US Versions 7La. Dink's Song (Fare Thee Well)
[Since there is essentially one eight-stanza set of lyrics for Dink's song, I will not at this time try and put all the variant versions and recordings attached to this page. To see Lomax's three very similar published versions see Main Headnotes. Further investigation into the "Fare Thee Well" song family is warranted. However, since this is about the Died for Love song family and other versions don't have the apron stanzas, the investigation will wait.
R. Matteson 2017]
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Dink's Song Notes
In Best Loved American Folk Songs (Folk Song USA) John A. Lomax called Dink's song, "a beautiful Negro variant of Careless Love."Lomax tells how he found the song in 1904, when he made his first field trip for Harvard University:
"I found Dink scrubbing her man's clothes in the shade of their tent across the Brazos river from the A. & M. College in Texas. Professor James C. Nagle of the College faculty was the supervising engineer of a levee-building company and he had invited me to come along and bring my Edison recording machine. The Negroes were trained levee workers from the Mississippi River. . . The original Edison record of 'Dink's Song' was broken long ago, but not until all the Lomax family had learned the tune. The one-line refrain, as Dink sang it in her soft lovely voice, gave the effect of a sobbing woman, deserted by her man. Dink's tune is really lost; what is left is only a shadow of the tender, tragic beauty of what she sang in the sordid, bleak surroundings of a Brazos Bottom levee camp."
Later Lomax changed the date when the song was collected to 1908. The text, which was published in the Lomaxes 1934 American Ballads and Folk Songs, includes 3 stanzas found in the "Died for Love" songs. Lomax's text may not be entirely accurate since he frequently added various related stanzas to make his songs fuller and longer.
1. Ef I had wings like Norah's dove,
I'd fly up de river to de man I love.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
2. Ize got a man an' he's long an' tall,
Moves his body like a cannon ball.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
3. One uh these days, an' it won't be long,
Call my name an' I'll be gone.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
4. 'Member one night, a-drizzlin' rain,
Roun' my heart I felt a pain.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
5. When I wo' my ap'on low,
Couldn't keep you from my do'.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
6. Now I wears my ap'on high,
Sca'cely ever see you.passin' by.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
7. Now my ap'on's up to my chin,
You pass my do' an' you won't come in.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
8. Ef I had listened to what my mama said,
I'd be at home in my mama's bed.
Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
The last stanza which acts as the chorus is similar in way to "Love, oh love, oh careless love." Most of the stanzas are simply floating stanzas and some are found in other versions of Careless Love. Dink's Song with the 'apron' stanzas has been widely recorded from the 1930s and is also titled "Fare Thee Well" or Dink's Blues."
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Random Notes:
Here are the notes from Lomax and Lomax, Best Loved American Folk Songs.
DINK'S SONG
. . . is a beautiful Negro variant of "Careless Love. John A. Lomax tells how he found the song in 1904, when he made his first field trip for Harvard University:
"I found Dink scrubbing her man's clothes in the shade of their tent across the Brazos river from the A. & M. College in Texas. Professor James C. Nagle of the College faculty was the supervising engineer of a levee-building company and he had invited me to come along and bring my Edison recording machine. The Negroes were trained levee workers from the Mississippi River.
'Dink knows all the songs,' said her companion. But I did not find her helpful until I walked a mile to a farm commissary and bought her a pint of gin. As she drank the gin, the sounds from her scrubbing board increased in intensity and in volume. She worked as she talked: 'That little boy there ain't got no daddy an' he ain't got no name. I comes from Mississippi and we never saw these levee niggers, till us got here. I brung along my little boy. My man drives a four-wheel scraper down there where you see the dust risin'. I keeps his tent, cooks his vittles and washes his clothes. Some day Ize goin' to wrap up his wet breeches and shirts, roll 'em up in a knot, put 'em in the middle of the bed, and tuck down the covers right nice. Then I'm going on up the river where I belong.' She sipped her gin and sang and drank until the bottle was empty.
"The original Edison record of 'Dink's Song' was broken long ago, but not until all the Lomax family had learned the tune. The one-line refrain, as Dink sang it in her soft lovely voice, gave the effect of a sobbing woman, deserted by her man. Dink's tune is really lost; what is left is only a shadow of the tender, tragic beauty of what she sang in the sordid, bleak surroundings of a Brazos Bottom levee camp.
"The lyrics and music of "Dink's Song" are to me uniquely beautiful. Professor Kittredge praised them without stint. Carl Sandburg compares them to the best fragments of Sappho. As you might expect, Carl prefers Dink to Sappho.
"When I went to find her in Yazoo, Mississippi, some years later, her women friends, pointing to a nearby graveyard, told me, Dink's done planted up there.' I could find no trace of her little son who 'didn't have no name.'
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Q: the African American spiritual "In That Great Gettin Up Mornin" includes the refrain "fare thee well, fare thee well".
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Origin of Blues
Frank and Burt Leighton
I never loved but one woman's son,
"fare thee honey, fare thee well"
I hope and I trust I never love another one
"fare thee honey, fare thee well"
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Joseph Scott - PM
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 04:38 PM
Ref: John A. Lomax, "Self-Pity in Negro Folk-Songs," Nation 105 (9 August 1917): 141-45.
http://www.unz.org/Pub/Nation-1917aug09-00141
If you look at John Lomax's 1917 article about black folk music for _The Nation_, which you can do at google books, it's obvious that he's just running together different lyrics he's encountered as mishmash supposed "lengthy" songs, and that includes when he's explicitly attributing stuff in that article to this "Dink," who he later couldn't keep his story straight about what year he'd encountered.
