Shady Grove

Traditional Appalachian folk song believed to have originated in eastern Kentucky around 1900; the Dorian mode melody was first published in the Journal of American Folklore in 1915, when E.C. Perrow collected it from singers in East Tennessee and Kentucky — from materials gathered around 1905. The tune shares its melody with “Matty Groves,” an older English ballad, suggesting the melodic lineage is older than the American song and may trace to England or Scotland. Jean Ritchie, who learned “Shady Grove” from her father in Perry County, Kentucky, carried it into the folk revival, and Doc Watson — who brought it to wide audiences beginning with field recordings released on the Folkways album The Watson Family (1963) — is credited as the primary popularizer. Other notable recordings include Bill Monroe, Jerry Garcia and David Grisman (Shady Grove, Acoustic Disc, 1996), and the Kingston Trio (…from the hungry i, Capitol, 1959); The Dillards performed it on The Andy Griffith Show in 1964. The song has accumulated up to 300 stanzas across oral tradition.