How the Trio acquired “Tom Dooley” has never been well documented. The CooperToon article mentions that the Trio heard it from another folk singer. Bob Shane stated that they “heard some old fella doing it in an audition for a show some place” at 3:58 minutes into the below YouTube video. That’s the acquisition story that I've heard in the past.
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>> https://www.coopertoons.com/caricatures/kingstontrio_tomdooley.html
> Interesting .......
...... but missing a sorta kinda what you might call a key interesting detail: "Mr. Grayson" in the "Tom Dooley" song had a nephew that recorded it, singing and fiddling, in 1929.
(quoting from the YouTube pages at this site here
https://www.youtube.com/@the78prof72 )
The 1866 murder of Laura Foster in North Carolina, the conviction and hanging of Tom Dula, and the history of this famous folk tune all make for an interesting read (courtesy of the SecondHandSongs website: https://secondhandsongs.com/work/119809 ). The “Mister Grayson” mentioned here and in the best-known Kingston Trio version • 1958 HITS ARCHIVE: Tom Dooley - Kings... was uncle to the man who is singing this original recorded version. The 78rpm single was issued on Victor V-40235 - Tom Dooley (G. B. Grayson) by Grayson and Whitter, vocal & violin by G. B. Grayson, guitar by Henry Whitter, recorded in Memphis September 30, 1929
Lyrics courtesy of Richard L. Matteson Jr's blog (Bluegrass Music and Artwork). This tune stems from the Darling Cory family of songs and I find G.B.'s fiddle part to be particularly eerie. The last image in the slide is Colonel James Grayson, who helped the Wilkes County posse capture the murderer Tom Dooley; a historical event which was later crystallized into myth, and like all myths, drained of its mundanity and colored by the comforting sepia of the past. However, at least Grayson actually did something, as opposed to John Wesley Harding, who shot people to death for no reason and gets his feet kissed by Bob Dylan.
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on 3/19/2025, 5:20 pm, in reply to "