And the woman's troubles with her man are her source of heartache. A song called variously "The Railroad Blues,"
"The Cincinnati Blues," "The Graveyard Blues," "The Waco Blues," "The Dallas Blues," "The Galveston Blues," or simply "The Blues" bears the burden of her plaint. It is of the endless type and is sung by all negroes who will sing "worl'ly songs" at all. Men and women alike sing it, changing its words frequently to suit their purposes. But though I have heard it many times, it always seems to me the woman's song— a tribute to the first singer I heard it from. It was in a levee camp in Texas, a reclamation project for which experienced hands from the Mississippi (along with their women) had been imported to the Brazos River bottom. The woman called herself Dink. She was a lithe, chocolate-colored woman with a reckless glint in her eye. You're jes' lucky I happened to want to sing this mornin'. Maybe to-morrow I wouldn't 'a' sung you nothin'. Anyhow, maybe to-morrow I won't be here. I'm likely to git tired, or mad, an' go. Say, if I got mad, I'd about dump that tub o' wet clo's there in that bed, an' I wouldn't be here by night." Dink's version of "The Blues" runs:
Some folks say dat de worry blues ain't bad.
Mus' not a bin de worry blues I had.
I've got de railroad blues and de Cincinnati heart disease;
I'm gwine somewhere to give my po' heart some ease.
I may be right an' I may be wrong,
But it takes a married woman to sing de worry song.
When a woman's in trouble she wring her han's an' cry.
But when a man's in trouble it's a long freight train an' ride.
I went to de depot wringin' my han's an' cryin';
Eve'ybody got to have her trouble some time.
My mammy tol' me when I was a chil'
'Bout de mens an' de whiskey gwine to kill me after a while.
When I git home, mamma, I'se sho' gwine to stick an' stay;
You kin kick an' beat me, but. you can't drive me away.
When I leave again, hang crape on yo' front do',
Caze I'll be dead an' not comin' back no mo'.
I woke up dis mornin' with the blues all roun' my head;
I drempt dat my lovin' baby was dead.
Oh, de blues ain't nothin' but a man on yo' min';
De blues ain't nothin' but yo' baby on yo' min'.
Some folks say dat de worry blues ain't bad—
It's de worst ol' feelin' ever I had.
Git you two three men so one won't worry yo' min';
Don't, they keep yo' worryin' all de tim
I'm gwine to de river, set down on de groun'.
If de blues overtake me, I'll jump overboard an' droun'.
I'm gwine ridin', ridin' 'way out on de sea
Where de long distance telephone can't reach me.
If trouble was money, I'd be a millioneer.
If trouble was money, I'd be a millioneer.
Tol' my mammy not to weep an' mo'n,
I do de bes' I kin, caze I'se a woman grown,
I flag de eas'-boun' train an' it keep on easin' by;
I fol' my arms an' hang my head an' cry.
Want to lay my head on de Southern Railway line,
Let some eas'-boun' train come an' ease my troubled min'.
If I feels to-morrow like I feels to-day,
Stan' right here, look a thousan' miles away.
If I feels to-morrow like I feels to-day.
Take a long freight train wid a red caboose to carry my blues away.
When my heart's struck sorrow, my tears come a-rollin' down.
When my heart's struck sorrow, my tears come a-roUin' down.
Dink sang another song of the deserted and lonely woman— a song with lyric beauty and pathetic appeal— and the rhythm of this one she handled in a way that gave the effect of a catch, or sob, at the end of each half-line:
If I had wings like Norah's* dove
I'd fly up de river to de man I love—
Refrain: Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well.
I've got a man, an' he's long an' tall
An' he moves his body like a cannon ball.
One dese days, an' it won't be long,
Call my name an' I'll be gone.
'Member one night, drizzlin' rain,
Roun' my heart I felt a pain.
When I wo' my ap'ons low
You'd follow me eve'ywhere I'd go.
Now I wears my ap'ons high
Sca'cely ever see you passin' by.
Now my ap'ons up to my chin
You pass my do' an' you don't look in—
If I'd a-listened to whut my mamma said,
I'd a-bin sleepin' in my mamma's bed.
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FARE THEE WELL BLUES
Recorded in Memphis, Tennessee, Feb. 20, 1930. Brunswick Records MEM-778- Br-7166.
(Joe Calicott)
Told me early in the fall you never had no man at all.
Fare thee, baby, fare thee well.
Told me early in the fall you never had no man at all.
Well, you got more men than a two-ton truck can haul.
Told me to my face, had a good man in my place.
Fare thee, baby, fare thee well.
Told me to my face, had a good man in my place.
Fare thee, baby, fare thee well.
Told me it's early spring, when the birds began to sing.
Fare thee, baby, fare thee well.
Told me, early spring, when the birds began to sing.
Well, it's the last chance get to be right here with me.
I told you, early in June, when the flowers began to bloom,
Fare thee, baby, fare thee well.
I told you, early in June, when the flowers began to bloom,
You can't do no better, 'nother good girl can take your room.
When [ice winter], let your curtain down.
Fare thee, baby, fare thee well.
When [ice winter], let your curtain down.
Well, you kept tellin' me, be some joke around.
Go 'n' put on your nightgown, baby. Let me go lie down.
Fare thee, baby, fare thee well.
Go 'n' put on your nightgown, baby. let me go lie down.
Well it's the last chance, shakin' in your baby, do.
See also Liston's “Titanic Blues”
John Queen “Fare thee, honey, fare thee well.” music Walter Wilson 1901.
Others include Ma Rainey's “Titanic Man Blues,”
See Johnny Head's "Fare Thee Blues"
"Snakey Blues " William Nash 1915