The Valley Song as Country Music Exemplar

(NOTE: Spoiler Alert for the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.)

Readers of The Hunger Games learn about “the valley song” during Peeta’s recollection of his early adoration for Katniss: “So that day, in music assembly, the teacher asked who knew the valley song. Your hand shot right up in the air. She stood you up on a stool and had you sing it for us. And I swear, every bird outside the windows fell silent” (THG Ch.22). Early readers of the recent Prequel have already pointed out the likely connection between the “valley song” and the one sung by Lucy Gray while caged with the other children at the Capitol Zoo. Peeta’s quote further indicates that Katniss had enjoyed some musical upbringing before she suffered the traumatic loss of her father. In any case, it makes sense that Collins provides some contextual background of this mysterious song in her recent Prequel, much as she did with The Hanging Tree. For my part, when I first encountered Lucy Gray’s first line, “Down in the valley, valley so low,” I recall immediately making the connection and stating aloud: “It’s the valley song!” with a subtle smile. I suspect many others did as well. While Suzanne Collins has not confirmed this is the case (to my knowledge), it is a safe bet right now that these songs are one and the same (I would go with a 99 percent level of confidence, for statistics fans). Moving along from here, the remainder of this post aims to provide some insights into the historical origins of the “valley song”. In this case, neither Lucy Gray (as a character) nor Suzanne Collins wrote the lyrics from scratch, but adapted an older American folk song for their own purposes. This is a trend for numerous songs and their stylistic origins throughout the Prequel.

The song that inspires Lucy Gray’s “valley song,” and likely that of Katniss as well, is titled Down in the Valley, itself rooted in earlier folk song traditions. Like typical folk music handed down through the generations, the lyrics of this one have been altered many times with countless versions. One theory holds that the origin of the song can be traced to a prisoner in the Raleigh, North Carolina State Prison, in the form of a letter written to a girl in Alabama (Tate & Tate 2004). But there is an alternate, if similar claim that the song was written (or perhaps modified) by early country music star and guitarist Jimmie Tarlton. According to the Wikipedia entry (with no reference, unfortunately), Tarlton takes credit for writing the song in 1925 as a prisoner in the Birmingham, Alabama city jailhouse, purportedly for illegal moonshining. This is certainly not out of the realm of possibility for that time and region. Perhaps this story is in a memoir somewhere that I have yet to discover.

Regardless of who actually wrote the song and in what prison, it is clear that the first popular, commercial version was recorded in 1927 by Jimmie Tarlton and his partner Tom Darby for Columbia Records. Sometimes the song is known by an alternate name, “Birmingham Jail”. Even Tarlton and Darby would change out various words and lines, such as singing “down in the levee” instead of “down in the valley”. In another version by Lead Belly in the 1930s, “Birmingham jail” is replaced with “Shreveport jail”. It’s not too crazy to assume that singers could substitute place names on a whim to rev up local sentiments from the home crowd. As for Lucy Gray, her alteration of some wording to suit her predicament in the Capitol fits into the ongoing practice of substituting certain lyrics for others as the situation calls for.

As for early country musician Jimmie Tarlton, his upbringing in a musical household was rather common for rural families of the South and within the Appalachians in particular. Raised in rural South Carolina, his father played a banjo and his mother was a singer. By age six, Jimmie was already playing the banjo and French harp, later taking up the guitar. He was already performing in the Northeast and the Texas-Oklahoma region by his teens, and eventually made his way to California. It was in 1927 when he began his partnership with Tom Darby, the same year they recorded “Down in the Valley”.

Of course, musicians are often networked in various ways, and Tarlton found himself collaborating at some point with Jimmie Rodgers. Along with the Carter family, Rodgers would be credited as the first true country music star during the 1920s. Readers of my previous blog post about the Covey and bluegrass music might recall that Jimmie Rodgers played a large role in inspiring the “father of bluegrass,” Bill Monroe, and his own development of the “high, lonesome sound”. Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys seem to have inspired the music style performed by the Covey, that of a traditional bluegrass band.

As for “Down in the Valley,” the song took on a life of its own after Tarlton and Darby made it commercially famous as a country music exemplar. While the basic lyrics and theme remained recognizable, the song was occasionally altered over time for this or that purpose. Numerous music stars have produced their own versions and recordings, not the least being The Andrews Sisters (1944), Bing Crosby (1961), Connie Francis (1961), and Jerry Garcia and David Grisman on their more recent 1996 album, Shady Grove. The song has also appeared in various Hollywood films and television shows, including the film Stir Crazy, and the Academy Award-winning film, Bound for Glory, among numerous other examples from over the years. Perhaps somewhat amusingly, the song further shows up in an episode (Dark Page) of Star Trek: The Next Generation, when a projection of Deanna Troi’s father sings the song. Somewhat eerily reminiscent of the Hunger Games trilogy, Deanna Troi mentions that as a baby she could never fall asleep without hearing the soothing tune. Perhaps it was a version of this song that somehow made it to the Capitol for Coriolanus to hear as a baby? At least the “roses are red and violets are blue” theme appears in both Lucy Gray’s and Coriolanus’s version of the song (admittedly not because of Star Trek. But the coincident use of the song here as a lullaby as with other Hunger Games songs did not go unnoticed here.)

One of the closest and most common renditions of the song was made popular by another famed country music star, Eddy Arnold, who enjoyed a career that spanned six decades and represented the so-called “Nashville Sound” of the late 1950s. He sold some 85 million records (wow!) and became a member of the Grand Ole Opry beginning in 1943 (only four years following the arrival of the “Father of bluegrass” himself, Bill Monroe). Here is a link to Arnold’s lyrics to Down in the Valley, with remarkable similarity to the Lucy Gray version of “the valley song”. Only a few words were changed to make it more appropriate for the world of Panem.

I’m sure others can dig further (mining pun intended) into the meanings or background of this iconic Hunger Games piece. Hopefully the tidbits provided above are a place to start, with some contextual background as to how the “valley song” has remained in America’s collective consciousness. Given its role within the early country music genre, it would be perfectly reasonable for Suzanne Collins to choose it as an exemplar of the genre within her ongoing series. Along with songs like “Clementine” and “Keep on the Sunny Side,” the “valley song” only contributes to our Collins-inspired tour of first-generation country music in the early twentieth century. Beyond all this, the song appears to serve as one of numerous clues pointing to the possible ancestry of one Katniss Everdeen—a subject for another post and plenty of further speculation.

Here is one rendition of the song on YouTube, by Roy Clark, 1979

(Featured Post Image: “Grand Ole Opry Fan” by afagen. Creative Commons)

References

Artist Biography: Jimmie Tarlton

“Down in the Valley“: Wikipedia

Lyrics to “Down in the Valley” and Eddie Arnold Biography

Tate, Ken, and Janice Tate (2004). Favorite Songs of the Good Old Days. DRG Wholesale. p. 29