Where Did You Sleep Last Night

Like many other folk songs, «Where Did You Sleep Last Night» was passed down orally across generations and regions. The first written version of the song was collected by Cecil Sharp in 1917, and consisted of only four lines and a melody. In 1925, a folk collector recorded a version on a phonograph cylinder, and the following year, several rural bands began making commercial recordings of the song. Musicologist Alan Lomax noted that Leadbelly, whose real name was Huddie William Ledbetter, learned «Where Did You Sleep Last Night» from the 1917 printed version and the 1925 recording. Leadbelly helped popularize the song, recording about six versions between 1944 and 1948, often under the title «Black Girl» or «Black Gal». His first performance, recorded for Musicraft Records in New York in February 1944, is the best known of his versions. On November 4, 1961, Bob Dylan performed the song at Carnegie Chapter Hall in New York, and played it again on January 12, 1990 at Toad's Place, New Haven, Connecticut. The Grateful Dead recorded their version on July 17, 1966, which appears as «In The Pines» on the 2001 box set The Golden Road. Their lyrical interpretation is a variant known as «The Longest Train». In August 1989, Mark Lanegan recorded an electric version of «Where Did You Sleep Last Night» for his 1990 solo debut album, The Winding Sheet. Grunge band Nirvana had already been performing the song live in the early 1990s. Kurt Cobain, singer, songwriter and guitarist of Nirvana, learned the song through his friend Mark Lanegan, participating in the recording of Lanegan's version by playing electric guitar and singing as a duet on The Winding Sheet. Cobain also screamed on the final verse of the song, as did Lanegan. Nirvana's acoustic performance on MTV Unplugged in 1993 received widespread acclaim, and was released posthumously on the album MTV Unplugged in New York, being chosen as the B-side of the single «Pennyroyal Tea» the following year. After hearing Cobain's version on Unplugged, Lanegan described it as «definitive» and superior to his own. Originally, Cobain had planned to record it as a duet with Lanegan.