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Goodnight Irene

Before there was equipment to record and play music, folk songs were passed down orally from one generation to the next. Individual singers and performers often changed words and varied the tunes: this music was alive. 

In the twentieth century, after the invention of the record player, musicians and historians became interested in recording folk music. In 1928, the United States Library of Congress established the Archive of American Folk Song to collect folk-music recordings and documentation. In 1933, John Lomax, a musicologist who had studied American cowboy songs and other traditional music, went to work for the Library of Congress. His job was to travel the country recording traditional music. Lomax set off by car with his son Alan as his assistant and a state-of-the-art, 150-kilogram aluminium disc recorder.

The Lomaxes visited farms and towns, but they were particularly drawn to prisons. They believed that prisoners, being cut off from modern music, were more likely to sing pure folk songs. At the Louisiana State Penitentiary, they were advised to see a prisoner named Huddie Ledbetter, who was called ‘Lead Belly’. They met him in the warden’s office and were so impressed with his music that they spent four days interviewing and recording him. Lead Belly told them he’d been singing all his life. He also played a battered twelve-string guitar. He knew a huge number of tunes—five hundred, he claimed—some dating from American Civil War times. The Lomaxes found his singing powerful and moving. One song they hadn’t heard before, ‘Goodnight Irene’, was a haunting ballad about lost love. Lead Belly said he’d learned it from his uncle, but as with many of his songs, Lead Belly had altered it and made it his own.

On his release from prison in 1934, Lead Belly tracked down John Lomax in the US state of Texas and proposed working for him. Lomax agreed to hire him as a driver and assistant. They worked together for several months recording more music in prisons located in the American South, after which Lomax took Lead Belly to New York City. There, Lomax organised performances for him, and audiences flocked to see and hear the former prisoner with the expressive voice. Lead Belly’s singing career was launched.

Before long, Lead Belly was a musical celebrity, performing folk tunes that celebrated Southern African American musical traditions and blues music. He sang on stage as well as on radio and television programmes, but he got into trouble again in 1939 and landed back in jail. He served another eight months before returning to his musical career. He continued to sing moving songs about oppression, injustice and political causes. But the ballad ‘Goodnight Irene’ became his signature tune, the one he was most known for. He played it twice in many concerts, and he particularly liked opening and closing with it. Many other artists began to sing it, too.

Lead Belly died in 1949, but his strong impact on music lives on. In 1950, the popular folk music group The Weavers released a recording of ‘Goodnight Irene’, and it was an immediate success. Pete Seeger, a member of The Weavers, said that everybody in the United States knew that song that year. Since then, artists as varied as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Garcia, Little Richard and Eric Clapton have sung ‘Goodnight Irene’, as have countless partygoers (when it’s time to go home) and parents (putting children to bed).

‘Goodnight Irene’ and Lead Belly’s other tunes—and the bluesy way he performed them—influenced many musicians over many years. As George Harrison, lead guitarist of the Beatles, is said to have remarked, ‘no Lead Belly, no Beatles.’ Lead Belly’s legacy lives on today.