Frank Proffitt never claimed to have written the song. He may be heard singing the version he learned from his family and regional tradition on his first Folk-Legacy recording, now available as a "custom cassette" with booklet from us. I recorded Frank's singing of the song in a small cabin on the hillside behind his home in "Pickbritches Valley" near Reese, North Carolina, (no longer a post office). Frank used the cabin for a workshop in which he made fretless banjos, etc. The version popularized by the Kingston Trio was basically the song as it had been inadvertently modified by Frank Warner, who had recorded Frank singing it back in 1938. I made my recording in 1961.

If someone from the New Christie Minstrels claims to have written the song, he/she must be about 150 years old, a bit long in the tooth for a member of a pop group, I'd say. The song came into being shortly after the hanging of Tom Dula for the murder of Laura Foster, just after the Civil War. It is known to almost every old-timer in Frank Proffitt's home area, although few of them know more than a verse or so. Grayson and Whitter recorded another, quite similar version of the song even earlier than the fateful Warner field trip to Beech Mountain, NC, during which he first met Frank Proffitt (Nathan Hicks' son-in-law).

The copyright hassle is too complex to go into here, but it involved Alan Lomax, who had included the song in one of his books, Frank Warner, who gave the song to Lomax for publication, and a member of the Kingston Trio (now deceased) who claimed "words and music by..." and was cheerfully collecting the royalties. You can read all about that sordid stuff elsewhere.

If you can get hold of a copy, listen to the Bob Carey Trio version recorded for Stinson records long before the Kingston Trio ever did the song. They did the Warner adaptation, too. The thing to remember is that Frank Proffitt received only a small fraction of the royalties that eventually were shared by Warner, Lomax, et al, and that because Frank Warner, an honorable man, divided his share of them with Proffitt. The bulk of the "composer" royalties, paid out when the song was such a huge hit, were given to the Kingston Trio member. That's show biz, folks.

Sandy