Red River Valley (song)

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Red River Valley is a folk song often sung by the Sons of the Pioneers. It is still widely believed to be a Texas re-working of a popular American song of 1896, "In the Bright Mohawk Valley." However, research has found that it was known in at least five Canadian provinces before then. This finding led to speculation that it was composed at the time of the Wolseley expedition to the northern Red River Valley in Manitoba, and depicts the sorrow of a local girl or woman as her soldier lover prepares to return to Ontario.

A version of the song was recorded by Bill Haley and the Four Aces of Western Swing in the late 1940s.

The song and tune have been used in numerous films. It was particularly memorable in John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath, whose tale of displaced Oklahomans helps associate it with the southern Red River.

Johnny Cash, on his 1966 album Everybody Loves a Nut, would write and perform a humorous song entitled "Plese Don't Play Red River Valley".

[edit] Lyric

From this valley they say you are going

We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile

For they say you are taking the sunshine

That has brightened our path for a while

Come and sit by my side if you love me

Do not hasten to bid me adieu

But remember the Red River Valley

And the cowboy who loved you so true

Won't you think of the valley you're leaving

Oh how lonely, how sad it will be?

Oh think of the fond heart you're breaking

And the grief you are causing to me

As you go to your home by the ocean

May you never forget those sweet hours

That we spent in the Red River Valley

And the love we exchanged mid the flowers

[edit] Source

Edith Fowke and Keith MacMillan. (1973). The Penguin Book of Canadian Folk Songs. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin.