I Wish My Baby Was Born

[4thVirginiaSoldier]

I love this song, it's very grim but it shows what everyone was going through during the war. To be honest the only time I haven't heard it at an event was in Cold Mountain and they sang the song extremely well.

[Silas]

Re: I Wish My Baby Was Born

Is this even a period tune?

[swankgreg]

Re: I Wish My Baby Was Born

I don't believe it is. T-Bone Burnett wrote that song under the name "Henry Burnett" for the Cold Mountain soundtrack. It's a good song, just not period.

http://www.answers.com/topic/t-bone-burnett

[Dusty Merritt]

Re: I Wish My Baby Was Born

T-Bone may have written the version in the movie (though I've also read it was also director Anthony Minghella), but there's a beautiful, much earlier (1965) field recording from the late great Dillard Chandler of Sodom, NC which can be found in a ballad compilation from Smithsonian Folkways, Dark Holler. That version is also on Backroads to Cold Mountain, a compilation containing a number of songs that inspired the book and film (not all period-accurate, but worth listening to nonetheless). The Carter Family's "Carter Blues" is supposedly a version of the same melody as well. I have no idea whether the song actually existed during the Civil War though.