Traditional Appalachian · Key of G · Public domain
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This chart is written in G. Tap any key above the chart to see the whole song in that key, with every chord already worked out. To stay in G with different chord shapes, play it capo 3 with the E shapes, or capo 5 with the D shapes, or capo 7 with the C shapes. Singing with a group? Pick the key where the highest note is comfortable for everyone, then print that page.
Nobody wrote In the Pines; it grew. The English collector Cecil Sharp took down the first known text on 18 August 1917 from a schoolgirl named Lizzie Abner at Oneida, Kentucky, during the trips through the Southern Appalachians he made with Maud Karpeles between 1916 and 1918. Over the next five years other collectors found pieces of it in North Carolina: Newman White printed two fragments heard from a railroad gang in Buncombe County in 1919, and Frank C. Brown gathered longer texts from singers in Avery and Durham counties in 1921 and 1922. Dock Walsh made the first commercial recording in Atlanta in 1926.
What the collectors found was really three songs travelling together: a chorus about shivering in the pines, a verse about the longest train (on "the Georgia line," which may remember the convict-leased coal mines of the 1870s), and a verse about a railroad accident. Singers have shuffled them ever since; the folklorist Judith McCulloh counted 160 versions in 1970. Bill Monroe set the bluegrass version in 1941, Lead Belly sang his own in the 1940s, and Nirvana took Lead Belly's to MTV Unplugged in 1993. This chart uses the words the collectors wrote down in Kentucky and North Carolina between 1917 and 1922. Words and melody are in the public domain.
Three chords in G: G, C and D, in a slow 3/4. Every verse and the chorus follow the same two-line shape: G for most of the first line, C two thirds of the way through it, back to G on the last word, then D in the middle of the second line and home to G. Strum it as a waltz, bass note on one and two light strokes after it, and keep it unhurried; the song is lonesome, not sad-fast. Let the chorus breathe, with a long D on "shivered" before the final G. With a group, sing the verses in a low voice and let the whole circle come in on "To the pines," and if someone can hold a high harmony on the chorus, that is the sound Bill Monroe built the bluegrass version on. E is one tap away if you want it lower.
Tap any chord for its diagram, other voicings, and the notes inside it.
Another lonesome Kentucky song: Man of Constant Sorrow chords and lyrics
All the campfire and folk song chord sheets, each one in every key.
Further reading: In the Pines (Wikipedia)
