Thought for the Day - June 29,00

Subject: Thought for the Day - June 29,00
From: GUEST,Peter T.
Date: 29 Jun 00 - 09:12 AM

Has there ever been a weirder folk song than "Goodnight Irene"? I have been listening to the original Angola Penitentiary tapes of Lead Belly from 1933, with its two versions of "Irene". It has been noted that some kind of the song had been wandering around (a minstrel version is reported from the late 1880's), but Lead Belly obviously made it his own, and eventually (just after his death) the Weavers catapulted his version into fame. It is a dark, hard song -- suicide, morphine, underage sex, broken homes in the verses -- but with that chorus that everyone knows with that lilt in it, and that, over time, infiltrated the rest of the song. In Lead Belly's version(s) from 1933, the verses are woven into the kind of story a man convicted of multiple assaults and spending time in Angola would tell, and there is always that big, booming, hard guitar work, like a man pounding rocks, and dealing with the bitterness of remembering how he messed up with a woman who stands with her hands on her hips and tells him to get lost, that she has finally given up on him. Who is this Irene? What kind of griefs has she had to go through with this hard, messed up man?

Contrast this with the Weavers, 1955 in Carnegie Hall, where the song is like a barbershop singalong. Not to take anything away from the Weavers, whom I revere, but the transformation in the song is stunning: it sways and sweetens, and everyone is there for a good time. But the verses still sing of a wreck of a life, a failed marriage, and wandering the streets, while the chorus swells into dreamland.

Of course, without the barbershopping, "Goodnight Irene" would never have become a huge hit -- but it is still a strange thing, to listen to the dark bitter suicidal seed, and the transformation into the sentimental flower that I remember from sitting around a hundred junior campfires.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - June 29,00
From: Dulci46
Date: 29 Jun 00 - 10:55 AM

What is the older version? Didn't know there was another version. I find this quite interesting as the old man across the street played it on his harmonica every night for 15 years. I certainly would like to know a different version!!!

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - June 29,00
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 29 Jun 00 - 11:34 AM

Peter, as you know I'm a fanatical "Huddie-ophile", but I've never heard his 1933 version. I'm fascinated. Any chance you could bring it to your session? Part of my interest is to see whether his style of playing in "A" (assuming he was playing it "A" then) was fully formed at that point.

Rick

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - June 29,00
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 29 Jun 00 - 11:38 AM

Peter, I have never heard Huddie sing it but the first time I actually listened to the verses at all I was blown away and have had a hard time joining fully into the jolly camaradarie of singing it as a closing song after a joyful night of singing, as was the tradition with one group I used to sing with. That is, I join fully aware of the irony of the song, and the darkness that can lurk behind the mask of "everything's fine."

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - June 29,00
From: Peter T.
Date: 29 Jun 00 - 12:12 PM

Rick, the song sounds pretty much the same as the later version (I have the Moses A. version from the mid40s, which I guess is the version you are referring to -- it even has the same bass runs, if my memory serves), but the early version is wrapped up in a story Lead Belly tells as he is going along (like a number of these songs) that purports to explain how each verse came to be sung. There is also a second partial "take". In the first version, he comes back home and finds a "clean house" -- she is gone. In the second, he finds her still there, and she tells him that she is through with him, and the verse about taking morphine and dying appears. All very cheery. I will bring it along tonight.
yours, Peter T.