2;
2 stgran
“.2 a. 4..
YA 21.212- ...
(2:320'. t

. , w WA
«A.» xfigéowjh‘xw 9&3. ~
w “’33"; r; "I’mfiax
I . . 3%.“. g '3‘? no
" A “-aaggfl ‘&
- 4‘ .J

«'5
am fie?
., “h , fimégjj f:
k ' , ”T 1. 1.,- a;
.. m , n 'IX. J rWfi?
- ¢&5fl%fi_i .mgfu .21.
" 222:3?“ await-3&2“ .r
“22"?‘m. a: W “mt-3.:

Esz‘fi...” 51-. , 2‘“ «31421.

3.2.323?" ' y"; .1715
“'1‘ $5.") 1 1.x?fp1fimg;

.. k , . . +2222?

=2:-«@222 -
#86.-
~‘.‘"~?TQ'L 2.
,«fig‘g a.

“JEWQPL
“- 22:22

J 2,5 ,2,

1‘ tag» 5: it
. i.’

, '1‘A‘f: a1» 7‘;

2.3.2 .
”Exam...
“1‘ w",

- m.
x.

«an a
.M
w < m.
.\ —-.r

1
m.
‘- agr’u‘
no; , .

2
...,,. 2,.
0112:." _ . 2,

v .2 .2 ““‘ 4 W“ 23" .5.

" ; . '1.' .3: _u V vary. :~ I
u&'fr‘°‘“€*‘ww ~ 2:: vim. 2:. ~
twppw-sz i‘fifi‘g'

V. .: § .- "‘-
§ 1-—
f_ h :9.- LA
4 .2 2 ‘ w
”22%; $452122;
*"éw‘f "‘ ”mar. ‘2‘.
g, ' mm“ . ‘ v;
2hr,-

-
.. 2«’ ~.

7. . .,
“"23”:
-7

 

THESIS

IlllIIIIHIIIIIIHIIIHllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

31293 01033 2223

‘__ ____- , _ 44

 

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY

A DELINEATION OF THE ETHIOPIAN OPERA IN THREE ACTS
presented by

Mark Morris

has been accepted towards fulfillment ,
of the requirements for

 

M.A. degree in History

(097 2:

._’7 (M

 

Major professor

Date OCT 9‘2; I993

 

0-7539 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

 

LIBRARY
Mlchlgan State
Unlverslty

 

 

 

PLACE lN RETURN BOX to roman this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES Mum on or baton date duo.

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE
«2.: mm,

v ,9:~a-L -

V7
in

2]

MSU Is An Affirmative Mon/Equal Opportunlty Institution
WM1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

29
I H

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

C
I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY
A DELDIEATION OF THE ETHIOPIAN OPERA IN THREE ACTS

By

Mark Morris

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of History

1993

ABSTRACT

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY
ADELINEATION OF THE ETHIOPIAN OPERA IN THREE ACTS

By

Mark Morris

This essay is hopelessly post-modem in its attempt to subvert the rules
of form. It subverts an authoritative academic document by becoming,
itself, a creature of its object of study, rhetorically, and also structurally
in for example its three acts which imitate the popular form of the antebellum minstrel
show. In its debt to and relation with past writings on the minstrel show, the greatest
influence comes from the reinterpretation served popular "Negro" songs in the 19508, a
reinterpretation most specifically embodied in Hans Nathan’s biography of Daniel
D.Emmett. From the days of their popularity up to the 1940s and 19508, the
"Negro"songs, like "Old Dan Tucker," "De Camptown Races," "Oh Susannah," "Dixie,"
"Jim Crow," "YellowRose of Texas," &c. were believed by many to be based on the
songs of slaves. In W Nathan, with musico-
logical authority, demonstrates rather that these tunes derive from English, Scottish and
Irish sources. What I have done here, then, for my "Plantation Finale" is to more or less
demonstrate musicologically to the contrary, that indeed the "Negro" minstrels borrowed
and adapted folk songs from African American tradition, a tradition, remember, by 1850

more than a century and a half old.

