Happy Birthday, Lead Belly! We’re celebrating with a new Tumblr series Lead Belly: Song by Song, in anticipation of the February 24 release of Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection. Twice a week, we’ll be featuring a track from the set, with the song’s history, exclusive images, and notable covers. Today we’re kicking it off with one of Lead Belly’s most well known songs, “Irene (Goodnight Irene).”

IRENE (Goodnight Irene)

Also known as “Irene, Goodnight”

Disc 1, Track 1

“Goodnight Irene” – The Weavers, 1950

This is undoubtedly Lead Belly’s most famous song. According to Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell, the song could be of Tin Pan Alley or minstrel show origins. Lead Belly apparently learned it from his uncle, Terrell, while a child and was performing it as early as 1909. When Lomax asked Lead Belly’s other uncle, Bob, if he made up the song, he answered, “No sir, it came from my brother, I don’t know who made it up. Huddie got it from us” (quoted in Wolfe and Lornell 1992, 52–53).

“Goodnight Irene” – Valerie June, 2014

Wolfe and Lornell’s research cites a sheet music folio on a minstrel piece published in 1888 that was called “Irene, Goodnight” and was performed by a traveling group called Haverly’s Colored Minstrels. Further, they found that the composer was African American Gussie Davis (1863–99), who is also credited with “Maple on the Hill” and “Footprints in the Snow.” Davis’ words are different than Lead Belly’s, but the imagery and themes are the same (ibid., 54–55). “Irene” became Lead Belly’s theme song, sung at the beginning and end of many of his radio programs. He died a year before the Weavers’ version became a nationwide hit in 1950; the fame he had so long worked for had eluded him.

The Weavers’ “Goodnight Irene,” a nationwide hit record (courtesy of John Reynolds Collection

“Goodnight Irene” went on to become the most recorded of Lead Belly’s songs, beginning with The Weavers and Frank Sinatra in 1950 to Eric Clapton in 2013. Versions of the song were also recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis, Kingston Trio, Little Richard, Ry Cooder, Meat Puppets, Tom Waits, Brian Wilson (“Folkways – A Vision Shared”), Jimmy Buffet, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Dr. John, and Mitch Miller. The Weavers sold 2 million copies of their recording of Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene” shortly after his death.

“Goodnight Irene” – Eric Clapton, 2013

“It’s one more case of black music being made famous by white people,” Pete Seeger, one of the Weavers, said in 1988, the year of Lead Belly’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “It’s a pure tragedy he didn’t live another six months, because all his dreams as a performer would have come true.”

“Irene” – Lead Belly