Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley--Interesting Random Facts

The other week, I went down a bit of a Wikipedia Rabbit hole with Tom Dooley, so I thought I'd share it here.  (Sharing random trips down Wikipedia is, after all, the raison d'être for this whole Interesting Random Facts series.)

These days, a lot of my time consists of walking back and forth with the baby and trying to entertain him, so I'm constantly looking for new songs to sing along to on Youtube.  

"What about The Kingston Trio?" I thought to myself.  "Weren't they Pete Seeger's old band?"  So I searched Youtube for The Kingston Trio, and the first song that popped up was "Tom Dooley".

Actually, I should back up here quickly just to say it turns out I had mis-remembered about The Kingston Trio being Pete Seeger's band.  Pete Seeger's band had been The Weavers (see Wikipedia article HERE).  But I believe The Kingston Trio (Wikipedia article HERE) is often mentioned in association with Pete Seeger because they helped to popularize some of his songs.  Most notably Where Have All the Flowers Gone, which, according to Wikipedia, The Kingston Trio actually initially claimed composition credit for, believing it to be an old folk song in the public domain.

But anyway, back to the  Tom Dooley song.

I had a listen to it, and it certainly sounds familiar.  I imagine that, like a lot of songs from this era, I probably heard it a lot growing up just in the background.  It probably got played on oldies stations occasionally.  According to Wikipedia, this song was crazy popular back in 1958.  It  reached No. 1 in Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, and also was top 10 on the Billboard R&B chart, and appeared in the Cashbox Country Music Top 20, and sold over 3 million copies as a single.  

It, uh... it must have been a different time, 1958.  Can you imagine a song like this getting so popular nowadays?  (I know, I know, I'm hardly the first person to observe that musical tastes have changed over time, but... it's still funny to think about, isn't it?)

Anyway, this song sent me down the Tom Dooley Wikipedia rabbit hole.  

It turns out that this was an old folk song  which is based on the actual murder trial of Tom Dula ("Dula" was pronounced as "Dooley" in the local dialect.)

The actual story of Tom Dula makes for fascinating reading--check out the Wikipedia article HERE.  There's a juicy love triangle going on.  There's also a lingering question about what really happened, and whether or not Tom Dula was guilty or innocent.  There was a huge sensational trial, and the former governor Zebulon Baird Vance even represented Tom Dula.  

Whatever one thinks about Tom Dula's guitl or innocence, I get the impression from the Wikipedia article that he tried to meet his end with a certain amount of dignity.  

As he stood on the gallows facing death, Dula reportedly said, "Gentlemen, I did not harm a single hair on that fair lady's head."^[9] 

...but the lyrics of the folk song seem to strip away that dignity and portray him as a pathetic and crying figure.

This time tomorrow

Reckon where I'll be

Down in some lonesome valley

Hangin' from a white oak tree

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley

Hang down your head and cry (poor boy)

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley

Poor boy, you're bound to die

Well now, boy

Boy, those old folk singers sure didn't give much thought to the dignity of their thematic subjects, did they?  

Now, don't get me wrong, I actually like the song.  Give it a listen!  The Kingston Trio really get into it, especially that last verse where they're adding in the yells and whoops.  And it's a real earworm.  Play it a couple of times, and you'll find yourself humming it all day.  (In fact, let me add this to my "Sharing Music I Like" index).  

But still, the lyrics do seem unnecessarily mocking, don't they?

Which makes this last little factoid seem all the more hilarious:

Dula's last name was pronounced "Dooley," leading to some confusion in spelling over the years. The pronunciation of a final "a" like "y" (or "ee") is an old feature in Appalachian speech, as in the term "Grand Ole Opry".^{[citation needed]} The confusion was compounded by the fact that Dr. Tom Dooley, an American physician known for international humanitarian work, was at the height of his fame in 1958 when the Kingston Trio version became a major hit.^{[citation needed]}

Now, I know there's still a "citation needed" hanging off that last one, but this is one of those little facts I really hope is true.  Just for sheer humor value.  Can't you just picture how funny it would have been if Dr. Tom Dooley kept having to answer questions about why he was hanging down his head and crying?

But who exactly was Dr. Tom Dooley?  Well, let's head over to the link for his Wikipedia entry to see, and... Yikes!

Thomas Anthony Dooley III (January 17, 1927 – January 18, 1961) was an American physician who worked in Southeast Asia at the outset of American involvement in the Vietnam War. While serving as a physician in the United States Navy and afterwards, he became known for his humanitarian and anti-communist political activities up until his early death from cancer. After his death, the public learned that he had been recruited as an intelligence operative by the Central Intelligence Agency, and numerous descriptions of atrocities by the Viet Minh in his book Deliver Us From Evil had been fabricated.

Dooley has been called "a key agent in the first disinformation campaign of the Vietnam War," garnering support for the US government's growing involvement there.^[1] Dooley, one critic said, is an example of "celebrity sainthood" and the "intersection of show business and mysticism occupied the space where Tom Dooley was perhaps most at home"; nevertheless, he "helped to pull American Catholicism away from its insular, angry anti-Communism" and he lived a life that does not "invite facile judgment." ^[2]

Okay, well that's obviously another whole Wikipedia rabbit hole that just opened up.  See, that's the problem with Wikipedia!