In the Pines

"In the Pines", also known as "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?", "My Girl" and "Black Girl", is a traditional American folk song originating from two songs, "In the Pines" and "The Longest Train", both of whose authorship is unknown and date back to at least the 1870s. The songs originated in the Southern Appalachian area of the United States in the contiguous areas of Eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, Western North Carolina and Northern Georgia.^[1][2]

Versions of the song have been recorded by many artists in numerous genres, but it is most often associated with American bluegrass musician Bill Monroe and American blues musician Lead Belly, both of whom recorded very different versions of the song in the 1940s and 1950s.^[3]

In 1964, a version of the song by English Beat music group the Four Pennies reached the top-twenty in the United Kingdom.^[4] A live version by American grunge band Nirvana, based on Lead Belly's interpretation, was recorded during their MTV Unplugged performance in 1993, and released the following year on their platinum-selling album, MTV Unplugged in New York.^[5][6]

Early history[]

Like numerous other folk songs, "In the Pines" was passed on from one generation and locale to the next by word of mouth. In 1925, a version of the song was recorded onto phonograph cylinder by a folk collector. This was the first documentation of "The Longest Train" variant of the song, which includes a verse about "The longest train I ever saw". This verse probably began as a separate song that later merged into "In the Pines". Lyrics in some versions about "Joe Brown's coal mine" and "the Georgia line" may refer to Joseph E. Brown, a former Governor of Georgia, who famously leased convicts to operate coal mines in the 1870s. While early renditions which mention the head in the "driver's wheel" make clear that the decapitation was caused by the train, some later versions would omit the reference to the train and reattribute the cause. As music historian Norm Cohen pointed out in his 1981 book, Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong, the song came to consist of three frequent elements: a chorus about "in the pines", a verse about "the longest train" and a verse about a decapitation, but not all elements are present in all versions.^[7][8]

Starting in 1926, commercial recordings of the song were made by various country artists. In her 1970 Ph.D. dissertation, Judith McCulloh found 160 permutations of the song.^[9] As well as rearrangement of the three frequent elements, the person who goes into the pines, or who is decapitated, is described as a man, woman, adolescent, husband, wife, or parent, while the pines can be seen as representing sexuality, death, or loneliness. The train is described as killing a loved one, as taking one's beloved away, or as leaving an itinerant worker far from home.^[7]

The folk version by the Kossoy Sisters asks, "Little girl, little girl, where'd you stay last night? Not even your mother knows." The reply to the question, "Where did you get that dress/ And those shoes that are so fine?" from one version is, "From a man in the mines/Who sleeps in the pines."^[7] The theme of a woman being caught doing something she should not is thus also common to many variants. One variant, performed in the early twentieth century by the Ellison clan (Ora Ellison, deceased) in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, tells of a young Georgia girl who flees to the pines after being raped. Her rapist, a male soldier, is later beheaded by the train.

Some versions of the song also reference the Great Depression, with the "black girl" being a hobo on the move from the police, who witnesses the murder of her father while train-jumping. She hides from this by sleeping in the pines, in the cold.

Influential versions[]

Bill Monroe[]

Bill Monroe's 1941 and 1952 recordings, both under the title "In the Pines", were highly influential on later bluegrass and country versions. Recorded with his Bluegrass Boys and featuring fiddles and yodelling, they represent the "longest train" variant of the song, and omit any reference to a decapitation. However, as Eric Weisbard writes in a 1994 article in The New York Times, "...the enigmatic train is almost as frightening, suggesting an eternal passage: 'I asked my captain for the time of day/He said he throwed his watch away.'"^[7]

Lead Belly[]

The American folk and blues musician Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, recorded over half-a-dozen versions between 1944 and 1948, most often under the title, "Black Girl" or "Black Gal". His first rendition, recorded for Musicraft Records in New York City in February 1944, is arguably his most familiar. Listed as "Where Did You Sleep Last Night", this version appears on a number of Lead Belly "best-of" compilations, such as Absolutely the Best (2000).

Another familiar version was recorded for Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records, in New York City. Listed as "Black Girl" or "In the Pines", this version appears on compilations such as Where Did You Sleep Last Night – Lead Belly Legacy Vol. 1 (1996), and The Definitive Lead Belly (2008).

