The Kingston Trio sings of wanton sexual promiscuity, adultery, syphilis and murderous revenge on American Pastimes.

In one of popular music’s most sublime ironies, The Kingston Trio, with their polished harmonies, conservative matching stage attire and milquetoast clean-cut image, turned a true 19th century story about lascivious lust and murder into a chart-topping hit that briefly changed the economic trajectory of folk music.

The Kingston Trio (Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds – and later John Stewart), formed in 1957 in Palo Alto, California. The group recorded their first album in 1958 for Capital Records, simply titled “The Kingston Trio.” It was to be the first of many best selling albums. Their success made folk music profitable, and some claim, made it a fad. All the elements that led to their success may have turned off “true” folkies, but they served as inspiration for many musicians, most notably, another hugely successful California band, the Beach Boys. But it was inarguably this trio who single-handedly created the “college market” of record buying, and who introduced the wider record buying public to traditional songs, and to serious songwriters like Pete Seeger, Hoyt Axton, and Billy Ed Wheeler, whose songs they recorded.

Just before the album was recorded, they had heard the song “Tom Dooley” for the first time during an afternoon audition at the Purple Onion, a San Francisco folk club. It was performed by someone they only remember as “Tom,” and he evidently sung the version published in Alan Lomax’s 1947 songbook “Folk Songs USA” which had been adapted and arranged by collectors Frank Warner and Charles & Ruth Seeger. The trio recorded this version of the song on their first album.

Before Capital released any singles from the record, the trio would sell their album at their concert performances. After a show at the ‘Hungry i’ in San Francisco, a record store owner from Salt Lake City took a bunch of copies to sell in her family-owned record store. A Salt Lake City DJ purchased a copy, and played “Tom Dooley” repeatedly on his show. He sent copies to DJ friends in Boston and Miami, who also played the tune, and soon enough other stations picked it up and as the album’s sales increased, Capital Records released that song as a single. It reached #1 on the charts just before Christmas, and won a Grammy for “Best Country & Western Vocal Performance of 1958” much to the chagrin of real Country & Western performers. The album stayed on the charts for four years, and inspired a Hollywood movie, “The Legend of Tom Dooley” starring Michael Landon (fresh off of his dramatic film debut in “I was a Teenage Werewolf”).

The folktale itself has a long history and is found in many forms throughout the south; in oral and written prose, poems, and in ballads. It can be entitled “Tom Dula” or “Tom Dooley” or “The Death of Laura Foster.” The story is simple: Tom Dula or Dooley murders his girlfriend Laura Foster, and runs away only to be caught by a sheriff named Grayson. He is convicted and is to be hanged. Most versions are told from the perspective of the murderer who admits his deed and laments his fate on the night before his execution. In many versions, the murderer laments his fate while playing his banjo. In a few versions the murderer points to drink and women (of course!) as the source of his ruin.

The actual events surrounding Tom Dula and Laura Foster took place in 1866. They were recorded in the court records and by tabloid journalists who traveled all the way from New York to cover the steamy and tragic story as it unfolded in the courtroom. Folklorist John Foster West used the court records, newspaper stories, historic documents (such as military records and county census information), oral histories, and the folklore record (songs, poems, and narratives) to separate out the facts from the fiction, as best as he could. This is the story:

On Friday May 25, 1866, Laura Foster left her home in Caldwell County North Carolina on her father’s horse and was never seen alive again. The next day the mare was found and search parties were organized again and again over the next few weeks. Finally, in late June a place in the woods where the horse had been tied up was located, and nearby was a large stain on the ground that the searchers believed to be dried human blood. A few weeks later, a drunken Pauline Foster (probably no relation to Laura) told others that she and Tom Dula had killed Laura. As this revelation spread throughout the county, Tom Dula disappeared. He went to Johnson County, Tennessee, using the name of Hall and got a job, working briefly on Col. James Grayson’s farm. While he was gone, the Caldwell County Sheriff began questioning Pauline who denied involvement, but implicated Tom Dula and Ann Foster Melton. A warrant was issued, and the Sheriff sent two deputies on the trail of Dula. They eventually made contact with Col. Grayson who helped them overtake the fugitive. The deputies returned with him to the Wilkesboro Jail. As Dula sat in jail in early September, Laura’s body was found buried near his home. She had been stabbed. With Pauline as the State’s key witness, Dula and Melton were indicted. Tom Dula had two trials (he was defended by Zebulon Vance, the ex-Governor of North Carolina who provided his services pro bono!), and was convicted and sentenced to hang. The night before his execution on May 1, 1868, he wrote out a confession that exonerated Ann Foster Melton. At her trial the following fall, she was found innocent.

