Several verses refer explicitly to suicidal fantasies, most famously in the line "sometimes I take a great notion to jump in the river and drown", which was the inspiration for the title of the 1964 Ken Kesey novel Sometimes a Great Notion and a song of the same name from John Mellencamp's 1989 album, Big Daddy, itself strongly informed by traditional American folk music.

Family members of Huddie Ledbetter indicate that he may have sung the song as early as 1908 as a lullaby to his niece, Irene Campbell.

[3] John Lomax recorded a version of Huddie Ledbetter's song "Irene" in 1933, on a prison visit to Angola (Louisiana State Penitentiary).

[3] As part of the Federal Art Project that began in 1935, the song was published in 1936, in Lomax's version, as "Goodnight, Irene", a joint Ledbetter-Lomax composition.

[6][7][8] It is a three-chord song, characterized as a "folk ballad" with a three-phrase melody, with provenance in 19th-century popular music transmitted by oral tradition.

[10][11] Hank Williams connected the melody to the English ballad tradition, via a mountain song he knew as "Pere Ellen".

In 1950, one year after Lead Belly's death, the American folk band the Weavers recorded a version of "Goodnight, Irene".

Frank Sinatra's cover, released a month after the Weavers', lasted nine weeks on the Billboard magazine Best Seller chart on July 10, peaking at #5.

[30] Raffi sang the song on his 1979 children's album The Corner Grocery Store, but with modified lyrics about where different animals sleep.

The song was sung by Plymouth Argyle supporters for a long time before this and this added to the goading by the Bristol Rovers fans.

[35][36] In professional wrestling, "Adorable" Adrian Adonis frequently referred to his finishing move—a standard sleeperhold—as "Goodnight, Irene.