Copright © 1992, 1993
Mark Morris

All Rights Reserved

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures vi
Introduction 1
ACT I 5
ACT H 46
ACT III 82
APPENDICE I 187
APPENDICE H 213

BIBLIOGRAPHY 217

List of Figures

1- Pompey Ran Away &C- (from W and Beadingiiafllack
WM... and MusiciAfljga) p. 88

2. West African fiddle songs (from Wk) p. 93

3: Run Nigger (from W and WE...) P- 95-96

4. Jim Crow and Mr. Goldman (from J. Edgar, Philadelphia 1832 and W
mam) P- 106

5. Motion Example (from Negro Fglk Songs [Curtis—BurlinD p. 115
6. Happy Land of Canaan (from John Church, Cincinnati 1860) p. 117

7. Clare de Kitchen and My Body Rock 'Long Fever (from Mt; and Slaye
5.91135) 9- 121

8. Rhythm example p. 124

9. Long Time Ago and Bound to Go (from G. Willig, Baltimore 1833 and Slay;
39332) P- 125

10. Rose Tree (from "George P. Knauft‘s Virginia Reels") p. 126

11. Natchez Under the Hill and Zip Coon (from "George P. Knauft‘s" and mm
Winn) P. 127

12. Ole Tare River and Ole Tar River (from W and W
W) p. 130

13. Ole Pee Dee and Way Down in the Old Pee Dee (from W and film
Sgngmthefieergiaau) P- 132

14. Walk Along John and Shock Along John (from Emmett and 51mg) p.
133

15. Gwine to Follow (from W) p. 134
16. De Boatman's Dance (fromflanfimett) p. 135

17. Whar Did You Come From? (from Segmfifiady) p.137

vi

18. Juba and Aunt Kate (from Deemett) p. 140

19. Peter Story Banjo Solo and Liza Jane (from Qanjmmett and NemfiqlkSengs) p.
142

20. Old Aunt Sally and Round the Corn Sally (from W and SlaxeSenge)
p. 143

21. Gwine to Run All Night and Liza Jane (from F.D. Benteen, New York 1850 and
Wags) p. 148

22. Gwine to Run All Night and Lord Remember Me (from F.D. Benteen, We
and W) p- 148

23. Way Down in Cairo (from Firth, Pond, New York 1850) p. 150
24. Away Down in Sunbury (from We) p. 151

25. Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel (from W) p. 155

26. Roll, Jordan, Roll (from Slave Songs) p. 156

27. Melodic motif of Jordan Am a Hard . . (from W) p. 156

28. Nathan's match of Jordan Am. . . with 0 Daniel and Goodbye (from W)
p. 157

29. Bow Wow Wow (from Dan Emmett) p. 160
30. Gumbo Chaff (from Dag Emmeg) p. 161

31. Give Up the World (from Slaw p. 162
32. HI Had a Donkey (from W p. 163

33. Nathan's examples of similar melodies in Emmett's Walk 'Rounds and Slave Spiri-

tuals (from W) p. 165-166

34. Rhythmic example p. 167

35. Billy Patterson and Charleston Gals (from Danfimmett and W p. 168

vii

36. Loozyanna Low Grounds (from MRI—111910 p. 170

37. Uncle Gabriel the Negro General and Hard Laws in Ole Virginia (from Christy's
Gems and W [1932-1933]) p. 176

38. What Will This Darkee Do? (from Christy's Gems) p. 178

viii

Introduction

At thirteen or fourteen, when many Negro minstrels started in the
business, like for other boys, to them the year wound in a circle of
peculiar months; June, filled with freckles and sunshine, for example,
warmed the burnt cork boys to run off with the travelling shows.

Even past these years, the Negro minstrels had their calendar.

