Tenting Tonight

DESCRIPTION: "We're tenting tonight on the old camp ground... Many are the hearts that are weary tonight, wishing for the war to cease... Tenting tonight (x2) Tenting on the old campground" The singer describes how the soldiers are lonely -- and often dying
AUTHOR: Walter Kittredge (1834-1905)
EARLIEST DATE: 1864 (sheet music published by Oliver Ditson & Co, Boston)
KEYWORDS: Civilwar battle death home music
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (18 citations):
Jackson-PopularSongsOfNineteenthCenturyAmerica, pp. 206-209, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber-SongsOfTheCivilWar, pp. 181-183, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground"; p. 183, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground, II" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Silber-SoldierSongsAndHomeFrontBalladsOfCivilWar, pp. 50-51, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" (1 text, 1 tune)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #2297, p. 155, "Tenting on the Old Cam Ground" (3 references)
Dime-Song-Book #15, p. 14, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" (1 text)
Heart-Songs, p. 28, "We're Tenting To-Night" (1 text, 1 tune)
Jolly-Miller-Songster-5thEd, #14, "We're Tenting Tonight" (1 text)
Emerson-StephenFosterAndCo, pp. 121-122, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" (1 text)
Hill-PoemsAndSongsOfTheCivilWar, pp. 222-223, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" (1 text)
Arnett-IHearAmericaSinging, pp. 86-87, "Tenting Tonight" (1 text, 1 tune)
Krythe-SamplerOfAmericanSongs 10, pp. 150-157, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" (1 text, 1 tune)
Colonial-Dames-AmericanWarSongs, pp. 107-108, "Tenting on the Old Camp Groun" (1 text)
Darling-NewAmericanSongster, pp. 348-349, "Tenting Tonight" (1 text)
Messerli-ListenToTheMockingbird, pp. 123-126, "Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground" (1 text)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 289, "Tenting On The Old Camp Ground" (1 text)
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 188, "Tenting Tonight" (notes only)
DT, TENTTNT* (TENTTNT2*)
ADDITIONAL: George Calvin Carter (with a Foreword by Hugh Gregg), _Walter Kittredge: Minstrel of the Merrimack_, (no publisher listed but printed in Manchester, New Hampshire), 1953, on the frontispiece and elsewhere, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" (1 text)
ST RJ19206 (Full)
Roud #14045
RECORDINGS:
Apollo Quartet, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" (Berliner 4264, 1898)
Colonial Quartet, "Tenting Tonight" (Phono-Cut 5097, c. 1913)
Columbia Stellar Quartet, "Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground" (Columbia A1808, 1915)
Haydn Quartet, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" (Victor 119, 1900)
Knickerbocker Quartet, "We're Tenting Tonight" (CYL: Edison [BA] 1881, n.d.)
Mount Vernon Quartet, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" (Columbia 15245-D, 1928)
Peerless Quartet, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" (Zon-O-Phone 892, c. 1908) (Emerson 7160, 1917) (Pathe 40032 [as "Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground"], 1916)
Pete Seeger, "Tenting Tonight" (on PeteSeeger28)
Frank C. Stanley, "Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground" (CYL: Edison 8151, 1902)
Sterling Trio, "Tenting Tonight" (Little Wonder 266, 1915)
Unidentified vocal quartet "Tenting To-night on the Old Camp Ground" (Harvard 514, 1903-1906; prob. rec. 1900; Oxford 11964, c. 1906)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Camp Meeting Tonight On the Old Camp Ground" (derivative)
SAME TUNE:
Camp Meeting Tonight On the Old Camp Ground (File: RcCMTOCG)
Singing on the Old Church Ground (recording, Emmet Brand, on MuSouth06)
"Ridin' Round the Old Bed Ground (John I. White, _Git Along, Little Dogies: Songs and Songmakers of the American West_, 1975 (page references are to the 1989 University of Illinois Press edition), p. 52)
Parody on Tenting on the Old Camp-Ground ("We're drinking, to-night, in the old bar-room," by William H. Hanford") (Wolf-AmericanSongSheets p. 124)
NOTES [1240 words]: Civil war historian Bruce Catton says that, during the war, this piece was second in popularity only to "When This Cruel War Is Over" among the sad songs. After the war, when the defeatist tone of "Cruel War" made it seem less patriotic, "Tenting Tonight" came to be first in the veterans' hearts.
Catton adds that Walter Kittredge composed this song in 1863 while under the threat of the draft. As it turned out, he was rejected for ill health. Publishers at first rejected the song as not martial enough -- but then it was picked up by the Hutchinson Family Singers, and the rest is history.
There is a biography of Kittredge, George Calvin Carter, Walter Kittredge, Minstrel Of The Merrimack, 1953. It is not really a full biography; the whole book is just 124 pages, and pages 56-119 consist entirely of poems and songs from Kittredge's Original Song Book. Very few of these are familiar; I recognized "The Unhappy Man" (in the Index as "The Very Unhappy Man") but nothing else. Kittredge's only real claim to fame seems to be this song; even his tombstone reads, in full:
WALTER KITTREDGE
1834 - 1905
----
AUTHOR OF
"TENTING ON THE
OLD CAMP GROUND"
(There is a photo of the stone in Carter.)
