“Goodnight, Irene” or “Irene, Goodnight,” is a 20th-century American folk standard, written in 3/4 time, first recorded by American blues musician Huddie ‘Lead Belly’ Ledbetter in 1933. 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, most famously in the line “sometimes I take a great notion to jump in the river and drown,” which was the inspiration for 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. In 1950, one year after Lead Belly’s death, the American folk band The Weavers recorded a version of “Goodnight, Irene”
Songs with Banjo from Harold Hagler
