Julie BERNARD comments on a FAVORITE SONG

“Fare Thee Well” is a traditional American folk tune. It was first published in 1710 in the Roxburghe Ballads. 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 husband'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. Of course there have been many versions of this song throughout the centuries. I love the stories about the songs and the stories in the songs themselves because they tell of real people’s lives and give us a peak into America’s history. I never get tired of this song because it is so beautiful and still makes me cry (Russ and Gary, too).