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Dink's Song (WORD)
Dink's Song (PDF)
Thanks to Chris Hill for submitting this song for BUG! You can play along with the 1st tutorial video, which is how Chris would like us to play the song when he leads it at BUG.
"Dink's Song" tells the story of a woman deserted by her lover when she needs him the most. The first historical record of the song was by ethnomusicologist John Lomax in 1909, who recorded it as sung by an African American woman called Dink, as she washed her man's clothes in a tent camp of migratory levee-builders on the bank of the Greater Calhoun Bayou River, a few miles from Houston, Texas and the University of Houston. The first publication of the music was in American Ballads and Folk Songs, edited by Lomax and his son, Alan Lomax, and published by Macmillan in 1934.
Gloria Lynne recorded the song for a concept album created and produced by Harry Belafonte titled Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music. In Lynne's version the song is called "Honey." The song was also recorded by Burl Ives (circa 1965).
A brief excerpt of Oscar Isaac and Marcus Mumford's performance of "Dink's Song" is featured in the Coen Brothers's film Inside Llewyn Davis, as well as a complete, searing solo acoustic version by Isaac, self-accompanied on guitar. Both versions are featured on the original soundtrack album.