#211: There Was A Tall Oak Tree by Dorsey Burnette

City: Toronto, ON
Radio Station: CHUM
Peak Month: April 1960
Peak Position in Toronto ~ #4
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #23
YouTube: “There Was A Tall Oak Tree”
Lyrics: “There Was A Tall Oak Tree”

Dorsey Burnette was born in 1932 in Memphis, Tennessee. He played bass in his younger brother Johnny Burnette’s rockabilly Rock ‘n Roll Trio. Dorsey became a solo artist and had a few minor hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Dorsey Burnette is best known for writing over 350 songs. His most well known songs were recorded by teen idol, Ricky Nelson. When he was six his dad bought him a Gene Autry guitar, along with one for his younger brother, Johnny. Dorsey had a temper and was on a path to becoming what was then called a juvenile delinquent. He put his temper to better use competing as a Golden Gloves boxer. He met another boxer when he was 17 years old at the 1949 championship named Paul Burlison. They discovered a mutual interest in music. However, Burlison was  inducted into the US Army in 1951. Dorsey and his brother began appearing on Memphis radio stations and playing gigs for beer money, kicks and girls.

When Burlison returned from the Army the Burnette brothers formed a trio with him.The Rock and toll Trio first performed “Rockabilly Boogie” in 1953. The songs’  title was made up from the name of cousin a of the Burnette brothers named Rocky, together with the name Billy. From that songs first performance the term rockabilly was coined. Johnny Burnette is singing the lead on this with Dorsey Burnette on guitar.

In addition to his gigs, Dorsey worked at various jobs picking cotton, fisherman, carpet-layer, a deckhand on a riverboat and apprenticing to become an electrician. While Dorsey worked at Crown Electric there was a guy who worked odd jobs there called Elvis Presley who was a few years younger. Presley had been raised in the same housing project. But he gave up his work at Crown Electric, recorded some records and got a contract with Sun Records. The Rock and Roll Trio decided to take a shot at making music their profession. It helped that Dorsey Burnette and Paul Burlison were soon given the pink slip at Crown Electric.

In 1956 got a few breaks including several appearances on shows with ABC and a subsequent record deal with the Coral label.  But the Rock ‘n Roll Trio came to be billed as Johnny Burnette and the Rock ‘n Roll Trio. Dorsey didn’t like the way the groups agents marketing of the trio or his brother Johnny’s leap into the limelight. Dorsey quit the trio just before their planned appearance in the film Rock Rock Rock featuring rock ‘n roll DJ Alan Freed.

Dorsey moved to California after turning down an invitation to appear on the Louisiana Hayride. The brothers audaciously stepped up the street where Ozzie and Harriet Nelson lived in Beverley Hills and asked to speak to their son, teen idol Ricky Nelson. At that moment Ricky Nelson came up the driveway in his motorcycle. Nelson asked Dorsey and Johnny to perform in front of him on the spot. Of the ones Ricky Nelson recorded the most successful were written by Dorsey. These include “Waiting’ In School”, “It’s Late”,  “Believe What You Say” and “Gypsy Woman”. This songwriting success led to a record deal with ERA Records.

Prior to his contract with ERA Records, Dorsey Burnette had released several records in 1956 and ’57 on the Abbott Record label. He jumped around from the Surf label, Imperial Records and Merri Records between 1957 and 1960.

Then Dorsey Burnette got a new contract and wrote his first for single, “Tall Oak Tree”, with ERA Records.

“(There Was A) Tall Oak Tree” is a song that begins with a portrait of an idyllic environment: a tall oak tree, a babbling brook, a high mountain and a sky above. The Creator looks down and everything is “love, love, love.” Harmonious relationship between all aspects of the natural world is present. However, the Creator makes male and female humans. As the Biblical story tells it, the woman is tempted (not by a snake but by The Devil in “Tall Oak Tree”). Dorsey Burnette laments “if she’d left that apple on the apple tree, there’d be no sin or sorrow. We’d live eternally.” The consequences of sin end up being expressed in a toxic environment: “And then along came man, and chopped the oak tree down. And the babbling brook is solid ground. And the mountain high doesn’t stand so high. And there’s a cloud of smoke that covers up the clear blue sky.” “Tall Oak Tree” was one of the earliest pop songs to address pollution in the environment.

“(There Was A) Tall Oak Tree” reached #2 in Bakersfield (CA), and Potsdam (NY), #3 in Denver, #4 in Spokane (WA), Toronto, Birmingham (AL), and Phoenix, #5 in Hillsboro (OR), and San Bernardino (CA), #6 in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Kalamazoo (MI), and Seattle, #7 in San Antonio (TX), and Milwaukee (WI), #8 in Flint (MI), Newark (NJ), Clovis (NM), and El Paso (TX), #9 in Johnstown (PA), La Crosse (WI), Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Philadelphia, #10 in Ventura, Des Moines (IA), and Washington DC, #11 in Muskegon (MI), and #12 in Buffalo, Oakland (CA), Ann Arbor (MI), and Vancouver (BC).

He wrote his follow-up in 1960 that peaked on the Billboard Hot 100 at #48 titled “Hey Little One”. Three more single released all failed to chart in the USA, as did the early 1961 release “Hard Rock Mine”. The latter got some airplay in San Antonio, Texas, and peaked at #20 in Vancouver.

Various artists have recorded Dorsey Burnette’s songs, including Roger Miller, Juice Newton, Brenda Lee, Stevie Wonder, the Beatles, Cher, Rod Stewart, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Grateful Dead and Donny Hathaway. In 1964 his brother Johnny died after the fishing boat he was in was hit by a cabin cruiser. The impact threw him off his fishing boat and he drowned.

Given to excess in much of his life, in grief Dorsey turned to alcohol, drugs, overuse of  prescriptions and then to religion. After eight years he gave his attention to country music. Starting in 1972 with “In The Spring The Roses Always Turn Red”, Dorsey would chart 14 more singles on the Billboard Country singles survey. From time to time he got into fist fights at small venues where he played. At the age of 46 he died in his California home of a heart attack in 1979.

April 10, 2026
Ray McGinnis

References:
The Burnette Brothers, Rockabilly Legends.com
Rob Grayson, “The Boxing Burnette Brothers Pack A Pop Punch,” WKNO-FM, Cordova, TN, November 22, 2011
Frank Hoffman, “Dorsey Burnette,” Survey of American Popular Music.
Johnny Burnette & The Rock ‘n’ Roll Trio, Playlist.net
Dorsey Burnette: Credits, Discogs.com