When I was about 5, my older brother was practicing his guitar, playing very slowly and picking a chord pattern that I thought was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. I asked him to play it over and over. Finally, I asked for the title of this gorgeous, (as I thought) classical piece. House of the Rising Sun, was his answer. 

Hmm. That sounded slightly exotic to a very young little girl living in Laramie, Wyoming. Not long after this, Hal, (my brother) got a new guitar and he gave me the older one as a bribe to clean up my room. (it worked.) But I needed to learn how to play this beautiful song. Hal was a self-taught guitarist, and believed that I could be, too. So, he just gave me the chord charts, and the order to play them in and let me be.

My little hands were just too small to form most of those chords. To help out, my dad gave me a couple of books of folk songs and easier ways to play some of the chords. I was about 9 when, in a new book of folk songs, I found music to House of the Rising Sun. And there were words! Who knew!?!?

I was thrilled with this discovery. As I learned how to sing the song, I thought that it sounded vaguely familiar, but assumed that I’d just heard Hal sing it a few times. The lyrics were evocative. I built a story around them. (These are the words that I learned when I was 9. You may know different words. This is, after all, a folk song.)

There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun.
It’s been the ruin of many-a poor girl.
And, God, I know, ‘cause I’m one.
 
If I had a-listened to what Mama said
I’d be at home today.
But I was a young a foolish poor girl;
I let a gambler lead me astray.
 
My mother, she’s a tailor,
She sews those new blue jeans.
My sweetheart is a drunkard, Oh Lord,
He drinks down in New Orleans.
 
Go tell my baby sister,
Don’t do what your sister done.
Stay away from that house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun.
 
With one foot one the platform
The other on the train,
I’m going back to New Orleans
To wear that ball and that chain.
 
I’m going back to New Orleans,
My race is almost run.
I’m going back to spend my life
Beneath that Rising Sun.
 
In my young and naive version of this story, there is a young woman who fell in with a bad crowd. After all, her sweetheart is a drunkard and a gambler. He led her astray, into a life of crime. And she’s been in jail, a jail they call the House of the Rising Sun. She’s gotten out, but now they need money. In their need, they do something wrong: maybe even rob a bank. She’s been caught, and she’s going back to New Orleans to spend the rest of her life in the House of the Rising Sun: jail. It makes sense – right?

Where does the song come from?

Now, House of the Rising Sun is a folk song. We do not know who wrote it or when. It may even go all the way back to England. It does have a lot of similarities with some English folk songs. Instead of taking place in New Orleans, one of them takes place in Lowestoft in England. There are several books and articles that try to make House of the Rising Sun an offshoot of the 16th Century ballad The Unfortunate Rake. And while there are some similarities to The Rake; House, and other songs like The Streets of Laredo, (which shares a melody with The Unfortunate Rake) are all lament songs, a specific type of folk song that share some similar elements without being any closer related.

The first mention of House of the Rising Sun that I was able to find, was in 1937. Alan Lomax was working for the Library of Congress, driving around the Appalachian mountains, talking to people in remote little hollows, and recording the music that these people were playing. The thought was to save some of the mountain music before it was lost forever. Lomax was in Middlesboro, Kentucky when he heard about a young woman named Georgia Turner and a song she loved to sing. During an evening of music, Georgia sang her song and Lomax recorded it. The melody is similar to what we have become used to in The Animals recording but is still different. I have read that she sings it in a major key while The Animals recorded it in a minor key. (Think happy sounding as opposed to sad sounding.) But I don’t think the truth is quite that simple. She is singing the song in a different type of scale, called a mode. Not major, or minor, just different.

The song quickly turned up in other people’s repertoires and began to be commercially recorded. The first commercially-available recording was done by Clarence Ashley. (I admit that I had a difficult time listening to these. I tend to like my singers to be able to sing on pitch. Silly me.)

Country music great Roy Acuff recorded House of the Rising Sun in 1938, still in a major-ish key, with some different verses. In the early 1940s, Woody Guthrie recorded his take on our song.

