On November 17, 1958, the Kingston Trio scored a number one hit on the Billboard pop chart with their recording of the folk song “Tom Dooley.” The song, asking Mr. Dooley to hang down his head, became one of those songs where everyone knows the chorus.
But the lyrics come out of a true story.
The Real Tom Dula
On May 1, 1868, a Confederate veteran named Tom Dula was hanged for the 1866 stabbing death of Laura Foster. Dula had been Foster’s lover and father of her unborn child.
Some questioned whether Dula was the actual killer. In addition to his affair with Foster, Dula had romantic engagements with two of Foster’s cousins, Anne Foster Melton and Pauline Foster. On the gallows, Dula professed his innocence while conceding he still deserved to be executed. Thus, some came to believe that Melton had killed Laura Foster.
The trial, a retrial, and the execution attracted significant attention. National newspapers covered Dula’s trial, and former North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance represented Dula pro bono. Due to all of the attention, a North Carolina poet named Thomas C. Land wrote a poem about the case called “Tom Dooley.”
The video below provides some of the history behind the song. Check it out.
The Kingston Trio
Historians do not know who created the folk song “Tom Dooley.” But over time various artists recorded versions of “Tom Dooley.” And the Kingston Trio produced the most popular version when they recorded the song in 1958, selling more than six million copies.
In later years, some criticized Kingston Trio performances as a sanitized version of folk music. But many today recognize that the group, despite their clean-cut coordinated outfits, were instrumental in making folk music popular and laid the groundwork for other folk singers to find success.
The Kingston Trio version of “Tom Dooley” is more vague about the details of the real case than earlier versions of the song. But perhaps their decision made the song more universal, leading to its massive sales. Check out their complete version below.
The Legend of Tom Dolley
Finally, there is a 1959 film called The Legend of Tom Dooley, starring Michael Landon. The movie does not attempt to tell the true story about Tom Dula but is based upon the song.
Below is the first part of the movie.
We do know today that innocent people still often end up on death row in our modern system of justice. But nobody could have predicted that we would still be talking about a nineteenth century North Carolina murder so many years later.
And we can never know the full story of what happened to Laura Foster, even while we reflect on the folk song about the tragic story. Yet, that is the story behind the song.
What is your favorite version of “Tom Dooley”? Photo via public domain. Leave your two cents in the comments.
Paul Newman gave one of his greatest performances in the wonderful movie Cool Hand Luke (1967). In one scene, after hearing about the death of his mother, he sits on his bunk with a banjo and sings a song about a plastic Jesus statue in a car. When I first saw the film, I wondered if the song were an old folk song or if it might have been written for the film. Well, I don’t care if it rains or freezes, Long as I have my plastic Jesus, Riding on the dashboard of my car; Through all trials and tribulations, We will travel every nation, With my plastic Jesus I’ll go far.
The Creation of “Plastic Jesus”
The song, “Plastic Jesus,” was a real song that had been around for about a decade before Cool Hand Luke was made. Ed Rush and George Cromarty wrote the song in 1957 while they were high school students in Fresno, California.
As kids in Del Rio, Texas, Rush and Cromarty listened to the radio and heard a Mexican border station playing a religious program that sold a wide variety of religious items to make money. One of the items was a glow-in-the-dark plastic Jesus with a suction cup the driver could stick on a car’s dashboard. The teenagers saw the humor in the selling pitch, and they giggled at a song about “the bosom of the Lord.” From there, they created the song “Plastic Jesus.”
You can buy a Sweet Madonna, Dressed in rhinestones sitting on a Pedestal of abalone shell; Goin’ ninety, I’m not wary, ‘Cause I’ve got my Virgin Mary, Guaranteeing I won’t go to Hell.
Rush and Cromarty began performing the song in college and then traveled around performing as The Goldcoast Singers. As Rush later explained, when they were playing the song around 1962, sometimes the audience reacted with hostility to the song, finding it sacrilegious.
The Goldcoast Singers recorded the song, but their band eventually ended. Rush and Cromarty had their last performance together in 1963 when Cromarty went off to Vietnam.
Below is the original version of “Plastic Jesus” recorded by Rush and Cromarty with a humorous introduction capturing the origins of the song.
If you look around the Internet for the lyrics, you probably will find a long list of verses. Most of them have been added by various people, as the song has taken on a life of its own as a real folk song. Rush and Cromarty only wrote the chorus and the verse about Madonna (both above). The Paul Newman version only uses the original chorus and verse too.