Kittredge was born October 8, 1834, the tenth of eleven children (Carter, p. 8) of a family that claimed to be able to trace itself back to England in the early 1400s but had become New Hampshire farmers. His fascination with music was such that seems to have been fond of making musical instruments out of odds and ends of growing plants (Carter, pp. 8-9). He reported that he and his sister mostly taught themselves to read music and sing (Carter, pp. 18-19, although Carter, p. 15, tells us that he was not allowed to play music until his day's work was done, and his family firmly shut down his aspirations to be an actor). He learned to play the violin somewhere, since he composed this song on it (Carter, p. 11). As a young man, he knew and sang alongside the Hutchinson Family Singers (Carter, p. 10) -- a tribute presumably to both his talent and his politics; he was a "stiff abolitionist" (Carter, p. 21) and he had a "temperance lecture, written in blank verse" (Carter, p. 20).
He married his wife Anna E. Fairfield in 1860. Soon after, he contracted a severe bout of rheumatic fever (Carter, p. 11).
In outline at least, the folklore about this song is apparently true. Kittredge, under the shadow of the draft, was ordered to report for a physical. Worried about what would happen to his family if he were called up, he composed this song. The following day, he reported to Concord, New Hampshire for his physical -- but he was still suffering the after-effects of his rheumatic fever and was turned down by the draft board (Carter, pp. 11-12). Ironic, given that he lived another 42 years! His own description of how the song was written, apparently told in the 1890s, is on pp. 21-22 of Carter:
"In the fall of 1863 I had been at Lynn, calling on the Hutchinsons at High Rock, and was on my way back to my home when I met a friend who told me I had been drafted to go to the war, in a drawing that had occurred in our town while I was away.
"The idea brought upon me anew and afresh the scenes of soldier life which had now become familiar, with all of their mingled glory and pathos, to most every household in the North.
"I went home, did my work and after tea sat down near the window in the front room with a violin in my hands. I had seldom used a violin for such a purpose, resorting generally, to a lap melodeon, which I still have and which I have carried many, many miles, and used in many concerts. [He usually composed his songs for melodeon because he couldn't sing while playing violin; Carter, p. 45]
"But while musing with the instrument my thoughts wandered away into the South, the camps where at evening the soldiers were gathered, of my own future among them. Almost unconsciously my thoughts began to express themselves in words and music simultaneously, as I drew the bow across the strings.
"Looked at from the present, the sentiment was probably more the expression of my own feeling of loneliness and regret at parting from home than anything else, but I could see as plainly as if it were a real picture, the events and feelings expressed in the song at that moment. The melody and words came together....
"Well, I didn't go to the war. I went up to Concord and the surgeons examined me and said I wouldn't do. 'Besides,' said one of them, 'you can do more good at home, Walter.'
"The first time I sung 'Tenting' was at Lowell, in the fall of 1863."
Kittredge apparently still wanted to do his part, and thought that a war song would help the Union cause -- and (having never sold a song before; Carter, p. 43) was willing to sell the copyright for $15. No publisher was interested in a song that was a "downer." (This was, presumably, before the success of "When This Cruel War Is Over" started changing minds about sad songs.) That might have been that had it not been for Asa Hutchinson, who in effect offered to be Kittredge's agent for the song in return for 50% of the royalties. Kittredge made the deal, Hutchinson sold the song to his own publisher Oliver Ditson and Co., and the royalties started flowing in (Carter, pp. 12-13). Kittredge reported that it sold ten thousand copies in the first two months after it came out, and more than a hundred thousand copies before the end of the war (Carter, p. 23; on p. 44, he says that it reached eventually reached a million copies sold).
Kittredge did eventually start to earn a living, or part of one, as a performer; Carter, p. 17, says that he would go out entertaining whenever he ran out of money at home and tour only until he had earned enough to head back to the farm.
He published at least two songbooks, the "Union Song Book" (Carter, p. 52, who dates it 1862 -- which cannot be right since it precedes the date of "Tenting Tonight") and "Walter Kittredge's Original Song Book" in 1882 (Carter, p. 54).
Carter, p. 121, prints one of Kittredge's newspaper obituaries, without listing its source:
"Walter Kittredge died Saturday morning [July 8, 1905] at his home in Merrimack [New Hampshire], aged 70 years and 9 months. He was born October 8, 1834 in the same town in which he died. He had been in comparatively good health until a few days ago when he suffered a paralytic shock and then failed steadily until the end came peacefully at 7:30 a.m. Saturday.
"Mr. Kittredge was a member of the Congregational Church of Merrimack an of the Thornton Grange, No. 31. He was a past master of the state grange. Mr. Kittredge is survived by his widow, Anne E. [Fairfax, 1834-1921]; one daughter, Clara S. Kittredge [1863-1940], who lived with her parents [she never married]; one son, Walter F. Kittredge [1866-1935], a lawyer of Nashua, and three grandchildren, Anna L, Walter W., and Winnifred J. Kittredge." (There was also, according to the tombstones in Merrimack, a third child who died young, Anne, 1870-1872.)
Carter, p. 122, says that Joshua Hutchinson, the last living man of the Hutchinsons, sang at Kittredge's funeral. He is buried at what is now the Last Rest Cemetery in Merrimack, across Church Street from the First Church of Merrimack (OPC), which apparently was the Merrimack Congregational Church at the time Kittredge was buried there. As of 2022, Kittredge's grave is still mentioned in the cemetery's literature. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: RJ19206

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