Some people think that House of the Rising Sun grew out of the African American blues school of music. There just really isn’t much to support that. Given where the song started, and how it was sung in the early days, all roads lead to Scotland and England, even if we can’t seem to find the missing link. However, it took an African American singer named Josh White to take the song in 1941 or 1942 and put it in that sad minor key. In his guitar work, I can hear the beginnings of what would become that strumming pattern that I love so much.

The Weavers, possibly the gold-standard for folk music in the late 1940s through to the early 1960s, did their own version of House of the Rising Sun.  It is a lovely, sung by Ronnie Gilbert. Now we have the minor key that White would start. The song is starting to sound more like what we are used to.

The distance from Woody Guthrie, and The Weavers to Bob Dylan is a short one, but there was an intermediary. His name was Dave Van Ronk. Dave was a bigwig in the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s. He had a version of House of the Rising Sun that follows the chord progression used by The Animals a few years later. (I freely admit that I had to struggle to even make it through even the first verse. I expect my professional singers to be able to carry a tune given a large-enough bucket. There may be an important part of folk music that I just don’t get.)

As the story goes, Bob Dylan heard Van Ronk perform the song in Greenwich Village. When Dylan was working on his first album, (which was released on my first birthday!) in 1962, he decided to record House of the Rising Sun a la Dave Van Ronk. Unfortunately, he neglected to ask for Van Ronk’s permission. Dave was more than a bit annoyed, because he was going to put the song on his next album, and now it was going to seem that he was copying Dylan instead of the other way around.

1964 brings us to The Animals and what many people feel is the definitive version of House of the Rising Sun. I have sheet music for the song, and the writing credit goes to Alan Price. This used to confuse me, given that I also know that we don’t know who wrote the song. What happened was this: the band was trying to decide who to put on the record as the arranger. All five members of The Animals had contributed to the arrangement, but there was not room on the single for all their names. Alan Price was the keyboardist, and somehow his name ended up alone on the record. This would not have been a problem, except that when it came to royalties for the sheet music, all of them went to Alan Price.

While Price may have gotten royalties for his organ playing on the record, for me it is Hilton Valentine’s guitar work that makes the song. (Yes, I love Eric Burdon’s vocals, but remember, I loved the song for the guitar part first.) He took the chord structure that Van Ronk and Dylan had established, but rather than just strum the chords, he gave us that haunting arpeggio pattern.

Their record producer had not even wanted them to record the song. But since recording it took only 15 minutes, he went along with it. Also working against the record was the fact that in the world of the 2-3 minute pop-song, House clocked in at about 4.5 minutes. While there was a shortened version that initially hit the air-waves in the US, eventually the full song took over.

For my 11th birthday, I got to pick out a new guitar. This involved driving somewhere in the realm of an hour, to get to the closest music store. I was so excited. We got to the store, and I began browsing. The clerk went to my parents, who explained about my present. So, he came over, and began, in a very condescending manner, to tell me about the parts of the guitar, and how to hold it. I finally got him to hand me the one I was interested in. After checking that the neck was straight, I started playing House of the Rising Sun. I hope he learned a valuable lesson that day: don’t be a condescending jerk!

But, my favorite part of my story about House of the Rising Sun comes a little later that year. As the school year was winding down to a close, it was announced that my 5th grade class would have a talent show. I was so excited! I knew exactly what I was going to do. I couldn’t wait to tell my mother. I raced out of school and bounded into the car and told her about the talent show. “How nice. What do you think you might sing?” “I’m going to take my new guitar and play and sing House of the Rising Sun!” “No, you’re not.” I was devastated. I begged, I cried, nothing helped.

The trip home had seldom seemed so long. I ran out of the car, and hid in my room, sobbing loudly. (I almost never sobbed quietly; I admit.) The situation remained like this until my dad got home from work. He came in, calmed my mother down, and then came into my room to calm me down. Choking back tears, I told him about my heartbreak. He had an odd suggestion. He wanted me to go into the living room and explain to my mother what the song was about. I thought this was nuts. How could she not know? (Remember my bank robbing story from earlier?) But I went in and told her my take on the song. I remember Dad looking a bit smug. Finally, she agreed that I could sing the song, but I had to explain to the class what it was about first. I thought that was a little weird, but if it would get me performing the song, then I was ok with it.

