Where Did You Sleep Last Night
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"Where Did You Sleep Last Night," also known as "In the Pines" and "Black Girl," is a traditional American folk song which dates back to at least the 1870s, and is believed to be Southern Appalachian in origin. The identity of the song's author is unknown, but it has been recorded by dozens of artists in numerous genres. The song was first made popular by Lead Belly in 1944, while the 1952 version by Bill Monroe set the standard for country and bluegrass renditions. A 1993 acoustic version by grunge act Nirvana introduced the song to many people at the end of the twentieth century.
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[edit] Early history
Like numerous other folk songs, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" was passed on from one generation and locale to the next by word of mouth. The first printed version of the song, compiled by Cecil Sharp, appeared in 1917, and comprised just four lines and a melody. The lines are:
Black girl, black girl, don't lie to me
Where did you stay last night?
I stayed in the pines where the sun never shines
And shivered when the cold wind blows
In 1925, a version of the song was recorded onto phonograph cylinder by a folk collector. This was the first documentation of "The Longest Train" variant of the song. This variant include a stanza about "The longest train I ever saw". "The Longest Train" stanzas probably began as a separate song that later merged into "Where Did You Sleep Last Night". Lyrics in some versions about "Joe Brown's coal mine" and "the Georgia line" may date it to Joseph E. Brown, a former Governor of Georgia, who famously leased convicts to operate coal mines in the 1870s. While early renditions that mention that someone's "head was found in the driver's wheel" make clear that the train caused the decapitation, some later versions would drop the reference to the train and reattribute the cause. Music historian Norm Cohen, in his 1981 book "Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong," states the song came to consist of three frequent elements: a chorus about "in the pines", a stanza about "the longest train" and a stanza about a decapitation, though not all elements are present in all versions.[1]
Starting the year following the 1925 recording, commercial recordings of the song were done by various "hillbilly" bands. In a 1970 dissertation, Judith McCulloh found 160 permutations of the song. As well as rearrangement of the three frequent elements, the person who goes into the pines or who is decapitated has been described as a man, a woman, an adolescent, a wife, a husband or a parent, while the pines have represented sexuality, death or loneliness. The train has been described killing a loved one, as taking one's beloved away or as leaving an itinerant worker far from home.[1]
In variants in which the song describes a confrontation, the person being challenged is always a woman, and never a man. The Kossoy Sisters folk version asks, "Little girl, little girl, where'd you stay last night? Not even your mother knows." The reply to one version's "Where did you get that dress, and those shoes that are so fine?" is "from a man in the mines, who sleeps in the pines."[1] The theme of a woman who has been caught doing something she should not is thus also common to many variants. One variant, sang in the early twentieth century by the Ellison clan (Ora Ellison, deceased) in Lookout Mountain Georgia, told of the rape of a young Georgia girl, who fled to the pines in shame. Her rapist, a male soldier, was later beheaded by the train. Mrs. Ellison had stated that it was her belief that the song was from the time shortly after the civil war.
[edit] Notable versions
- Lead Belly: According to musicologist Alan Lomax, the American folk musician Lead Belly learned "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" from the 1917 printed version, and from the 1925 recording. Lead Belly helped popularize the song, recording over half-a-dozen versions between 1944 and 1948, most often under the title, "Black Girl" (or, "Black Gal"). Lead Belly's first rendition, recorded for Musicraft Records in New York City in February 1944, is arguably his most familiar.
- Bill Monroe: The 1952 recording by the founder of bluegrass was highly influential on later bluegrass and country versions. Fiddles and yodeling are used to evoke the cold wind blowing through the pines, while references to the decapitation are dropped. However, added lines suggest an eerie quality of timelessness about the train: "I asked my captain for the time of day/ He said he throwed his watch away."
- Louvin Brothers: A version of "In the Pines" appears on the Louvin Brothers' 1956 album, "Tragic Songs of Life."
- Bob Dylan: The song was performed by Dylan on November 4, 1961 at the Carnegie Chapter Hall in New York City. He again performed the song on January 12, 1990 at the Toad's Place in New Haven, Connecticut. Neither of these recordings has been officially released.
- Jackson C. Frank: The song is on the second disc of Blues Run the Game as "In the Pines."
- Clifford Jordan: In the 1965 jazz arrangement by Jordan, singer Sandra Douglass is clear that the woman is in the pines because her husband's death has forced her into prostitution: "You caused me to weep/ And you caused me to moan/ You caused me to leave my home."
- The Four Pennies: Recorded and released Black Girl in October 1964, which reached No. 20 in the British charts.
