“Tom Dooley” is an Appalachian murder ballad. It tells of Tom Dula, a Confederate veteran hanged in 1868 for the murder of Laura Foster in Wilkes County, North Carolina; a local poet wrote a song about the case soon after, and Grayson and Whitter made an early recording of it in 1929.
The song is sung as a lament and a warning, its refrain telling Tom to hang down his head and weep, for he is bound to die. It dwells less on the crime than on the doom that follows it — the gallows waiting at the end of the story.
The Kingston Trio’s 1958 recording became a hit and helped set off the folk revival. Doc Watson, who grew up with the ballad in the North Carolina mountains where the story unfolded, kept it alive in the old-time tradition.
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