It was decades before I found out that most people think the song is about a brothel. I get it, but I still think my version has possibilities.

Do you have a story about House of the Rising Sun? Which is your favorite version of the song? Let me know in the comments below. I’ll be playing some of my favorite version of House of the Rising Sun on my Minnich Music FaceBook page this week, so be sure to check them out.

Until next time!

​In Scarlet-town where I was born, there was a fair maid dwellin’. Thus, begins the ballad that is often called Barbara Allen. 

Barbara Allen is a folk song of the no-one-knows-who-wrote-it-or-even-when variety. The diarist Samuel Pepys (yup, he is best known for having written a diary. This is important because he lived from 1633-1703 in London.) mentions having heard the song sung at a party on 2 January 1666. The song appears to have been well-known at the time.
​
In Scarlet town, where I was born,
There was a fair maid dwellin’,
Made every youth cry Well-a-way!
Her name was Barbara Allen.
 
All in the merry month of May,
When green buds they were swellin’,
Young Jemmy Grove on his death-bed lay,
For love of Barbara Allen.
 
He sent his man in to her then,
To the place where she was dwellin’;
“O haste and come to my master dear,
If your name be Barbara Allen.”
 
So slowly, slowly rose she up,
And slowly she came nigh him,
And when she drew the curtain by--
“Young man, I think you’re dyin’.”
 
“O dinna ye mind, young man,” says she,
“When the red wine ye were fillin’,
That ye made the healths go round and round,
And slighted Barbara Allen?”
 
He turned his face unto the wall,
And death was with him dealin’:
“Adieu, adieu, my dear friends all,
And be kind to Barbara Allen!”
 
As she was walking o’er the fields,
She heard the dead-bell knellin’;
And every blow the dead-bell gave
Cried “Woe to Barbara Allen.”
 
“O mother, mother, make my bed,
O make it saft and narrow:
My love has died for me today,
I’ll die for him tomorrow.”
 
They buried him in the old churchyard,
They buried her beside him.
And out his grave grew a red- red rose
And out of hers a briar
 
They grew and grew in the old churchyard;
Till they could grow no higher.
They lapped and tied in a true love’s knot,
The red rose and the briar.
 
 
While many places are given in the first verse for where the song takes place, Scarlet town is the one that I learned. It is generally considered that Scarlet is a joke on the town of Reading (pronounced Red-ing.) While the music that I owned of this song is long, long gone, I’ve tried to give you the version that I used to sing.
 
As with other folk songs of this type, there are as many versions as there are people who sing it.  We know that it goes back at least as far as 1666. The American historian B.H. Bronson said  “This little song of a spineless lover who gives up the ghost without a struggle, and his spirited beloved who repents too late, has paradoxically shown a stronger will to live than perhaps any other ballad in the canon. It is still universally known.” Bronson found 198 versions of Barbara Allen. (198! It’s a shame he couldn’t find two more.) There are still people recording this song.
 
Dark of the Moon
 
Barbara Allen has made it into a few movies as background music, but it was (sort of, somehow) made into a play entitled Dark of the Moon. But the plot gets a little out there. We have witches, magic, and a ritualized rape. Apparently, the play was written in 1942 at the University of Iowa, possibly in response to an unspecified bad folk play of the time.
 
When I was in college, we did Dark of the Moon. I remember it as being a lot of fun, if more than a little weird. I remember all of the cast being upset that the rape got laughs. We all found it disturbing.
 
Ok, briefly, here’s the plot. There is a witch-boy, and he falls in love with Barbara Allen. He goes to the Conjur Man and asks to be made human so that he can marry Barbara. The Conjur Man refuses, but the Conjur Woman agrees, but like Cinderella’s fairy godmother, gives some conditions. Barbara has to remain faithful to him for a year, or he will return to being a witch.
John (our witch-boy is now called John) meets the fair Barbara and asks her to marry him. She says yes, but there is already a problem. Since he isn’t quite human, John cannot enter the church, so they are wed outside.
 
Time passes. There is conflict with the local villagers, especially with Barbara’s ex. Barbara gets pregnant, and gives birth to a demon-baby, which is still-born and then burned.
 
