Delia
First recording by Nassau String Band (July 1935)
- Written by
- [Traditional]
- Language
- English
- Comments
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Delia (or Delia's Gone) is a traditional song of the Southeast United States that dates to the early 1900s, and is based on the murder of Delia Green, age 14, by Moses "Cooney" Houston, age 14 to 16 in Savannah, Georgia (Cooney is the name of the killer in early versions of the song). The pair had been seeing each other for several months when, on Christmas Eve 1900, Moses boasted in Delia's presence about his sexual relationship with her. She denied the sexual relationship, and during their argument called him a "son-of-a-bitch". Shortly thereafter, Moses shot Delia, who died on Christmas.
Howard Odum collected a fragment of the ballad in Newton, Georgia sometime between 1906 and 1908. It is #59 in the second part of his 1911 collection of African-American secular songs published in the Journal of American Folklore. This version, a three verse fragment called “One More Rounder Gone”, implies Delia was a prostitute.
Newman Ivey White’s 1928 American Negro Folk Songs, includes a five verse variant, “Delie”, collected in 1924 from Frank Goodell of Spartanburg, South Carolina, who reported he learned it sometime between 1900 and 1904. It’s thin on details regarding motive for the murder. White includes two other fragments which may be part of the same song, one from 1915 or 1916 in Alabama and the other from 1919 in North Carolina.
Early US versions of the song like "One More Rounder Gone" and "Delia" were originally accompanied by the traditional "Frankie and Albert" tune.
But when the song migrated to the Bahamas, new lyrics were added and the tune was also adapted. As early as 1935, Alan Lomax recorded a local version on the Bahamas by The Nassau String Band. Virtually all subsequent versions would use this same form.
In 1959, Karl Silbersdorf and Dick Toops made a questionable copyright with the same title, used by Johnny Cash in 1962 and many to follow. - Licensing
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