Tom Dooley

E97649

"Tom Dooley" is a traditional American folk ballad, popularized during the mid-20th-century folk revival, that recounts the story of a man condemned for murder.

All labels observed (1)

Label Occurrences
Tom Dooley canonical 4

How this entity was disambiguated

Statements (47)

Predicate Object
instanceOf American folk ballad
folk song
alternateSpelling Tom Dula
associatedWith American folk music revival
surface form: American folk revival

Appalachian folk music
awarded Grammy Hall of Fame Award
basedOn Life of Tom Dula
Murder of Laura Foster
chartSuccess U.S. Billboard Hot 100
surface form: Billboard Hot 100 hit
collectedBy Frank Warner
collectedFrom Frank Proffitt
countryOfOrigin United States of America
surface form: United States
culturalImpact Helped spark late-1950s commercial folk boom
genre folk
murder ballad
hasCategory American murder ballads
Songs about capital punishment
Songs about crime
Songs based on actual events
hasLyric “Hang down your head, Tom Dooley”
“Poor boy, you’re bound to die”
historicalEventLinked Trial of Tom Dula in 1868
language English
mainCharacter Tom Dula
narrativeForm first-person ballad
narrativeOutcome Execution of Tom Dula
notableRecordingYear 1958
popularizedBy The Kingston Trio
recordedBy Doc Watson
Frank Proffitt
Lonnie Donegan
The Kingston Trio
The Limeliters
regionOfCollection Appalachian Mountains
settingLocation North Carolina
Wilkes County, North Carolina
subjectOf numerous cover versions
scholarly studies on folk ballads
theme execution
guilt
lost love
murder
punishment
timePeriod American Civil War
surface form: American Civil War era

Post–Civil War period
transmission oral tradition
type traditional song

How these facts were elicited

Referenced by (4)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

The Kingston Trio notableWork Tom Dooley
The Kingston Trio notableSingle Tom Dooley
Lonnie Donegan notableWork Tom Dooley