Other Versions of “Plastic Jesus”
In addition to Paul Newman, a number of artists have performed “Plastic Jesus.” In 1971, Tia Blake included the song on the album Folksongs & Ballads with a bouncing country sound.
The Flaming Lips included the song as a hidden track on the album Transmissions From the Satellite Heart (1993). The band mostly maintained Paul Newman’s sparse arrangement.
“Plastic Jesus” also appears in a rock version with extra verses on Billy Idol’s Devil’s Playground (2005). Idol explained in an interview with Juice magazine that his version of the song that is about “an alcoholic who keeps his booze in his plastic Jesus on his dashboard. It’s a symphony song.”
In addition to using additional verses, Idol changed the music from the Cool Hand Luke version, making the song more upbeat: “I just followed the meter of the words and made it less like a hillbilly song. I made it sound more religiouso.”
Idol even made an official video for the song, featuring a plastic Billy Idol jamming with the plastic Jesus, who is pretty good at air guitar. Seriously, you have to watch Idol’s video.
After I posted the initial version of this story actor Lucas Hare pointed out to me that Bob Dylan’s song “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” from Blood on the Tracks (1975) has music very similar to “Plastic Jesus,” and at least in one live version from 1976, the guitar solo actually plays the “Plastic Jesus” melody.
Finally, Jack Johnson often performs the song, which appeared on Live at Boulder (2001).
Impact of “Plastic Jesus”
My favorite version remains Paul Newman’s version in Cool Hand Luke, where Newman adds a layer of meaning to the humorous song. The lyrics remain funny, but as Newman sings the song in his pain at losing his mother, the viewer learns a lot about the relationship between the son and the mother. Additionally, the song about Jesus underlies a movie that is full of Christ imagery.
I’ll bet those two teenagers laughing at the radio had no idea their song would go so far. But “Plastic Jesus” was not the only time that Ed Rush and George Cromarty had a brush with movie fame. In 2013, the Coen Brothers used an altered version of The Goldcoast Singers’ 1961 song “Please Mr. Kennedy” in the film Inside Llewyn Davis (2013).
Folksinger and songwriter Tom Paxton was born on October 31, 1937 in Chicago, Illinois. We celebrate today with one of his classic songs, “The Last Thing On My Mind.”
“The Last Thing On My Mind” first appeared on Paxton’s 1964 album Ramblin’ Boy. It has been covered by numerous artists, recently appearing on the soundtrack to Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) in a version by Stark Sands with the Punch Brothers.
In this video, Paxton introduces “The Last Thing On My Mind” as a love song, but it is also a song about loss. The singer’s lover has left him, and while he contemplates what he did wrong, he realizes it is “a lesson too late for the learnin’.” He realizes he could have loved the person better, and the last thing on his mind was being unkind.
We do not know what happened to the narrator and his former lover, but Paxton is still going strong. He recently completed a successful Kickstarter campaign for a new CD, Redemption Road, and he continues to tour around the country. Happy birthday Mr. Paxton!
What is your favorite Tom Paxton song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Inside Llewyn Davis opens with one of the film’s best musical moments. The camera simply focuses on the title character, played by Oscar Isaac, singing “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” at the Gaslight Cafe. Isaac’s performance of the song is mesmerizing. He immediately draws the viewer into the time and setting of the movie.
Hang me, Oh hang me, and I’ll be dead and gone; Hang me, Oh hang me, I’ll be dead and gone; Wouldn’t mind the hangin’, but the layin’ in the grave so long; Poor boy, I been all around this world.
The song stayed with me long after the movie ended. One might argue that no other performance in the film matches it. Check out Isaac’s opening performance from Inside Llewyn Davis.
Versions and Sources of “Hang Me”
The movie performance made me curious to find out more about the song. The Coen Brothers movie is loosely based on the life of Dave Van Ronk. So the obvious first step for anyone interested in the film is to check out Van Ronk’s version of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me.”
Van Ronk’s version is a wonderful recording and worth tracking down. Van Ronk’s ex-wife Terri Thai wrote in The Village Voice that one of the best things about the movie is that it will lead people to check out Van Ronk’s music.
You may find Van Ronk’s version of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” on the CD Inside Dave Van Ronk. Check it out below.
Van Ronk did not write the song. If you look for further information, many places just list it as “traditional.” The song “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,” however, has a long history that takes a number of twists and turns.
There are different variations on the song with different titles. These title variations include “I’ve Been All Around This World,” “The Gambler,” “My Father Was a Gambler,” and “The New Railroad.” Sometimes, the song is called “Cape Girardeau,” from the song’s line “I been all around Cape Girardeau.” Another version specifies the location of the singer’s last stand in “Up On The Blue Ridge Mountains.”
