The Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane

Infobox Standard
title=The Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane
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image_size=
caption=Cover of sheet music, 1871.
writer=Will S. Hays
composer=
lyricist=
published=1871
written=
language=English
form=Sheet music
original_artist=
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performed_by=

"The Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane" is a popular song written by Will Hays in 1871 for the minstrel trade. Written in dialect, the song tells of an eldery man, presumably a slave or former slave, passing his latter years in a broken-down old log cabin. The title is from a refrain::"... de little old log cabin in de lane."

The song itself was popular, resulting in several answer songs, but the melody was even more widely used, finding itself adapted to a variety of other songs: Western songs such as "The Little Old Sod Shanty On The Claim" and "Little Joe, The Wrangler"; [Thorp, "Songs of the Cowboys", pp. xviii-xviv: "Again, others have been built upon well-known airs; 'The Cowboy's Dream' is sung to the tune of 'My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,' and Jack Thorp's 'Little Joe, the Wrangelr' was composed to the tune of 'The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane'. "] railroad songs, "Little Red Caboose Behind The Train"; and even hymns, "The Lily Of The Valley".

Fiddlin' John Carson's recording of "The Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane" was the first Appalachian folk song recorded by the record industry. [Carlin, "Country Music", p. x: "One artist whom Brockman recommended was a fifty-plus-year-old fiddler and sometime house painter named Fiddlin' John Carson; the Okeh label dutifully made a custom record of Carson singing the late-nineteenth-century popular song 'The little Old Log Cabin in the Lane' for Brockman to sell, but didn't even bother to assign a master number or affix a label to the 500 records pressed for him. It was only after the record became a regional hit that the light bulb of commerce lit up in the executives' heads, and suddenly they were scouring the countryside for entertainers."] Its popularity ensured that the industry would continue recording rural folk songs.

The song has since become a Bluegrass standard.

References

Bibliography

*Carlin, Richard. "Country Music: A Biographical Dictionary". New York: Routledge (2002).
* Thorp, N. Howard "Jack". "Songs of the Cowboys". Houghton Mifflin Company, 1908, 1921.
*Waltz, Robert B; David G. Engle. " [http://www.csufresno.edu/folklore/ballads/RcLOLCIL.html Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane] ". "The Traditional Ballad Index: An Annotated Bibliography of the Folk Songs of the English-Speaking World". Hosted by [http://www.csufresno.edu/folklore/ California State University, Fresno, Folklore] , 2007.