Due to the popularity of Lead Belly's versions, he is often erroneously cited as the song's author, such as by Kurt Cobain, who introduced Nirvana's 1993 MTV Unplugged rendition as being by his "favorite performer," then telling an anecdote about attempting to purchase Lead Belly's guitar. According to the American folklorist Alan Lomax, Lead Belly learned the song from an interpretation of the 1917 version compiled by Cecil Sharp, and by the 1925 phonograph recording.^[7]

Cajun versions[]

"In the Pines", converted into the Cajun French language and sung under the titles "Pine Grove Blues" or "Ma Negresse", became one of the landmark songs of Cajun music. The song is most associated with Nathan Abshire, the Louisiana Cajun accordion player, for whom "Pine Grove Blues" was his biggest hit. His melody is a hard-driving blues, but the lyrics, when translated to English, are the familiar "Hey, my girl, where did you sleep last night?" The Cajun French word "negresse" and the masculine counterpart "negre" are terms of endearment without regard to race.^{[citation needed]} He recorded it at least three times, from the 1940s onward. Since then, Abshire's version has been covered by a wide variety of Cajun and zydeco musicians, including the Pine Leaf Boys, the Lost Bayou Ramblers, Beau Jocque, and Cedric Watson.

The Four Pennies[]

The Four Pennies recorded and released the song as "Black Girl" in October 1964. Their version reached No. 20 in the UK,^[4] but was not released by their label in the US.^{[citation needed]}

Mark Lanegan/Nirvana[]

"Where Did You Sleep Last Night"
Promotional single by Nirvana
from the album MTV Unplugged in New York
Released	1995
Recorded	November 18, 1993 at Sony Music Studios in New York City
Length	5:08
Label	DGC Records
Songwriter(s)	Lead Belly
Producer(s)	Alex Coletti, Scott Litt, Nirvana
Nirvana singles chronology
"The Man Who Sold the World" (1995) "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" (1995) "Lake of Fire" (1995)
MTV Unplugged in New York track listing
show 13 tracks "About a Girl" "Come as You Are" "Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam" "The Man Who Sold the World" "Pennyroyal Tea" "Dumb" "Polly" "On a Plain" "Something in the Way" "Plateau" "Oh, Me" "Lake of Fire" "All Apologies" "Where Did You Sleep Last Night"

The song was occasionally performed live by American rock band Nirvana in the early 1990s. The band's vocalist and guitarist, Kurt Cobain, had been introduced to the song by fellow Seattle musician Mark Lanegan, and played guitar on a version on Lanegan's album, The Winding Sheet, released in May 1990. Like Lanegan, Cobain usually screamed the song's final verse an octave higher.

It is likely that Cobain drew from Lead Belly's 1944 Musicraft version for his interpretation of the song; Lanegan owned an original 78 rpm record of this version,^[7] and it is the one that Cobain's version most closely resembles in terms of form, title and lyrics, including the "Shiver for me" interjection before the instrumental verse. In a 2009 MTV article, Kurt Loder remembers discussing the song's title with Cobain, with Cobain insisting, "But the Leadbelly version is called 'Where Did You Sleep Last Night,'" and Loder preferring the "In the Pines" title used by Bill Monroe (as well as Lead Belly).^[10]

The first officially released version by Nirvana was recorded during the band's MTV Unplugged appearance, on November 18, 1993, at Sony Music Studios in New York City. This version was originally sanctioned to be released, under the title "Where Did You Sleep Last Night (In the Pines)," as a b-side to the band's "Pennyroyal Tea" single in 1994, but the single was cancelled following Cobain's death in April 1994. It was instead posthumously released as simply "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" on the band's MTV Unplugged in New York album in November 1994, and as a promotional single from the album,^[11] receiving some airplay on US rock and alternative radio in 1994-95.^[12][13] The song also received some airplay in Belgium and France.^[14] In 2002, it was re-released on non-American versions of the band's "best of" collection, Nirvana.

In November 2004, an acoustic home demo by Cobain, recorded in 1990, appeared on the Nirvana's rarities box set, With the Lights Out.