April opened the season in city theatres at the North. With populations
stripped to the working classes during pestilent July and August, minstrel
troupes toured New England or played to thinned audiences. October
delivered a last flurry of new repertoire for faithful and fading patrons.
November finished the season with a killing frost. Early December,
clasping white clouds exploding upward in a pink and blue airless sky
summoned expectations of traveling the Southern circuit. And, if this dim
invocation of fair weather put the long distance to the South too far a
minstrel might ejaculate to his friends “Iwish I was in Dixie’s Land.”{ 1}

To minstrels, Dixie meant Southern States south of the Mason-Dixon,
or, possibly, Negroes.{2} Going to Dixie’s land afforded an opportunity for
character study of Southern blacks according to biographical and
autobiographical portraits of Negro minstrels in the New York Clipper. No
one living knows how deeply these studies touched. Regardless the
veracity either the Negro characters or these reports, such statements
always flattered the minstrel. The Clipper, for example, wrote of R.
Bishop Buckley in July 1864, “During all their peregrinations, particularly
in the Southern States, R. Bishop Buckley has ever been a quiet, close and
philosophical observer of the Negro character, and being gifted with great

imitative powers and facial elasticity, his delineations are irresistibly

l

effective.”

Like other adventures of boys and men, fair and dark made
cardinal schemes for the minstrels. Negro minstrels put a blackface over
white skin. Sometimes they put on this character a black hat, fitting for
Fu Manchu or Dr. Faustus, in such a character as the vain and idle Sambo
Johnson of Oh Hushl. And, sometimes a white hat, like Uncle Ned,—in
honor of St. Thomas and Buddha. Their circus, yet, knocked aside the
different values of white and black. Not decisively, but in the enactment
of the burnt-cork “Negro” character, the identities and boundary lines of
black and white became obdurately entwined and tangled.

A person living in the United States during the 18403 or 18505 had a
better chance of seeing a minstrel show than most other types of entertainment.
Itinerant and imitated, the minstrel show was the only the theatre many
towns knew. And, the minstrel show cast a spell over audiences,
especially young boys. Something in the mix of bones rattling, clowning
and burnt cork drove their imagination. When a boy in the 18403, Negro
minstrel George Thatcher often awoke from dreaming holding an imaginary
tambourine believing he was blacked up.

The minstrel shows assembled a rich and authentic facsimile of a

nascent national culture. The Americans borrowed some old, some new for

their “Ethiopian” theatre. Pieces came from medieval folk culture,

Elizabethan theatre, colonial English drama, African slavery and American
patriotism, to name a few. Tumbling from the carousel with all of his

prizes, the blackface entertainer walked in an irreducibly American milieu

with a gait as timeless as his journey. A carnival freak, this painted man moved in

animation. Color, motion, and sound made the essence of the Ethiopian character.

The author, here, presents several vignettes of Negro minstrelsy. A
thumbnail depiction of the artistic traditions of the blackface figures of
the “Ethiopian” theatre appears in the first part. Part second features the
equivocal “Ethiopian” figure within the fiction of Negro minstrelsy created
by professional historians. In the closing act, a new tale in this story
unfolds. Music was an essential trait of the burnt cork “Negro” body. For a
long time, Americans believed this too minstrels borrowed from blacks at
the South. The Clipper tales of character study, for example, include
anecdotes of minstrels and African Americans sharing music. Later, the
association of “Negro” songs with negroes fell out of the fiction of the
minstrel shows. But, this transaction, too, created a part of this classic
delineation of the body.

“Ethiopian” minstrels conquered American drama before the Civil War.
Its plantation clowns, city-slicker buffoons, lively music and exciting
dance, fascinated audiences across the continent. { 3} Before 1843,
“Ethiopian delineators” as duets or solos, performed in circuses or shared
bills with drama troupes, and soloist singers. {4} Thomas D. Rice, the
“original Jim Crow,” marked an exception by his ability to carry a whole
evening’s entertainment.{5} The first minstrel show, the “Virginia
Minstrels,” appeared in New York City in 1843. A quartet, with Dan
Emmett on violin and William Whitlock on banjo, the “Virginia Minstrels”
created enormous success in New York, inspiring the classic form of the
minstrel show and a score of imitators.{6} When Emmett returned from
England in 1844, lead-men like E.P. Christy, who later won a patent for the
minstrel show, had troupes roaming the country or established in theaters
in almost every Northern and Western city.{7} During the 18203 and 18303,

