Country Club 54: Wake Up, Irene

If covers and their success is one indication of a song with a big impact, another deeper sign is an answer song that becomes a hit in its own right. Occasionally, an answer song equals and surpasses the original and, more rarely, stands on its own. Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life" was answered and outsold by Kitty Well's "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels." both, by the way, based on the tune of Roy Acuff's 1936 "The Great Speckled Bird" and the Carter Family's 1929 "I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes."

In the surprising country history of "Goodnight, Irene"  not only were there country hits" there was a successful answer song.

In 1953, Hank Thompson recorded this answer song to "Goodnight, Irene." It comments on the popularity of the song and, interestingly,  portrays Irene as a sort of honky tonk angel. It was a big hit. Just like the Ernest Tubb and Red Foley version of "Goodnight, Irene," it reached number 1 on the country charts. But it didn't become a country standard.



Here are the lyrics

For months and months and months around the country
Everybody sang Irene goodnight
But she wouldn’t go to bed no matter what they said though everybody tried with all their might.
She stayed awake while steel guitars were a going
In every honky-tonk she could be seen
but she finally went to bed and covered up her head and now there’s not a thing can wake Irene

Wakeup Irene you’ve sleep to long
Wakeup Irene it’s time to move along
Wakeup Irene and pay for your bed
Wakeup Irene or folks will think your dead

Lot’s of guitar pickers by the dozen Sang goodnight Irene all night and day
And even Crosby too with his bobobabobedo tried to get Irene to hit the hay
Well I guess they finally sang her off to slumber
They must have tried a million times or more
But oh my aching back when she finally hit the sack man you ought to hear that women snore

Wakeup Irene you’ve sleep to long
Wakeup Irene it’s time to move along
Wakeup Irene and pay for your bed
Wakeup Irene or folks will think your dead

Country Club 53: Goodnight, Irene--the country hits

"Goodnight, Irene" has become an American standard. It is usually associated with the Weavers who had a hit in 1950. It first reached the Billboard charts on June 30, 1950 and spent 25 weeks on the chart, reaching Number One.  But the Weaver version wasn't the only hit version.  Within weeks of the Weavers release, "Goodnight Irene" was covered by Frank Sinatra  and three other pop artists charted with their own covers later in the year.  It was a Number 5 hit for Sinatra, one of his few chart-toppers in the period, but reportedly he hated the song and rebuffed fan's calls to perform it.

It was also a country hit.  Red Foley and Ernest Tubb recorded this version that was a number one country hit in the summer of 1950.

Moon Mullican had a lesser hit the same year.

All these hits came a year after Goodnight Irene's composer Leadbelly died. He had recorded it for the Library of Congress in the 1930's, but said he learned the song from an uncle and had begun singing it around 1908. Some people say it is a Tin Pan Alley song from 1886, and not a folk song. Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell, authors of the The Life and Legend of Leadbelly report that Leadbelly's song was most likely an adaptation of n 1886 song by the early African American songwriter Gusie Lord Davis. (pp. 53-56).  There does seem to be an argument that Leadbelly modified the rhythm, melody, and lyrics of the song enough to be credited as composer. though

There doesn't seem to be any justification for Alan Lomax to have claimed co-writer credits and royalties. The song was already in Leadbelly's repertoire when the Lomaxes first met him.

Interestingly, Wolfe and Lornell write that the ARC company did not appreciate the diversity of Leadbelly's music when they recorded him.

...they had a simplistic perception of black folk music. They divided folk and folklike music into two camps:  Whites performed hillbilly and cowboy songs, while black  singers played blues and spirituals.  A black man like Hudie, whose complicated repertoire ranged across these arbitrary lines, seemed problematic to them. They finally did consent to record "Irene" but it was never released. (p. 158)

Wikipedia's entry on "Goodnight, Irene" notes that

the Weavers chose to omit some of Leadbelly's more controversial lyrics, leading Time magazine to label it a "dehydrated" and "prettied up" version of the original. Due to the recording's popularity, however, The Weavers' lyrics are the ones generally used today.

The next edition of Country Club will provide further evidence of just how popular "Goodnight, Irene" was.