We make it to the last night before the year is up, and Barbara is dragged off to church, where her ex-boyfriend tells everyone that God has told him that his lusting for Barbara is not a sin, and that the only way to save her soul is for him to take her. So, while the churchgoers watch, Barbara is raped.
 
This breaks the agreement with the Conjur Woman, and as Barbara dies, John returns to being a witch. The end.
 
Barbara Allen and Witches?!?
 
During rehearsals for Dark of the Moon, I researched the song Barbara Allen. Davis and Elkins college (first college I attended) houses the Augusta Collection, an archive of Appalachian music and folk culture. In none of the versions of the ballad of Barbara Allen could I find any mention of witches.
 
Barbara Allen is an old-school folk song. No one knows who wrote it, when, or why. But is exists in Scotland, England, and the USA. It has been translated into French, and Italian.
Are you familiar with this song? Have you ever seen Dark of the Moon? I’ll be posting versions of Barbara Allen on my Minnich Music FaceBook page this week, so be sure to check them out.
Until next time!
 

I remember being in kindergarten, with the whole class standing in a circle holding hands. We were learning the song This Land Is Your Land. I loved it. Of course, I loved any time that we sang. But something about that song made me feel so grown up and proud.

This Land is Your Land is one of those folk songs that we know when, why, where, and by whom it was written. The when is 23 February 1940. Where: the Hanover House Hotel at 101 West 43rd Street in New York City. By whom:

Woody Guthrie
​
Woody Guthrie was a fascinating person. He was born in 1912 in Oklahoma. He married for the first time at the young age of 19 but left his wife and children at the advent of the Dust Bowl and went to seek his fortune in California. (Needless to say, this marriage did not last.) Woody married three times fathering a total of eight children.
Throughout his life, Woody was associated with Socialism and Communism, although he never actually joined either party. He was also active in the Labor movement, helping unions form. He traveled extensively and wrote songs about everything that he saw.
But I haven’t yet told you why Woody wrote This Land Is Your Land. He was sick and tired of hearing Kate Smith singing God Bless America on the radio.
Kate Smith and God Bless America
God Bless America was written in 1918 by Tin Pan Alley composer extraordinaire Irving Berlin. He revived it in 1938 as America was debating joining the war in Europe. At this point Kate Smith was the queen of radio hosting The Kate Smith Hour that gave us her resident comics, Abbott and Costello. (Who’s on First had its premiere on The Kate Smith Hour on 24 March 1938.) God Bless America became Kate’s signature song.
Initially, Woody entitled his new song God Blessed America for Me, but later changed the title to This Land Is Your Land. He wrote the lyrics in his hotel room, but the melody came from a different source.
The Carter Family and Goat Gonads
The Carter Family had become famous due to appearing on the strongest radio station on the continent, owned by John R. Brinkley. Oh boy. “Dr.” Brinkley was a huge charlatan who convinced thousands of people that he could cure them over the airwaves. But his biggest scam dealt with transplanting goat gonads into men’s testes. I kid you not. Yes, a lot of people died or were permanently disabled.
Almost incidentally, Brinkley pioneered radio broadcasts. One of the acts he found and promoted was the Carter Family. They were originally made up of A.P. Carter, his wife Sara, and their sister-in-law, Maybelle. They sang folk, religious and self-written songs in a bluegrass-style. (Johnny Cash’s wife June was a member of a later generation of the Carter Family.) They had two songs that become important in the story of This Land Is Your Land: When the World’s on Fire, and Little Darlin’, Pal of Mine.
When the World’s on Fire is also known as Oh, my Loving Brother, an old-time hymn. As best I can tell all the Carter Family did was to change the name. However, their song Little Darlin’, Pal of Mine, used the same melody with new words written by A.P.
Woody had probably heard Little Darlin’, Pal of Mine on the radio in 1938. He may have also been familiar with the hymn, but The Carter Family didn’t record it until 1945. This doesn’t mean that they could not have been playing it on the radio before it was recorded.
Little Darlin’, Pal of Mine
My little darling, oh, how I love you
How I love you none can tell
In your heart you love another
Little darling pal of mine
 
Many a night while you lay sleeping
Dreaming of your rambler's life
Lay a poor boy brokenhearted
Listening to the wind outside