Reception[]

Nirvana's MTV Unplugged version of the song has earned Cobain acclaim from critics and other musicians and artists. In 1994, American poet Allen Ginsberg recalled that "a couple weeks ago, one of my students gave me a mixed tape of Kurt Cobain and there was a version of 'Black Girl' of great artistry. Great vocal control and subtlety, it's almost as good as Leadbelly's."^[15] Canadian musician Neil Young described Cobain's vocals during the final screamed verse as "unearthly, like a werewolf, unbelievable."^[16] In 2013, Andrew Wallace Chamings of The Atlantic wrote that "it ranks among the greatest single rock performances of all time."^[16] The show's producer, Alex Coletti, recalled Cobain declining his suggestion to perform an encore after "Where Did You Sleep Last Night," which was the final song of the set, telling him that “I don’t think we can top the last song," at which point Coletti relented.^[17]

Year-end charts[]

Chart (2019)	Position
Portugal (AFP)[18]	2961

Other versions[]

• Dock Walsh recorded as an A-side on his 1926 single In The Pines / Going Back To Jericho
• The Louvin Brothers version appears on their 1956 album Tragic Songs of Life
• in 1959 folksinger Dave Van Ronk interpreted the composition on his Ballads, Blues, and a Spiritual
• Jackson C. Frank recorded a version for his self titled 1965 album.
• The Grateful Dead played a version in 1965, released later in 2001 as part of The Golden Road (1965–1973) box set and in 2003 on the stand-alone Birth of the Dead.
• Norma Tanega recorded a version for her 1966 album, Walkin' My Cat Named Dog under the title "Hey Girl."
• The Sir Douglas Quintet recorded a version for their 1966 album, The Best of Sir Douglas Quintet
• Gene Clark, former frontman of The Byrds, recorded a version for his 1977 album, "Two Sides to Every Story"
• The Oak Ridge Boys recorded this song for their 1983 album Deliver.
• Dolly Parton's version appears on her 1994 album Heartsongs: Live from Home.^[7]
• Carl Rutherford recorded a version on his 2001 album, Turn Off the Fear^[19]
• Laura Gibson's version appears as a b-side on her single La Grande^[20]
• Loretta Lynn's version appears on her 2016 album Full Circle.
• Sleigh Bells has a version in the 2020 movie, "The Rhythm Section".
• Kid Cudi and Dot da Genius, collectively known as WZRD, produced a folk/grunge version of the song.
• 070 Shake recorded a hip hop version on Modus Vivendi (070 Shake album) released in 2020.
• Louisiana sludge metal band Thou recorded a version of the song for their Nirvana cover album Blessings of the Highest Order
• Fantastic Negrito, an American Folk and Blues musician, recorded a version of the song for his 2016 release The Last Days of Oakland.
• Billy Childish project The William Loveday Intention recorded a version titled My Father Was a Railroad Man for 2020 album People Think They Know Me But They Don't Know Me
• The Pretty Things in their final acoustic album Bare as Bone, Bright as Blood (2020) as "Black Girl".
• Clifford Jordan recorded a version for the 1965 album These are My Roots: Clifford Jordan Plays Leadbelly with Sandra Douglass
• Long John Baldry recorded a version for the 1971 album It Ain't Easy with Maggie Bell

In popular culture[]

Literature[]

• In 2007, Czech-American writer-singer Natálie Kocábová used a strophe of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" for the opening of her novella Růže: Cesta za světlem... ("Rose: A Way to the Light").^[21]
• Kari Kilgore's 2018 novella In the Pines took its inspiration from the song.

Games[]

• A rendition by Jared Emerson-Johnson and is played during the closing credits of The Walking Dead: Season Two - Episode 2: A House Divided released in 2014.^[22]
• A version of the song, as of yet unidentified, can be found playing in certain parts of the Ubisoft video game Far Cry 5, released on March 27, 2018.^[23]

Film & TV[]

• Another version with vocals from Mark Lanegan and composed by Brian Reitzell was recorded for the original soundtrack of the 2017 American Gods TV series.
• A version appears in the 1980 film, Coal Miner's Daughter. It is sung by Sissy Spacek.
• Another version appears in the fashion brand Diesel’s 2020 TV commercial, Francesca directed by Francois Rousselet. The story follows the journey of a young male student (played by Harlow Monroe) as he transitions into a woman, and ultimately becomes a nun.

See also[]

• List of train songs

References[]

External links[]

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Where Did You Sleep Last Night

• Nirvana's version of the Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics
• In the Pines novella at Spiral Publishing, Ltd.