a burgeoning popular culture awoke in the United States; in the midst of
3

this blackface minstrelsy became a genuinely national amusement and
art.{8} At a time when middle class Americans trumpeted woman’s virtue
and denounced the theater, families of all ranks came to the minstrel
shows to see and hear Sambo’s, Jim Crow’s and Zip Coon’s grotesque songs,
dances, and antics.{9} Minstrelsy grew in the garden of J acksonian
America.{ 10} Its tunes turned that “Music for the Millions” which gave
Americans their first popular music.{ 1 l} Minstrel shows captured the
hearts and imaginations of 19th-century Americans. In the autumn of his
life, the great American humorist, Mark Twain, wrote, “If I could have the
nigger show back. . .I would have but little further use for opera. . .In our
village of Hannibal. . .it burst upon us as a glad and stunning surprise.”{ 12}
As history, the United States’ blackface entertainments looks like a
fine can of worms. In bits and smatters, African culture found its way
into the “Ethiopian” theater. Blackface minstrelsy belied its African
influences with racism’s and amusement’s hallucinations. Blackface acts
distorted, scandalized and degraded the African in America, but they also
diffused aspects of African culture throughout the population. Early
“Africans” made extravagant claims of the authenticity of their acts.
History shows many of these claims lie. Within the lies, though, hides
some truth. In turn, some historians’ proofs against the minstrels’ boasts,
project more lies. The problem remains, in America, so far constant.
Racism and caste belie the African’s history on this continent. Lies breed
more lies, twisting and curling, all in confusion, the chaos itself making a
design;{ 13} within the buzzing and blooming, colors of the rainbow sift into
coherent patterns. These rainbow fractals crystalize on the cold
windowpane of caste, race and class in the United States; they coalesce in

the exchange and blending of culture at the margins of the oppression

4

decreed by the J acksonian ideology.{ 14} In “Ethiopian” entertainments white
Americans found an honest expression of their culture within an expanding
multi-racial caste society.

An attempt to delineate the character of the “Ethiopian”
entertainments favored among the United States, during the years 1820-
1867, risks portraying the genuine article little better than these
entertainments depicted Africans and African Americans. Albeit, the two
acts wield a mutual power; the representations dominate understanding of
the “real.” Presently, journalistic and academic writings on blackface
minstrelsy almost exclusively interpret and evince the antebellum
“Ethiopian” show. Modern academic writings, particularly, enjoy a wide
latitude constructing organized meaning for blackface entertainments.
This literature articulates an extensive landscape; racism, sexuality,
misogyny, carnival, class politics and social criticism color the canvas,
enunciate the Chiaroscuro. Pale, impotent, feeble, to borrow Fanny
Kemble’s words for the minstrel show, however, illustrate the power of
the academic discourse over blackface minstrelsy in contrast to the
tremendous influence of “Ethiopian” entertainments, and “Negro” minstrels
on African identity in the United States, Afro-American culture and, most
of all, the discourse on African Americans in the United States. Through
its enormous popularity and broad acceptance, blackface minstrelsy
defined, internationally, not only the Negro image, but also Negro
language, music, dance, and mentality. Thus, from its antebellum heyday
until the Great War, and lingering since in legacy, this, the minstrel
fiction, determined what was and what wasn’t African, Negro, black
competitive with other “organic” and “fictional” discourses.{ 15} Academic

delineations of the “Ethiopians” shade into a similar fantasy in attempts
5

to reach beyond the already impossible, “what” and “how” of blackface
minstrelsy to “why?” The fiction circulated in accounting of the impetus
for the origin, growth and success of blackface minstrelsy bears
importance because these explanations depend, largely, upon the
semantics, semiotics, and iconography of black skin in the United States.
This history, then, not only bears the mark of the these entertainments,
but strongly derives from them. Given this context, it becomes necessary
to concede that the most important question about this “African” art,
“why?,” remains, fundamentally inexplicable. I

Exotic or economic? The puzzle of minstrelsy’s catalyst grieves in
proportion to familiarity with the art. “Ethiopian” entertainments, as an
entity, carry the axiom that it looks preposterous to accurately
reconstruct its cultural style from the odds and ends’ understanding of
negritude and Africaness in the United States. The “Ethiopian” theater
could be many things, least of all reduced to one viewpoint of its impetus.
Except for its ambition to charm audiences, little in it remained
consistent; ribaldry, sentimentalism, fascism and freedom all cut their
capers.