My little darling, oh, how I love you
How I love you none can tell
In your heart you love another
Little darling pal of mine
 
Many a day with you I've rambled
Countless hours with you I've spent
Thought I had your heart forever
But I find it only lent

My little darling, oh, how I love you
How I love you none can tell
In your heart you love another
Little darling pal of mine
 
There is just three things I wish for
That's a casket, shroud, and grave
When I'm dead, don't weep for me
Just kiss those lips that you betrayed

My little darling, oh, how I love you
How I love you none can tell
In your heart you love another
Little darling pal of mine
(Well, that was a bright, cheerful little song, wasn’t it?)
This Land Is Your Land
There are a couple of changes that Woody made to the melody. The original is written in the ABCD format; meaning a different melodic idea for each of the verse’s four lines. Woody changed it to ABAC; so that the third line is a repeat of the first, and the fourth line is something entirely different.
Woody didn’t record This Land Is Your Land until 1944. He was approached by Alan Lomax, who with his father, John, had been driving all around Appalachia collecting folk songs for decades for the Library of Congress. Alan wanted to start putting American folk songs into school music books, and he wanted This Land Is Your Land. Woody sold him the rights to do this for $1.
This Land Is Your Land
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway;
I saw below me that golden valley;
This land was made for you and me.
I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding;
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
The version that I learned as a child, and that was put into school music books, lacked the last three verses.
Is this a folk song?
What makes this song a folk song? We know so much about it, and usually with folk music we know so little. In this case, we need to revisit the definition of folk song:

1. a song originating among the people of a country or area, passed by oral tradition from one singer or generation to the next, often existing in several versions, and marked generally by simple, modal melody and stanzaic, narrative verse.
2. a song of similar character written by a known composer.

 
This song falls into the second part of the definition. It has a simple melody and a stanzaic, narrative verse. (Stanzaic – meaning it contains verses or stanzas) As the years have passed, it has gone through the oral tradition as well and has had many people sing it in their own way, often adding or subtracting verses. And the song continues to grow and change as people from Bruce Springsteen to Lady Gaga (who humorously combined it with God Bless America!) to Queen Latifah sing it.
Proving its folk song status even more, the song has been translated into many different languages and used as songs of national pride all over the world. Here’s a verse that they add in Canada:
 
This land is your land, This land is my land,
From Bonavista, to the Vancouver Island
From the Arctic Circle to the Great Lake waters,
This land was made for you and me.
 
As a final note (la!) here’s what Woody put on the copywrite notice for this song:
This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do.
 
Were you taught This Land Is Your Land in school? Have you ever heard the versions from other countries? I’ll be posting several versions this week on my Minnich Music Facebook page, so be sure to check those out.
Until next time!

Dictionary.com defines a folk song as: (noun) a song originating among the people of a country or area, passed by oral tradition from one singer or generation to the next, often existing in several versions, and marked generally by simple, modal melody and stanzaic, narrative verse. Also, a song of similar character written by a known composer. (Stanzaic – as in having stanzas or verses) That goes with what I always say about folk songs: that there are as many different ways to sing one as there are people singing it.
 
Wikipedia goes on to tell us that the terms folksong, folk music and folk dance are off-shoots of the term folklore that was coined in 1846 by the English writer William Thoms, who used it to describe : "the traditions, customs, and superstitions of the uncultured classes". The article goes on to talk a bit about the German concept of volk, which can describe the people as a whole, as in nation or tribe.
 
So, there is a phrase in the paragraph above that sticks out: the uncultured classes. As opposed to the cultured classes, I suppose. Some of that makes sense. In the case of many folk songs, we do not know when they were written or who wrote them. Many go so far back that they predate literacy, (although, that may not be as far back as you might think.) The more cultured, literate classes had opera, and art songs; songs that we know who composed them and when. Often, they require a bit of musical training, or in the case of opera, a lot of training, to perform. Folk songs tend to be simpler and require little to no training.
 
Rather than talk about the folk song in general, this month I’m going to look at four different folk songs. To start things off, this week we are looking at Down in the Valley.
 
