Goodnight Irene

DESCRIPTION: The singer describes how he courted Irene. Now he and his wife are parted. "And if Irene turns her back on me, gonna take morphine and die." Chorus: "Irene, goodnight, Irene, goodnight; Goodnight, Irene, goodnight, Irene, I'll (get/see) you in my dreams."
AUTHOR: popular version by Huddie Ledbetter ("Lead Belly")
EARLIEST DATE: 1933 (recordings, Huddie Ledbetter [Lead Belly])
KEYWORDS: love courting separation drugs suicide loneliness floatingverses
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Lomax-FolkSongsOfNorthAmerica 315, "Irene" (1 text, 1 tune)
Seeger-AmericanFavoriteBallads, p. 48, "Irene, Goodnight" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fuld-BookOfWorldFamousMusic, pp. 307-308, "Irene (Goodnight, Irene)"
MidwestFolklore, W. L. McAtee, "Some Folklore of Grant County, Indiana, in the Nineties," Volume 1, Number 4 (WInter 1951), p. 261, "(Sometimes I live in the country)" (1 fragment, of the single verse cited)
DT, IRENGDNT
ADDITIONAL: Moses Asch and Alan Lomax, Editors, _The Leadbelly Songbook_, Oak, 1962, p. 93, "Irene" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #11681
RECORDINGS:
Judy Cook, "Goodnight Irene" (Piotr-Archive #378, recorded 12/07/2022 -- a parody verse but one which implies knowledge of the rest of the song)
Scott Dunbar, "Goodnight Irene" (on USDunbarS01)
Nancy Finley, Samuel Finley, "Goodnight Irene" (Fragment: Piotr-Archive #622, recorded 08/01/2023)
Gordon Jenkins & The Weavers, "Goodnight Irene" (Decca 27077, 1950; on Weavers01)
Huddie Ledbetter [Lead Belly], "Irene" (AFS 120 A1, 1933) (AFS 120 A6, 1933) (AFS 120 A7, 1933) (Atlantic 917, 1950)
Pete Seeger, "Goodnight, Irene" (on PeteSeeger24) (on PeteSeeger43)
Guy Wolff, "Goodnight Irene" (Piotr-Archive #444, recorded 01/08/2023)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Dark and Dreary Weather" (floating lyrics)
cf. "Willy, Poor Boy" (floating lyrics)
cf. "Sometimes I'm in This Country" (floating lyrics)
cf. "Late Last Night When Willie Came Home (Way Downtown)" (floating lyrics)
cf. "Rambling Round" (approximate tune)
cf. "Roll On, Columbia" (tune)
NOTES [188 words]: Fuld quotes the Lomaxes to the effect that Lead Belly learned the chorus of this song from his uncle. Many of the verses can also be shown to be older. To what extent Lead Belly created this song, as opposed to reshaping the materials, cannot now be determined.
The 1888 song "Irene, Goodnight," sung by the Haverly Minstrels and credited by Spaeth to "Davis" (but dated 1892), is a separate piece. - RBW
The "Davis" cited by Spaeth is Gussie L. Davis, and according to Guy Logsdon & Jeff Place the date is 1887, not 1888. They note some melodic similarity to the song sung by Lead Belly.
According to Seeger, Lead Belly said Irene was a sixteen-year-old girl he knew, who took up with a rambler. - PJS
Jon W. Finson, The Voices That Are Gone: Themes in Nineteenth-Century American Popular Song, Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 142, refers to Davis's composition of "Irene, Good Night" in a way that implies he thinks it is the same. But he offers no evidence.
Judy Cook's parody verse is:
Sometimes Irene wears pajamas,
Sometimes Irene wears a gown,
But when they're both in the laundry,
Irene is the talk of the town. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: LoF315

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