Accounting the abstruseness of blackface performances, perhaps the
instability of the form that Eric Lott avows, one simple perspective
grounds minstrelsy with its referent population; “Ethiopian” minstrelsy
must sit against the backdrop of the contemporaneous lives of Africans in
the United States. Moving from the postulate to a specific, though, means
everything. Take this riddle, please. What discursive formations marched
along with the “Ethiopian” drama in a city such as Philadelphia? Here on
the public stages actors portrayed, primarily, Southern negroes of places

like Louisville or Richmond, in a city whose African American population
6

of 20,000 in 1827 almost matched the population of either other city.
Here, also where Africans had almost no rights as citizens or human
beings; where they were ridiculed in the press, oppressed by law, and
brutalized on the streets, in their churches, and their homes to an extent,
moreover, less severe than any major city except Boston. Did this arise
because fair Philadelphians esteemed free Africans too high, or feared
making another Belfast too much, to cast them as Pierrot; or were they
just not interested in B’er Rabbit across the avenue?{ 16}

In any case, C. Vann Woodward lays out a tempting line of thought when
he posits the New South borrowed Jim Crow from the North. The following
essay abjures pursuit of these themes. The three reasons deciding that
balance action and reaction. At top, the direction of this thesis lays
outside of the discourse of the three horsemen of the Apocalypse—race,
class and gender.{ 17} At middle, academic delineations of “Ethiopian”
theater cover these issues more thoroughly than any others. In the
“crisper,” sits this notion that very serious epistemological dilemmas
perplex reconstitutions of racial semantics in the antebellum United
States; they are too much and too little like those of the present, and set
in a too volatile milieu to warrant the moral generalizations which
suffuse post-modem writings on blackface minstrelsy.

ACT I
“Attenshun all de Univarse, My Kingdom’s rite weel,
Tan by to jump ‘Jim Crow’ Pon de toe and heel.”

The traditions which indirectly propagated the “Ethiopian” of the
American stage reach back many centuries. Properly placed in context,
the paradoxical salamungundi of minstrelsy’s “Ethiopian” characters

becomes more understandable. In Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro
7

Minstrelsy, Hans Nathan cites “the Greek phallophoroi who used soot; the
demons, goblins, savages, Indians, Turks, Moors, and Negroes of the lavish
entertainments at the courts of the Renaissance and the early Baroque;

and Pulcinella and Arlecchino of the Commedia dell’Arte . . .” as earlier
examples of the blackface art, but abjures connection between these and
American entertainment. However, the circuitous route of a extensive and
powerful aegis binds, in a genuine and almost linear relationship,
American blackface minstrelsy with at least one of these antecedents.

The tale of this relation tenders itself perhaps, on one hand, as funny
as one of the minstrel show’s best one-line screamers, or, on the other, as
convoluted as America’s racial history. In Europe during the middle ages,
carnivals and fairs held a prominent place in life and culture. In France,
the southern city of Lyons, fore example, sponsored fairs on feast days
four times a year, each lasting fifteen days. Enormous, chaotic,
hedonistic, the several major yearly festivals very literally ordered the
whole year. Piece meal like this, medieval men and women, dedicated
three months of the year to Carnival. Punctuating Mikhail Bahktin’s
description of the medieval carnivals, it might be said in France in the
12th, 13th and 14th centuries one did not toil until carnival time, but one
toiled in between carnival time.

The jumble of pagan revelry and Christian repentance created its own
language and order. The carnivals were a time of hedonism, of feasting,
drinking, fucking and fighting; a time for gratifying and glorifying the
“lower strata,” a time when, indeed, shit was noble. The camival’s
hedonism simultaneously upset, or rather inverted, society’s hierarchy.
People became mixed, blended, and set free.{ 18}

In the 16th-century, a former monk, Francois Rabelais wrote a series

8

of tales imbued with carnival scenes, but, moreover, with the language

and spirit of the carnival. In Rabelais’ day, the carnivals had become a

pale shadow of their former glory, if not a memory. Yet, they remained

vivid enough in fact and legend to give inspiration to his expansive, ribald,
humanist narratives. Specifically, two motifs of the carnival’s hedonism

exerted cardinal influence upon Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel: utopia

and the grotesque. Gargantua, the giant protagonist, unexpectedly names

Paris when, as an offertory to the Bishop, he so fiercely bepisses a crowd

that he drowns two hundred sixty thousand four hundred and eighteen,

exclusive of women and children. His very hugeness is anti—hero, anti-
hierarchical; he is, perhaps, the peasantry transfigured as a knight.{ 19}

