Talk:Follow the Drinkin' Gourd

paywall link

I removed the paywall link

• Song, Story, or History: Resisting Claims of a Coded Message in the African American Spiritual "Follow the Drinking Gourd"

from the extlinks section. If the linked article contains interesting info, it might be ok to use the info in the wikipedia article, citing the printed journal as a source in the usual way. 75.62.4.94 (talk) 19:06, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Traditional?

The original song dates back to the mid-late 19th century. My understanding is that Parks and Hays were assembling lyrics from sources they believed reached back to that time; if so, copyright is not an issue. Woodum's version is also very unlikely to be subject to copyright. The only uncertain one is the version Randy Sparks settled on for the NCM recordings, and even that is more likely traditional than copyrightable. Rhsimard (talk) 22:21, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

The book

The book was well-known enough to be featured as the main book on an episode of Reading Rainbow (something that can only be said of 155 books). Shouldn't it bear mentioning in this article? I believe so, and I added that earlier today. User:SummerPhDv2.0 does not believe so and she reverted me, claiming it was "trivial IPC". I think the "trivial IPC" brush was applied too heavily by her. Thoughts from the peanut gallery? pbp 02:32, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

The song has been in use by educators far earlier than this book (including my own childhood). I am certain there have been numerous books/articles/slide shows/filmstrips/films/etc. based on the song. We certainly would not list all of them, any more than we would list all of the recordings of the Beatles' "Yesterday".

I can certainly see room for one or more. As to which I would include, I'd want something a bit more solid than "was featured on Reading Rainbow". If there are any that are notable in their own right (very unlikely) or by notable authors (possible) I'd give those some attention. Likewise, any that had received awards from notable organizations (the International Planetarium Society comes to mind) or have received considerable press (perhaps educator's journals?).

While Reading Rainbow is a notable show, it is one of many. I can easily imagine thousands of books related to tens of thousands of topics that have been a significant part of hundreds of shows over the years. That's a bit too much proliferation, IMO, for the kind of unsourced addition I removed.[1] - SummerPhD^v2.0 03:38, 12 June 2017 (UTC)