People are drinking less these days — trending toward moderation or non-alcoholic alternatives on a night out, according to recent industry reports. But songs about drinking never seem to go out of style.
Take the roughly 250-year-old "Three Nights Drunk," a song about the tricks an adulterous wife plays on her inebriated husband. According to the Library of Congress, it likely originated in the British Isles and is also known as "Our Goodman," "Four Nights Drunk," "Drunkard's Special," and "Seven Drunken Nights."
The song appears twice on Drinking in Here, a new compilation of boozy tunes culled from the archive of the pioneering American musicologists Alan and John Lomax. There's one version by J.E. Mainer's Mountaineers from 1959 recorded in North Carolina, and another by Jim Henry, recorded in Mississippi in 1937.
That song has also been recorded many times since, by such artists as Steeleye Span and The Dubliners.
" It's a total tradition that these drinking songs are not only passed around in an evening, but they're passed around over years," said record producer David Katznelson, who curated Drinking in Here. "Drinking songs are about camaraderie, which is something we really need right now."
Many songs to choose from
Around 100 recordings of the 8,000 in the Lomax Archive are drinking songs. More than two decades ago, the archive released another record focused on this type of music, Scottish Drinking and Pipe Songs. The majority of the songs on the new album are recordings made in the United States, with a smattering of others from Great Britain, Ireland, and the Caribbean.
Anna Lomax Wood, who helps to run the archive, said that both her father, Alan, and grandfather, John, enjoyed a tipple.
"My grandfather used to take a little flask of what he called 'the water of life' hidden in his jacket," Lomax Wood said. "He'd go off and excuse himself and have a little swig."
But she said her forebears didn't drink while working, even when the singers themselves were soused. Lomax Wood witnessed this herself in 1962, when her father recorded a group of workers performing the song "Roll Roll Roll and Go" on the Caribbean island of Grenada.
"I don't think he had time to be in the culture of drinking songs," Lomax Wood said. "I think he loved to see it."
A genre that never gets old
Drinking songs continue to endure, with artists like Post Malone, Shaboozey and Beyoncé all contributing.
"There is some sort of cultural universal about getting a little tipsy and wanting to sing about it," said Sayre Piotrkowski. The advanced cicerone — a cicerone is like a sommelier, but for beer rather than wine — also writes a Substack about drinking and music, Beer & Soul.
Piotrkowski said there's a direct line between the artists featured on the Lomax album and those singing songs about drinking today.
" I think the best drinking songs are self-deprecating, self-aware," said Piotrkowski. "They're talking about drinking and it's like, 'Yeah, I might drink a little too much. But I'm still pretty freaking great.'"
Jennifer Vanasco edited this story for broadcast and digital. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio.
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