#97: The Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley”

20 December 1958

#1 for 8 weeks

traditional, arranged by Dave Guard
produced by Voyle Gilmore

“Throughout history, there have been many songs written about the eternal triangle,” drones a quiet voice at the beginning of “Tom Dooley”. With that first line alone, it grounds itself firmly in the American tradition: it doesn’t merely assert its status as part of American folk, it also holds itself up as a worthy continuation of that tradition. And indeed it does seem to have worked: this song is credited as kickstarting the folk music boom that would eventually give birth to Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel. It proved that the gentle sounds of folk music could hold its own against the onslaught of loud, brashy rock — so props to the Kingston Trio, I suppose.

But “folk” also implies a long-standing historical background, and that’s where things get sour. Because “Tom Dooley” spends very little time in talking about “the eternal triangle” — it’s far more interested in commemorating the real-life murder that occurred because of said triangle. That unpleasantness is compounded by the murderer being a Confederate veteran — and though I can’t think that sympathy for the South played a huge part in propelling this to #1 (I know that Australia still had a very racist policy in place, but still it’s not like people were more attracted to it because of its subject material), it’s still unsettling to think that a song this breezy and unironic about murder can still get there.

That simplicity and lack of irony defines “Tom Dooley”. Yet a little research into the event this song’s based on reveals a lot more nuance to the story. The story of Tom Dula (pronounced “Dooley”, hence the song title) is classic weepfest material: man gets jealous, stabs girlfriend and is sentenced to hang, people write song in remembrance. But the story is much deeper than the song it spawned suggests — some accounts suggest that Dula was shielding the actual murderer, a jealous cousin of his. Point is: there’s more nuance to this story than meets the eye, and there’s a lot of subtext that could be developed on. Unfortunately, the Kingston Trio don’t really try to bring out that nuance. I get that they’re merely doing a cover of a folk ballad, but there’s many ways of injecting that with a bit of subtle context, maybe even root for Tom Dooley. Instead, they go hard on the surface text, relishing the title character’s guilt and pain as a vehicle for melodrama. The verses don’t really say much, but what they do say are pretty grim: “met her on the mountain, stabbed her with my knife”. That’s a statement that might send a normal person running for the hills — yet as we’re in the middle of a dramatic folk song, our focus is not on the lyrics themselves, but on the way that these lyrics are being sung.

Is that sanguine foregrounding of murder wrong, then? On a pop level, not really — plenty of songs have snuck through questionable ideas underneath a casually dismissive performance (the Rolling Stones do it all the time). But the Kingston Trio come off as too blatantly casual — Tom Dooley and all his motives and emotions become a footnote, while the guitars and the banjos and the lovely nebbish harmonies get centre stage. It’s an attempt to show off craft, rather than involve us in a story. I won’t deny, of course, that it’s very impressively sung — the three voices are layered well, and the little hollering they do during the latter choruses does get me pricking my ears up. But there’s been so little concern for Tom Dooley — the Trio might as well be singing about making a ham sandwich — that you immediately see through it as the manipulative attempt that it is. And if that’s the case, well there are better triangles worth my time.

Chamois

---

Ratings:

Chamois

3

Liz

6

AVERAGE (ROUNDED DOWN)

4