Tom Dula had been a Confederate soldier since age 17, and is listed in military records as a musician (he played fiddle, but as a soldier served as a drummer). He spent much of the war hospitalized (not from wounds, but from an unnamed recurring illness). By all written accounts he was a good soldier, respected by his peers and leaders. He was captured in March, 1865 and was a Prisoner of War until June when he signed the Oath of Allegiance and was released. He was 22 years old in 1866 when he returned home to Reedy Branch, in the hill country above the Yadkin River near the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. His family was not land-owning gentry of the fertile valley. They were hill people, the folks who worked the land owned by the gentry; “hillbillies” to outsiders. They were poor, unschooled, hardscrabble laborers, scratching a living from their homestead gardens, or as tenant farmers, and from whatever work they could do for their well-off neighbors in the valley. When Tom Dula returned home, he returned to all of this, and to the loving arms of Ann Foster Melton.

Ann and Tom had begun their affair when they were 14 or 15 years old. Ann was married at the time to James Melton, an older man, apparently a cobbler and a pretty handy worker who was relatively well off for a hill person. Ann was still married to James when Tom returned from war. They picked up where they left off romantically and James looked the other way…literally. Court testimony detailed how all three shared the same bedroom. Just as Ann’s long-term relationship with husband James didn’t keep her away from Tom, Dula’s long-term relationship with his lover Ann didn’t stop him from becoming involved with Pauline Foster, Ann’s cousin.

Pauline had moved to Reedy Branch in 1866 to work for James and Ann to earn money. She needed to pay for medicine to treat her case of syphilis. She admitted on the witness stand that she had sexual relations “on occasion” with Tom. On the witness stand Ann’s brother also admitted having sex with Pauline. The evidence shows that Pauline was very promiscuous, and also an alcoholic. To this evidence is added a tabloid’s opinion “Pauline….is remarkable for nothing but debasement, and may be dismissed with the statement that she has since married a white man and given birth to a Negro child.” The big city tabloids were eating this back wood’s hillbilly story up because it was depraved stuff. It could have provided James Dickey with inspiration for writing “Deliverance,” later a film staring Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty.

So who was Laura Foster, Tom Dula’s murder victim? Possibly she’s related to Pauline and Ann in some way, but the record isn’t clear on that. The folklore presents her as sweet, young, and virtuous. The court record and the tabloid coverage established that she lived 5 miles away in German’s Hill, Caldwell County and was 22 years old. It suggests that she was of “easy virtue”. When called to testify at Tom Dula’s murder trial, Laura’s father, Wilson Foster described how he caught Tom and his daughter in bed “on one or two occasions.” Others also testified to having “intimate relations” with her. Other testimonies also describe her father’s concern when he learned that she was missing: He worried that she had one of his horses, and that she may have “run off with a colored man.” The local doctor testified that he treated Tom Dula for syphilis, and that Tom told him that he got it from Laura Foster. Pauline and others testified that he said that he was going to kill Laura because of the infection. Pauline also testified that Ann Melton wanted to kill Laura, although it wasn’t clear whether it was because of the venereal disease or out of jealousy. By the end of the trial the evidence showed that all the individuals involved were promiscuous and infected (at one point a witness blurted out “yes, we all have the pox!”) but it was unclear about who infected who. In the end Laura was murdered, perhaps a scapegoat, perhaps out of jealousy, either by Tom Dula alone, or with Ann Melton’s assistance. Laura is buried in German’s Hill, Caldwell County North Carolina. Her gravestone is still there.

The evidence against Dula was purely circumstantial and hearsay. The prosecution’s key witness against him was Pauline; clearly alcoholic, diseased and not very reliable or sympathetic. He was convicted anyway, and was hanged in Statesville. He stood on a cart that was pulled out from under him, and died suspended from the makeshift cross beam placed between two uprights. His family claimed his body and took him to Elksville, North Carolina for burial. There’s a vandalized monument along the Lenoir-Wilkesboro Road that supposedly marks his grave. On it, the date of his death is incorrect. But that’s okay. His real and lasting monument is a song that made it to #1 on the Hit Parade.

Source: The Ballad of Tom Dula by John Foster West. Published by Parkway Publishers, Boone, North Carolina. 2002.