"Dink's Song" (sometimes known as "Fare Thee Well") is an American folk song played by many folk revival musicians such as Pete Seeger, Fred Neil, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, and Cisco Houston as well as more recent musicians like Jeff Buckley.
The first historical record of the song was by ethnomusicologist John Lomax in 1909, who recorded it as sung by an African American woman called Dink, as she washed her husband's clothes in a tent camp of migratory levee-builders on the bank of the Brazos River, a few miles from Houston, Texas.
[4] Libby Holman recorded "Dink's Song" (as "Fare Thee Well") with guitar accompaniment by Josh White in 1942.
In the 1946 film Cloak and Dagger, the character played by Lilli Palmer sings a verse of the song to Gary Cooper's character, explaining she learned it from an American airman from "New Arizona" and adding she didn't have the chance to learn the rest of it.
The song was performed by Mary "Mississippi" Brown (Peggy Castle) on the television show Cheyenne, in the episode "Fury at Rio Hondo", which aired April 17, 1956.
In the liner notes to the album, Van Ronk writes that he considers the tune "probably the best piece of singing as such I've ever done on record.
Gloria Lynne recorded the song for a concept album created and produced by Harry Belafonte in 2001, titled The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music.
Puerto Rican singer Gabriel Ríos included the song on the limited edition 2-disc release of his album Angelhead.
[10] The song was also performed by Chuck/God (Rob Benedict) on the television show Supernatural, at the end of the episode "Don't Call Me Shurley."
The British folk musical group The Longest Johns included a rendition of the song on their 2023 album C-Sides.
Joni Mitchell performed "Fare Thee Well (Dink's Song)" early in her career and it was recorded when she appeared on radio station CFQC, circa 1963.