Tom Dooley

 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.