Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree
Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree is a pop song written in 1972 by Irwin Levine and L. Russell Brown and produced by Hank Medress and David Appell. The original performers were Dawn featuring Tony Orlando . On the B-side was I Can't Believe How Much I Love You .
The song reached number one on the charts in both the US and the UK for four weeks in April and May 1973 ; in Australia even seven weeks from May to July. The piece was the best-selling single in the US in 1973 and placed 37th on Billboard's Greatest Songs of All Time in 2008.
background
The song describes how a prisoner, before returning to his homeland after three years in prison, writes to his loved one to tie a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree in the city so that he can see from the bus whether she is still him always wanted, and otherwise he could continue straight away without getting out; when he arrives he sees the tree covered with a hundred yellow ribbons.
Such an anecdote can be found for the first time in print in the 1959 book on prison reform Star Wormwood by judge William Curtis Bok (1897–1962), who names the head of the prison in Chino (California) , Kenyon J. Scudder, as the source . On October 14, 1971, a corresponding short story by Pete Hamill ( New York Post ) appeared in various newspapers under the title Going Home . Reader's Digest published an abridged version in January 1972. In June 1972 ABC-TV broadcast a dramatized version with James Earl Jones in the role of the released prisoner as part of the series The Permanent People Puzzle produced by Alvin H. Perlmutter . In the same year Levine and Brown registered their copyright for the song Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree .
Inspired by this song, the yellow ribbon was used from 1979 during the hostage-taking in Tehran as a symbol of solidarity with the hostages and to greet them when they returned home. Before that, even if something different is often claimed, a tradition of wearing yellow scarves or ribbons to commemorate soldiers stationed in the field or elsewhere far away cannot be established.
Cover versions
The country version of the song by Johnny Carver was also successful . His Yellow Ribbon was placed in the Top 10 Hot Country Songs in June 1973 . Other cover versions come from, for example, Frank Sinatra , Dean Martin , Dolly Parton , Connie Smith or Tony Christie .
The title was also published in German versions by Ralf Bendix ( 100 colorful ribbons ), Peter Alexander and Dieter Thomas Kuhn ( bind a blue ribbon around our birch tree ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Billboard Top 100 ( Memento from September 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Curtis Bok: Star wormwood . Knopf, 1959 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
- ↑ Gerald E. Parsons: How the Yellow Ribbon Became a National Folk Symbol (1991)
- ↑ http://www.christsbondservants.org/Home_Files/wys-Insp%20Going%20Home2.pdf
- ↑ Gerald E. Parsons: How the Yellow Ribbon Became a National Folk Symbol (1991) and Yellow Ribbons: Ties with Tradition (1981)