Not properly a travelogue, Rabelais’ stories are designed to present

new scenes and sites to the reader. Like other books of this time,

Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel doubled as a compendium of world
knowledge.{20} The catchpoles, Gastrolaters, Dingdongs, and Chitterlings of the fourth
book of Pantegruel, for example, imitate the exotic peoples described in John
Mandeville's Travels, or Jacque Cartier’s Navigations.{21} As in the Baroque and
Renaissance courts,Europe’s burgeoning contact with Islamic countries, India and the
Americas initiated representations of people of different lands, of

different customs, habits and appearance into the carnival and Rabelais’

tales. In a limited sense, people of all classes in Europe’s major countries

(France, Italy, Spain), in Rabelais’ day, became absorbed with pondering,
discussing, delineating, acting out or seeing acted out, the appearance and
manners of “exotic” characters. { 22}

In the works of Rabelais’ kindred authors, Saavedra Miguel Cervantes

and William Shakespeare, an enlarged interest in Moors and “blackamoors,”

meshes in the grotesque and utopian motifs of the carnival. From the

9

eddies of the antique, grotesque ocean rolls the realism of Cervantes and
Shakespeare. Degradation, of magisterial divine order or official ideology
set above folk timelessness, follows this impulse, this impulse of

“coming down to earth” in Cervantes work. Such is the character of
Sancho in Don Quixote. Sancho’s fat belly, his appetites, and abundant
defecation, as Bakhtin argues, convey a powerful carnivalesque spirit. He
lies in the gay bodily grave, in the ever laughing lower stratum (belly,
bowels, earth), opened for the “abstract and deadened idealism” of Don
Quixote. {23 }

Masters and slaves caught in illicit and inverted alliances also shape
Cervantes’ grotesque carnivalesque realism. In Don Quixote appears a
story resurrected from the Commerce of Algiers. In Commerce of Algiers,
two Moors, the King of Algiers, Izuf, and his wife Zara fall in love with
their Spanish slaves. Zara is stricken with desire for Aurelio; unsated,
she appeals to the witch Fatima. Izuf, on his own, buys and becomes
enamored with Aurelio’s wife, Silvia. Izuf and Zara lament their fate,
unrequited and rejected for their Mahometan faith. Their personas as
“slaves of slaves” capsizes power with the gay inspiration of sexual
desire. Yet, while wicked, the blackness of Izuf and Zara little inflects the
polyphonic voice of Cervantes' utopic and carnivalesque Christian narration.{24}

In the novella, El Celoso Estremeno, Cervantes intertwines these two
carnivalesque motifs. Luys, a Moor, enacts a ribald impetuous slave; his
free, droll manners, love for music, and affection for wine ties him to the
medieval grotesque bodily images of the vernacular languages.{25} He
taunts and damns his master, Don Diego. Diego, the jealous husband, keeps his
wife locked in his house. Luys contemptuously twists Diego’s jealousy

by invoking mysterious young gentlemen who lay Diego’s wife in his
10

absence. Carnivalesque utopia floods the boards, here, as Diego’s
possession preys upon his possessiveness.{26}

Shakespeare staged his carnivalesque themes within a milieu dangled
between the carnivals, fairs, pilgrimages, church ales and maypoles of
festive medieval culture and the orgiastic masquerades of the 17th and
18th centuries. Shakespeare’s drama shows many outward signs of
carnival; such as, blunt “flesh and belly” images, ambivalent Obscenities
and banquet scenes. { 27} Elizabethan theatre emanated, as Michael Bristol
argues, from the low culture of the Renaissance.{28} Unlike the typical
middle child, it enjoyed itself fully. Although Richard Wilson detects a
creeping “official” ethic in the theatre’s organization, the Elizabethean
theatre housed a “theatre of misrule” like that of the English masquerades
and the early American theatre.{29} In figures like Falstaff, Feste or
Strumbo, the audience laughs at itself in the image of the plebeian mind.
Simultaneously, these clownish lords of misrule defy the external social
hierarchy which shade in the drarna’s meaning.{30}