- The Pleazers: The song was recorded as "Poor Girl" by the Australian rock band in 1965. It was originally recorded as "Black Girl," but changed due to it being viewed as racist.
- Grateful Dead: The song was recorded by the American rock band the Grateful Dead on July 17, 1966. It appears as "In The Pines" on their 2001 box set, The Golden Road.
- John Phillips: Titled "Black Girl", the song appears as a bonus track on the remastered CD of John Phillips (The Wolf King of L.A.) recorded in 1969.
- Long John Baldry: Titled "Black Girl," the song appears on It Ain't Easy, a bluesy release produced by Rod Stewart and Elton John in 1971. Baldry sings a rousing version with Maggie Bell.
- Danish rock band Gasolin released "Min tøs", a cover, in 1972 on the album Gasolin' 2.
- Dave Van Ronk: Appears as "In The Pines" on The Folkway Years 1959 - 1961.
- Link Wray: Recorded two versions titled "Georgia Pines" and "In the Pines" on his 1973 folk-roots-rock release Beans and Fatback.
- Gene Clark: Recorded "In the Pines" on his 1977 album Two Sides to Every Story.
- Annette Zilinskas, formerly of the Bangles: Recorded the song in 1986 with her band Blood on the Saddle
- Mark Lanegan: An electric version of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" was recorded by Mark Lanegan in August 1989. It appears on his 1990 debut solo album, The Winding Sheet. In 2006 the Twilight Singers toured with Lanegan as guest vocalist and performed the song live several times.
- Nirvana: "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" was occasionally performed live by the American rock band Nirvana during the early 1990s. Singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain was introduced to the song by Lanegan, and even played guitar on Lanegan's version. Like Lanegan, Cobain usually screamed the song's final verse. Cobain earned critical and commercial acclaim for his acoustic performance of the song during Nirvana's MTV Unplugged appearance in 1993. This version was posthumously released on the band's MTV Unplugged in New York album (and as a B-side on their recalled "Pennyroyal Tea" single) the following year. A solo Cobain home demo of the song, recorded in 1990, appears on the band's 2004 box set, With the Lights Out. It does not feature the final screamed verse of later versions.
- Dolly Parton: A live version was recorded by Parton in 1994. It appears as "In The Pines" on her album, Heartsongs: Live From Home. "It's easy to play, easy to sing, great harmonies and very emotional," said Parton of the song, who learned it from elder members of her family. "The perfect song for simple people."[1]
- Ralph Stanley & Jimmy Martin: A version appears as "In the Pines" on the Ralph Stanley & Jimmy Martin album, First Time Together. It was released in 2005.
- Susheela Raman: on her 2007 album 33 1/3
- Smog: on his 2005 album A River Ain't Too Much to Love. The song drops the subject of decapitation, but builds upon the narrative of the train in the vein of Bill Monroe and Clifford Jordan.
- Nicole Atkins performed a rendition of the song at the 2007 South by Southwest music festival. She changed the lyrics to "My boy, my boy..."
- Nathan Abshire, a Louisiana cajun accordion player, recorded a distinct variation of the song, sung in Cajun French, under the name "Pine Grove Blues." His melody is a hard-driving blues, but the lyrics, when translated to English, are the familiar, "Hey, black girl, where did you sleep last night?" "Pine Grove Blues" became Abshire's theme song and he recorded it at least three times from the 1940s onward.
[edit] Appearances
[edit] In films
- The song can be heard in the background of the Nicholas Ray film The True Story of Jesse James.
- It is possible to hear the song at the end of Wild River, a 1960 film directed by Elia Kazan.
- The Four Pennies perform the song as "Black Girl" in the 1965 music review film Pop Gear.
- A few lines of the song are sung by Sissy Spacek, playing Loretta Lynn, in the 1980 film, Coal Miner's Daughter.
- Lead Belly's version of the song appears in the 1997 horror film, I Know What You Did Last Summer.
[edit] In plays
- The song appears in the 1958 play A Taste of Honey, by the British dramatist Shelagh Delaney. It is sung by the character Josephine, who replaces the lyric "black girl" with "black boy." The "black boy" in the play is Jimmy, a black sailor who impregnated her after a one night stand, and with whom she is in love even though he has left her life.
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"Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" Image:WhereDidYouSleepLastNight.ogg Performed by Lead Belly - Problems playing the files? See media help.
[edit] In The Pines Club
In The Pines is also the name of a London-based folk and blues club which takes place monthly on Sundays at The Harrison in King's Cross.
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b c d "A Simple Song That Lives Beyond Time" by Eric Weisbard, New York Times, November 13, 1994
[edit] References
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