So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh

Music and lyrics

Woody Guthrie adapted the tune from Carson Robison's 1930s "Ballad of Billy the Kid," tweaking the music and writing fresh words. The piece moves in a waltz-like 3/4 rhythm and features four vocal parts.

Its subject is the brutal weather and drought that plagued Western farm families during the Great Depression. Guthrie, then living in Pampa, Texas, saw the Black Sunday dust storm firsthand on April 14, 1935; the line "In the month called April, county called Gray" points to Pampa's location. Critics have called the repeating chorus a darkly witty, apocalyptic joke: "So long, it's been good to know yuh." Guthrie later penned a wartime version with lyrics about serving in World War II.

Cover versions

The folk standard has been covered by The Weavers and by the band X, whose version appears on their 1988 live album. Liverpool folk group The Spinners often used it as a closing number. On A Prairie Home Companion, host Garrison Keillor would occasionally close the show with the song, adding his own humorous verses. During the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, Old Crow Medicine Show adopted it as the closing tune for their weekly online program, Hartland Hootenanny.

Did You Know?

• The song's popularity soared in 1951 when it was published by Howard S. Richmond's Folkways Music Publishers, Inc., and promoted to major record labels.
• In the TV series M*A*S*H, Hawkeye Pierce asks Father Mulcahy to play the song on the piano in the episode "Mr. and Mrs. Who?".
• Charles Osgood performed a cover of the song on the last day of his twenty-two years of hosting CBS Sunday Morning.