“Goodnight, Irene” reached the world through Huddie Ledbetter, known as Lead Belly. John Lomax first recorded his “Irene” for the Library of Congress in 1933, on a visit to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, where Ledbetter was a prisoner. That first take had two verses and two choruses. Lomax recorded the song from him again in 1934 and 1936, longer each time, and the last ran to six verses with a spoken part. In 1936 it was published as “Goodnight, Irene,” credited to Ledbetter and Lomax together.
Ledbetter said he got the refrain and a couple of verses from his uncle Terrell. Another uncle, Bob Ledbetter, who said he had learned it from Terrell as well, was recorded by the Lomaxes singing a nearly identical version. Family members recalled Huddie singing it as early as 1908, as a lullaby for his niece Irene Campbell. The roots go further back. In 1886 the songwriter Gussie Lord Davis published “Irene, Good Night,” and the folklorist Neil V. Rosenberg describes Ledbetter’s song as a folk recomposition of it. By the 1930s Ledbetter had made it his own, changing the rhythm, rewriting most of the verses and singing it in waltz time.
The chorus is a gentle goodnight to Irene, with a promise to see her in dreams. The verses are darker. A man marries on a Saturday night, then he and his wife part. He drifts between country and town and thinks of drowning himself in the river. Another verse turns to advice: give up rambling, gambling and late nights, and stay at home by the fire with wife and family.
Lead Belly died in 1949. In 1950 the Weavers recorded the song for Decca, with Gordon Jenkins arranging and conducting his orchestra and Milt Gabler producing. It was issued as the B-side of “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena.” It entered the Billboard best-seller chart on 30 June 1950 and spent thirteen weeks at number 1, and Billboard ranked it the top song of the year. The Weavers left out some of Ledbetter’s verses, and their words are the ones generally sung now.
Country singers took it up the same summer. Red Foley and Ernest Tubb recorded it as a duet on 30 June 1950 at Castle Studio in Nashville’s Tulane Hotel, with Paul Cohen producing for Decca, and their record went to number 1 on the country chart. Moon Mullican had a number 5 country hit with it the same year.
