Uncommon
Tom Dooley (song)
North Carolina folk song
Tom Dooley (song)
"Tom Dooley" (Roud 4192) is a traditional North Carolina folk song based on the 1866 murder of a woman named Laura Foster in Wilkes County, North Carolina by Tom Dula (whose name in the local dialect was pronounced "Dooley"). One of the more famous murder ballads, a popular hit version recorded in 1958 by The Kingston Trio reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, was in the top 10 on the Billboard R&B chart, and appeared in the Cashbox Country Music Top 20. The song was selected as one of the American Songs of the Century by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the National Endowment for the Arts, and Scholastic Inc. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time. "Tom Dooley" fits within the wider genre of Appalachian murder ballads. A local poet named Thomas Land wrote a song about the tragedy, titled "Tom Dooley", shortly after Dula was hanged. In the documentary Appalachian Journey (1991), folklorist Alan...
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