“Tom Dooley” is an old North Carolina folk song based on the 1866 murder of a woman named Laura Foster in Wilkes County, North Carolina. It is best known today because of a hit version recorded in 1958 by The Kingston Trio. This version was a multi-format hit, reaching #1 in Billboard, the Billboard R&B listing, and appearing in the Cashbox country music top 20. It fits within the wider genre of Appalachian ‘sweetheart murder ballad’ songs such as ‘Down in the Willow Garden’ and ‘Rose Connelly’, but ‘Tom Dooley’ is based on a real event.
The song was selected as one of the Songs of the Century by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the National Endowment for the Arts, and Scholastic Inc.
In the documentary Appalachian Journey (1991), folklorist Alan Lomax describes Frank Proffitt as the “original source” for the song. Although there is at least one earlier known recording, by Grayson and Whitter made in 1929, approximately 10 years before Proffitt cut his own recording., the Kingston Trio took their version from Frank Warner’s singing. Warner had learned the song from Proffitt, who learned it from his Aunt Nancy Prather, whose parents had known both Laura Foster and Tom Dula (See Anne Warner, Traditional American Folk Songs (1984)) and who had the song as part of their cultural heritage.
Impoverished Confederate veteran Tom Dula (Dooley), Laura Foster’s lover and probable fiancé, was convicted of her murder and hanged May 1, 1868. Foster was stabbed to death with a large knife; the brutality of the attack partly accounted for the widespread publicity the murder and subsequent trial received.
Dula had a lover, prior to his leaving for the war, named Anne Melton. It was her comments that led to the discovery of Foster’s body, but Melton was acquitted in a separate trial based on Dula’s word. Dula’s enigmatic statement on the gallows that he had not harmed Foster but still deserved his punishment led to press speculation that Melton was the actual killer and that Dula simply covered for her. Melton, who had once expressed jealousy of Dula’s purported plans to marry Foster, died insane a few years after the homicide. Thanks to the efforts of newspapers such as The New York Times, and to the fact that former North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance represented Dula pro bono, Dula’s murder trial and hanging were given widespread national publicity. A local poet, Thomas C. Land, wrote a popular song about Dula’s tragedy after the hanging.
A man named “Grayson,” mentioned in the song as pivotal in Dula’s downfall, has sometimes been characterized as a romantic rival of Dula’s or a vengeful sheriff who captured him and presided over his hanging. Some variant lyrics of the song portray Grayson in that light, and the spoken introduction to the Kingston Trio version did the same. Col. James Grayson was actually a Tennessee politician who had hired Dula on his farm when the young man fled North Carolina under suspicion and was using a false name. Grayson did help North Carolinians capture Dula and was involved in returning him to North Carolina, but otherwise played no role in the case.
Dula was tried in Statesville, because it was believed he could not get a fair trial in Wilkes County. He was given a new trial on appeal but he was again convicted, and hanged on May 1, 1868. His alleged accomplice, Jack Keaton, was set free. On the gallows, Dula reportedly stated, “Gentlemen, do you see this hand? I didn’t harm a hair on the girl’s head.”
Dula’s last name was pronounced “Dooley,” leading to some confusion in spelling over the years. (The pronunciation of a final “a” like “y” is an old feature in Appalachian speech, as in the term “Grand Ole Opry”). The confusion was probably compounded by the fact that Dr. Tom Dooley, an American physician known for international humanitarian work, was at the height of his fame in 1958, when the Kingston Trio version became a major hit.
The doleful ballad was probably first sung shortly after the execution and is still commonly sung in North Carolina.

By The Kingston Trio

Lyrics