The Grateful Dead used the variation “I’ve Been All Around This World.” The band sang the song in a 1980 New Year’s Eve performance at the Oakland Auditorium.
A Grateful Dead fansite notes that the origin of the song is somewhat unclear. The first commercial recorded version of the song appears to be a 1946 single by Grandpa Jones, who later starred on Hee-Haw. But the song goes back further to a 1937 Library of Congress field recording.
A trip to the Library of Congress website leads to information about this first known recordings of the song. One early version of “I’ve Been All Around This World” (AFS 1531) is by Justis Begley. Alan and Elizabeth Lomax recorded Begley singing the song at Hazard, Kentucky in October 1937.
The Library of Congress lists another version of the song supposedly “sung” by a person named Dr. David McIntosh with a recording date of May from the same year, although I have yet to find more information about that version. McIntosh seems to have been a collector of folk songs, authoring books called Folk Songs and Singing Games of the Illinois Ozarks and Singing Games and Dances (1957). (Thanks to Elijah Wald in the comments for pointing me to the McIntosh listing.)
Interestingly, Begley, the man who made the other 1937 recording of this song about a man about to be hanged, served as the sheriff of Hazard. You may hear another Sheriff Begley recording on YouTube, “Run Banjo.”
Begley’s version of “I’ve Been All Around This World” is below courtesy of archive.org and thanks to Stephen Winick at the American Folklife Center for the link. At the end of the song, you can hear the legendary folklorist Alan Lomax referring to Begley as the “composer” of the song.
The line “hang me” probably derived from the American ballad “My Father Was a Gambler.” That song is about an unnamed murderer who was hanged in the 1870s. Like many other versions, the narrator in “My Father Was a Gambler” claims he has been all around the world as he states, “hang me, oh hang me, I’ll be dead and gone.”
Below is a YouTube video of someone playing “My Father Was a Gambler.” The song title reflects a paternal gambler theme also found in “House of the Rising Sun” (“My father was a gamblin’ man / Down in New Orleans.”). A gambling father also appears in the Allman Brothers’ song “Ramblin’ Man” (“My father was a gambler down in Georgia”).
What Hanged Man Inspired the Song?
Unfortunately, sources do not disclose the name of the condemned man or men who inspired the various versions of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me.” The book Outlaw Ballads, Legends & Lore (1996) by Wayne Erbsen claims that the song was inspired by a man hanged in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Some versions of the song mention that location.
Apparently the hanged man’s name has been lost to history. But the book claims that the execution occurred sometime during the decade of the 1870s. The author notes that the famous hanging judge Judge Isaac Charles Parker might have pronounced the sentence because he served as judge at that location during 1875-1896.
One may speculate further about the person who inspired “My Father Was a Gambler” and the “hang me” lyric. Examining a list of people executed in the Arkansas, one finds a large number of men hanged for murder in Arkansas in the 1870s. Most were black men or Native Americans (also illustrating the discriminatory way the death penalty is used).
If we try to narrow down the time period, the famous execution may have occurred sometime during 1873-1876. During that period, executions at Fort Smith were open to the general public. For these public executions, thousands of people could hear the condemned person’s last words.
But even if we narrow down the song’s inspiration to the years of public executions, it is still challenging to determine the name of the condemned man who inspired the “hang me” lyrics. For example, one may guess that the song could be about Sidney Wallace. As something of a folk hero, Wallace and his execution may have captured people’s imagination.
Or maybe the song is about Daniel Evans. He had connections in Missouri, which might have inspired the song’s reference to Cape Girardeau. Evans also joked about his execution, which might have made it memorable to a potential songwriter.
Or maybe the song is about either William Leach or William Whittington. Both of those men gave final speeches to a crowd blaming their vices and discussing their reform. Further, Leach’s lingering 10-minute hanging may have prompted extra attention. (See Roger Harold Tuller, “Let No Guilty Man Escape”: A Judicial Biography of “Hanging Judge” Isaac C. Parker.)
A good guess is that John Childers may be the inspiration for the song because of his final request to be hanged. Childers spoke for sixteen minutes on the scaffold in 1873. Then his request came after the marshal made him an offer.
The marshal explained that he would spare Childers if the condemned man would reveal the names of his accomplices. Following his own code of honor not to rat on others, Childers swept his hand and asked, “Didn’t you say you were going to hang me?” After the marshal answered in the affirmative, Childers replied, “Then, why in hell don’t you!”
