The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #160090   Message #3795869
Posted By: Richie
15-Jun-16 - 09:00 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Drowsy Sleeper
Subject: RE: Origins: Drowsy Sleeper
TY Steve, the ballad, or part of it, was sung in the Civil War in Kentucky.

George Dallas Mosgrove was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1844, and enlisted in the Fourth Kentucky Cavalry Regiment as a private on September 10, 1862. In his book, Kentucky Cavaliers in Dixie; or, The Reminiscences of a Confederate Cavalryman (271 pp., Courier-Journal Job Printing Co., Louisville, 1895) he describes a Kentucky soldier who sang the ballad during the Civil War to rouse the Fourth Kentucky boys:

"Possessing a deep bass voice, he was wont to arouse the Fourth Kentucky boys by singing, 'Awake, awake, ye drowsy sleeper,' in the early morn before Tom Hayden sounded reveille with his bugle."

Richie