When I am teaching guitar, Down in the Valley is one of the first songs that I give young guitar students. While a lot of songs require at least three chords, Down in the Valley only needs two, this makes it easy for young fingers to accommodate. And a lot of kids still learn it in early schooling. A lot of folk songs show up in preschool and kindergarten classrooms.
 
We can get a little bit of an idea when the melody for Down in the Valley was written and by whom. The site secondhandsongs.com says that the melody can be traced to the first part of The Happy Home Waltz by Louis-Antione Julienn. I was not able to find anything on this waltz to verify this information. The only Happy Home Waltz I could find was by a different composer and bore no resemblance to Down in the Valley. However, since we know that Julienn was around from 1812 to 1860, that gives us a rough time period for the melody of this song. (A rabbit hole I fell down gave me this piece of information on Julienn – his father was a violinist, and when it came time for his infant son to be baptized he asked the symphony where he worked if anyone wanted to be the baby’s godfather. Everyone volunteered. This gave the boy the full name of: Louis George Maurice Adolphe Roche Albert Abel Antonio Alexandre Noë Jean Lucien Daniel Eugène Joseph-le-brun Joseph-Barême Thomas Thomas Thomas-Thomas Pierre Arbon Pierre-Maurel Barthélemi Artus Alphonse Bertrand Dieudonné Emanuel Josué Vincent Luc Michel Jules-de-la-plane Jules-Bazin Julio César Jullien.)
 
The lyrics for Down in the Valley often get mushed up with the lyrics for Birmingham Jail. No one knows where Valley lyrics originated, but the guitarist Jimmie Tarlton of the country duo Darby and Tarlton claimed that he wrote the Birmingham Jail lyrics while in said jail for moonshining in 1925. However, Lead Belly claimed that he performed Birmingham Jail in 1924, so who knows.
 
If we go to Ireland, we find the same melody and a lot of the same lyrics as Down in the Valley in a piece called the Connemara Cradle Song. It appears that the first recording of this was somewhere in the 1930s or 1940s, but that doesn’t mean that the song is that new.
 
Is it possible that Mr. Very-Long-Name Julienn heard the folksong and stole it for his waltz that I cannot find? Absolutely. He spent time in both Ireland and the United States. He was kicked out of the Paris Conservatoire because of his love for the lighter forms of music. It was also not uncommon for composers to borrow from folk music. Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) used Norwegian folk music in a lot of his compositions, Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) did the same with Swedish folk music, and Bedrich Smetana (1884-1884) did that with Czech music. So, there was a movement in the mid- 19th century to borrow themes and melodies from folk music.
 
And, to make things even more confusing, Kurt Weill (who composed Mack the Knife among many, many other things) wrote an opera with words by Arnold Sundgaard called Down in the Valley. The opera uses several folk songs to tell its story, along with a few songs composed specifically for it. This opera is in English and is very short, at only 35 minutes. So much for the “uncultured classes” of William Thoms, huh?
 
Here are some of the lyrics of Down in the Valley.
 
Down in the valley
Valley so low
Hang your head over
Hear the wind blow.
Hear the wind blow, dear
Hear the wind blow
Hang your head over
Hear the wind blow
 
If you don’t love me
Love whom you please
But throw your arms round me
Give my heart ease
Give my heart ease, dear
Give my heart ease
Throw your arms round me
Give my heart ease
 
Roses love sunshine
Violets love dew
Angels in heaven
Know I love you
Know I love you, dear
Know I love you
Angels in heaven
Know I love you
 
Bird in a cage, love
Bird in a cage
Dying for freedom
Ever a slave
Ever a slave, dear
Ever a slave
Dying for freedom
Ever a slave
 
Write me a letter
Send it by mail
Send it in care of
The Birmingham jail
Birmingham jail, love
Birmingham jail
Send it in care of
The Birmingham jail
 
That is only a small sample of all of the lyrics for this “simple” folk song. As I said at the beginning, there are as many different variations of this song as there are people who sing it.
 
Do you have a favorite version of this song? Like me, did you learn it in kindergarten? Tell me your story in the comments below. I’ll be posting this and some of my other favorite folk songs this week on my Minnich Music Facebook page, so be sure to check those out.
Until next time!