Shenandoah

Shenandoah River

Some songs are familiar to many people and remain favorites over the years.  They are modernized in one format, then changed for another.  That is particularly true of folk songs like Shenandoah, a song that has been recorded by many people, as a standard, as a folk and even as a country song.  But it's familiarity has not bred contempt, as its melody and words call out to that something inside all of us, that longing for the beauty of country and the love in our lives.

According to the Library of Congress, it is difficult to determine the authorship of the song or exactly when it was written, although it was likely before the Civil War because it was popular by then, from America to Europe.

Alan Lomax, a well-known expert in his time about music origins supposes the song "Shenandoah" was a sea-shanty.  The composition, he believes, was done by French Canadian sailors as a sea shanty, the kind of song the sailors sang as they were coordinating their work aboard ship.  It has that simple sound of verse and solo lead with chorus, and the refrain is familiar and easy to remember.  Indeed many believe it has that very essence of the sea shanties of old and was included among the “Sailor Songs” published in an article by William L. Alden in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine of 1882.

The song could be about the river of the same name or the story of the daughter of the Indian Chief Shenandoah who is courted for seven years by a white man, a Missouri river trader. 

The song is a classic, a traditional, recorded by Jo Stafford, as a standard, but as a folk song by many, and will likely continue to be a classic in years to come.