Goodnight, Irene: History and Key Facts

"Goodnight, Irene" or "Irene, Goodnight" (Roud 11681) is a 20th-century American folk standard, written in 34 time, first recorded by American blues musician Huddie 'Lead Belly' Ledbetter in 1933. A version recorded by The Weavers was a No. 1 hit in 1950. Pete Seeger of The Weavers has characterized it as Lead Belly's "theme song".

The lyrics tell of the singer's troubled past with his love, Irene, and express his sadness and frustration. Several verses refer explicitly to suicidal fantasies, in the line "If Irene turns her back on me / I'll take morphine and die" and more famously in the line "sometimes I take a great notion to jump in the river and drown", which was the inspiration for the title of the 1964 Ken Kesey novel Sometimes a Great Notion and a song of the same name from John Mellencamp's 1989 album, Big Daddy, itself strongly informed by traditional American folk music.

Source and attribution

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