Talk:Tom Dooley (song)

Lomax
The Alan Lomax documentary Appalachian Journey suggests that Lomax had at least some part in discovering/popularizing the song through his radio shows. Might be worth putting it in the article if anyone can find an independent source.


 * Pete Seeger explains in his book "How to Play the Five-String Banjo" that Frank Profitt made a recording which a guy named Frank Warner heard. Frank Warner learned to play the song, made his own record, which the Kingston Trio then heard, and got inspired to record it themselves. 69.129.39.228 (talk) 07:21, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Authorship, Copyright
Proffitt was "acknowledged by the courts as the preserver of the original version"? How is "preserver" a legal status? I've been preserving "Happy Birthday" on a regular basis for a very long time. I need a caselaw citation on this, not to mention something about how this gets around authorship for a copyright.Ramseyman (talk) 21:42, 11 February 2020 (UTC)


 * The poet Thomas Land died in 1912. The fact that he has been dead for so long means that the original lyrics are now public domain. But I don't know if people have actually been singing the original lyrics all this time, or creating different versions of them. It's possible that parts of the best-known recordings have different words.


 * PS: You may be glad to know that Happy Birthday is officially public domain now. Also, you may be unhappy to recognize that whatever you or I know about copyright law, copyright predators know it far better. If you want to fight them, you'll need a great deal of time and money, and several very dedicated lawyers. TooManyFingers (talk) 01:47, 26 August 2021 (UTC)


 * How about the tune? Did Land write that too or did he put his lyric to a pre-existing tune--or was his original version even meant to be sung? Is this known? TheScotch (talk) 23:43, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Singles cats
Can we get some citations for this song being a "number one hit" in different countries? &mdash;ScouterSig 22:26, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.76.254.95 (talk) 22:04, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

This article is a joke
How many times does it say Dooley is how Dula is pronounced? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sofa King Insane (talk • contribs) 09:54, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Four - which I've now now edited back to two, which I think covers the Dula/Dooley point. Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:30, 2 September 2015 (UTC).

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Clarification on the vowel
There is no need to go into "characteristic of Appalachian speech." In British dialects as late as 1740, we see the vowel sound of "say," "hay" with words that contemporary American and British speech treats with the vowel sound of "see" and "heat." Alexander Pope several places rhymes "tea" with "say."

American settlers preserved the speech they came over with. The more geographically isolated they were, the longer they maintained their "original" vowels. Consequently, hillspar dialects will still pronounce the first name "Bill" as "Beel" and harden the initial consonant in a word like "city" (and push the vowel) to "seedty."

So long as Tom Dula's last name had an accented final syllable, the vowel would be fronted and raised.

Honestly, y'all, it's just a dialect, and this particular vowel doesn't explain "Opry." Hithladaeus (talk) 15:13, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
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