The Childers execution continued to attract attention after Childer’s death. Some claimed that Childers escaped. Others claimed that after Childer’s body fell through the trap, a bolt of lightening from a storm cloud struck the scaffold.
But we may only guess how much of the song we know today is based in fact. For example, singers may have added the gambling reference in some versions as a morality lesson for listeners.
The Song and Hangings Today
Other versions may contain clues about the origins or may just feature additional details added long after the execution. One of the versions called “Working on the New Railroad” refers to railroad work. Below, Crooked Still performs their version of “Working on the New Railroad,” which also has some of the “hang me” lyrics.
There are a number of other good versions of “Hang Me” and the various variations, including ones by Amos Lee and Yonder Mountain String Band. Also, reportedly, Bob Dylan performed the song during the 1990 leg of his “Never Ending Tour.”
The Deep Dark Woods made a lively version of the song the title track of their 2008 album, Hang Me Oh Hang Me. I like what they do with the song. Check it out.
While hangings may seem a relic of the past, hanging is still an option for executions in Delaware, New Hampshire, and Washington. In many ways, other current methods of killing prisoners also seem barbaric vestiges of the past.
States now have lethal injection as their primary method of execution. But such executions still are not civilized, as shown by a recent 26-minute execution in Ohio.
Whether or not we will ever see a song about lethal injection that rivals “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” may depend on how much longer some states continue to kill prisoners.
What is your favorite version of “Oh Hang Me”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
For more than two years, I have been anticipating the new Joel and Ethan Coen movie loosely based on the life of folksinger David Van Ronk, Inside Llewyn Davis. Although the Coen Brothers movie may not live up to my expectations of another great integration of story, humor, and music as in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Inside Llewyn Davis is another very good film from the Coen Brothers.
Inside Llewyn Davis follows Llewyn Davis, played by Oscar Isaac, as a struggling folksinger in 1961 Greenwich Village. This review will not give away too much of the story, but the film follows Davis moving around trying to find a couch to sleep on while he struggles to make a living with his music. The movie opens with Davis giving a moving performance of the traditional folk song “Hang Me Oh Hang Me.” In that scene, the actor and musician Isaac immediately conveys the musical soul of Davis.
But as in several other Coen Brothers movies, we see that the world is not quite fair. Others do not recognize Davis’s talents, while we see other more polished and less soulful groups on the rise. But Davis is not an innocent, as he often contributes to his own troubles.
In addition to Isaac, the film features a number of excellent performances by Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, and Coen Brothers film regular John Goodman. The music is pretty good too, but not O Brother good even though producer T Bone Burnett was involved in both movies. Perhaps one thing that prevented the music from taking off for me was that the film seemed to want me to distinguish between “bad” folk music and “good” folk music, even as I wanted to enjoy the “bad” songs too, like the ridiculous but fun “Please Mr. Kennedy.”
Although critics are giving the movie great reviews as show by Rotten Tomatoes 93% rating, I also understand why the Rotten Tomatoes audience rating is almost 20 points lower at only 75%. At times, the lead character’s faults seem to override his charm or the usual Coen Brothers sense of humor (even if that humor does usually carry doses of cynicism and fatalism). Also, one might find that the film plays like a series of vignettes rather than a plot-driven story.
If I were to rate this film among the Coen Brothers catalog, it would still fit among my top ten Coen Brothers films, although maybe it would be around ninth. On the other hand, even if Inside Llewyn Davis is not in league with movies like Fargo (1996) and No Country for Old Men (2007) that blew me away at the first viewing, I suspect that I may grow to love the movie more on repeated viewings, as has happened with me for films like A Serious Man (2009) and Miller’s Crossing (1990).
In other words, I look forward to seeing Inside Llewyn Davis again. And I also plan to pick up folksinger David Van Ronk’s memoir that inspired the film, The Mayor of MacDougal Street. Meanwhile, I suggest you check out Inside Llewyn Davis for yourself.
How would you rank Inside Llewyn Davis among the Coen Brothers catalog? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On November 17, 1958, the Kingston Trio scored a number one hit on the Billboard pop chart with their recording of the folk song “Tom Dooley.” The song, asking Mr. Dooley to hang down his head, became one of those songs where everyone knows the chorus.
(1993). The band mostly maintained Paul Newman’s sparse arrangement.
(2005). Idol explained in an interview with 
. It has been covered by numerous artists, recently appearing on the soundtrack to Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) in a version by Stark Sands with the 
. Check it out below.
(1996) by Wayne Erbsen claims that the song was inspired by a man hanged in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Some versions of the song mention that location.
