it-yourself music an antidote to the commercialism that pervaded not only the Instrument industry, created a demand for 33-1/3 rpm long-playing records and Kingston Trio hits that followed) revived a slumping recording and musical In American roots music that continues to this day. In excess of six million copies, is credited with starting the "Folkīoom" of the late 1950s and early 1960s and generating a worldwide interest Dooley," which topped the music industry charts in 1958 and reportedly sold
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