In 1958 an
unknown group called the Kingston Trio (so named because of their love of
calypso music) issued an album. One track was picked up by a DJ in Salt Lake
City and given repeated plays, turning it into a single: Tom Dooley.
Hang down
your head Tom Dooley.
Hang down
your head and cry,
Hang down
your head Tom Dooley,
For boy you’re
bound to die.
It was a
song that had travelled down through the ages based – vaguely – on a true event,
the execution of Tom Dooley (real name Tom Dula) in 1868.
Tom Dula was a confederate soldier in the American civil war,
although he spent much of his time as a prisoner of war. Both before the war
and straight after his release he had various sexual encounters, which included
three sisters or cousins, Laura, Anne and Pauline Foster. Anne was married at
the time, but this didn’t seem to deter Tom. Into
this ménage
à troi (plus extras) someone introduced “soldier’s joy” (venereal
desease) and they all caught it. Various complications and jealousies led to
Laura disappearing, reportedly pregnant. Pauline led a search party to Laura’s
shallow grave, and she and Anne were arrested. Tom legged it, but was caught
and brought back. Ultimately, it was Tom and Anne who went on trial for murder and
the case received huge publicity. Tom was convicted; his lawyer managed to get
a new trial, but the second trial eighteen months later, still found him
guilty. Before his execution he wrote out a statement that cleared Anne, and
she was released. She later died from syphilis-induced insanity. Some believe
that she was the real murderer and Tom took the blame to save her.
A song about messy relationships and venereal disease was
hardly likely to make the hit parade, so a greatly sanitized version was
recorded by the Kingstons. It was a huge hit, over six million copies of the
single were sold. The Trio got a Grammy award in 1958 for best Country and Western
record – and the next year when a Folk award was introduced, they got another
Grammy for the same song. They also got a lawsuit when they claimed composer
credits for the song.
The Kingston Trio became huge for a few years – they were to
have five longplaying albums in the American top twenty album charts at one
time.
However,
they were not everyone’s cup of tea. Nik Cohn’s entertaining book written in
1968, Awopbopaloobop
Alopbamboom gave them short shrift:
“Beaming
all over their toothpaste faces, the Kingston Trio would dig up some old
warhorse like Tom Dooley, full of
stabbings and hangings, and turn it into a Shirley Temple nursery rhyme.”
The Kingstons received this kind of stick throughout much of
their career. As they often remarked in interviews – somewhat testily – they didn’t
believe in deliberately singing badly just to please the purists.
They actually sparked a musical revolution in the mainstream,
where hordes of American college kids suddently discovered and embraced “folk
music”. It was similar in the UK with Lonnie Donegan and skiffle.
The movement quickly evolved with female singers like Joan Baez,
Caroline Hester, and Judy Collins. A young Jewish boy with adenoids called
Robert Zinnerman changed his name to Bob Dylan, ‘borrowed’ the tune of an old song
No More Auction Block – put in some new
and suitably vague words and Blowin’ in
the Wind was born. The song was taken to great heights by Peter Paul and
Mary – a group manufactured by business interests just as much as the Monkees
and Spice Girls were years later, but somehow they sounded more ‘authentic’
than the Kingstons.
Soon folk was everywhere. Middle-aged folkies like Pete
Seeger, who’d been singing away for decades, suddenly entered the mainstream and
got prestigious gigs.
Ultimately it morfed into folk rock, which meant adding both electric
instruments and percussion behind the performance. That in turn – mixed with a folk
hybrid, the blues – had a huge effect on rock in general. Perhaps the biggest result
was that lyrics could now cover any subject under the sun.
Now there were lyrics to really make you think.
If only you could hear them.
But for many, a starting point was the clean cut smiles of
the Kingston Trio.
So hang down your head Tom Dooley.
All together now.