Like the masquerades, Elizabethan drama revelled in the confusion of
identity. Travesty and other disguises composed a dramatic subculture of
carnivalesque inversions and uncrownings The carnival uncrownings, for example,
created by Prince Edwards and his companions, as theydonned disguises in Friar Bacon
and Friar Bungay, presage the intention ofthe masquerades. A more convoluted ethic
emerged in the multipletransvestitism of boy actors playing Rosalind or Viola, which like
all gender and status inversions undermined fixed personality.{31}

The English masquerades invited a commingling of the erotic and exotic in a utopian
carnival of lost identity. In this age, Turkish, blackamoor, and occupational
costumes became standard fare. Inheritors of the Carnival “misrule”

ethic, the masquerade figures burlesqued proper order, and commingled
11

with subterfuge, seduction and the erotic. Thus, merchants impersonated
mechanics, and footmen lords; transvestites found themselves in
unsympathetic hands; women came with uncovered breasts and legs. In
this context Miss Pleham disguised herself as a “blacamore” with
artificially darkened legs entirely exposed in 1768. { 32}

Miss Pleharn’s interest in “blackamores” followed a long tradition,
especially among ladies. In 1605, when Queen Anne asked Ben Jonson to
write a masque in which she and her ladies impersonated “Black-mores,”
she spoke within fashion and reason. { 33} Titled Masque of Blackness,
Jonson’s first masque struck new ground in several other ways,
including the use of perspective scenery and blackened skin.

Nowhere does the contrast between carnivalesque and official
ideology surface sharper than in Shakespeare’s Othello (1604) and
Jonson’s Masque of Blackness. Jonson’s fable tells the story of Niger’s
daughters who seek to become pure and beautiful, to become white.
Despite Niger’s protestations that “in their black the perfect’st beauty
grows,” they desire nothing but whiteness. The sun, the King of England,
alone has the power to restore to them their beauty. { 34}

Othello seduces its audience by upending the stereotype of the Moor.
Blackness is a vehicle of Shakespeare’s grotesque realism. Shakespeare
manipulates its moral conventions, and in doing so, heightens its appeal.
The Moor’s exoticism and wickedness furnish Shakespeare a means to
plumb human will and human consciousness. In Othello, he farms out
traits traditionally the Moor’s to all the principal characters; venery and
wickedness become Othello’s peril rather than his weakness. But, it is in
Othello’s blackness that he is a tragic figure. In Shakespeare’s unorthodox

allegory of good and evil, Othello becomes tragic by surrendering to the
12

stereotype. { 35}
Othello created perhaps the most influential representation of a black

man until the twentieth century. { 36} At heart, it projected a utopian vision
by sanctioning the love of Desdemona and Othello; and, moreover, by
sabotaging it with the Moor’s transplanted vice. Thus, with grotesque
realism, Shakespeare placed a carnivalesque image of blackness as a
model for later generations. The other vision of blackness, of J onsons’
Masque of Blackness, persisted in English culture.

In the United States, these competing images reappeared. In genteel
culture, two tropes came to blackness: the tragic and the corrupt. In
many abolitionist sets, for example, the African slave tended to be either
noble and tragic or savage and treacherous. Tom and Topsy became the
most human of these fictions. The “Ethiopian,” in his context, by contrast,
recreated the carnivalesque rebelliousness of Shakespeare’s Othello. Like
the Moor, the Ethiopian inverts and disorders the mores of blackness. He,
however, has no calling as a tragic human character; a clown better suits
his natural aptitude.

Charles Dibdin’s The Padlock, (1768) initiated the most influential of
these figures. Luys, transfigured as Mungo, became a more specifically
Negro character. Toward the end of the 18th-century, the West Indian
slave replaced the Moor in the English theatre. In this spirit, Isaac
Bickerstaff wrote Mungo’s part in West Indian dialect—originally for John
Moody who toured Barbados, although he never played the role. Mungo
portrays a gayly insolent operatic servant. Like Luys, his soul aches for
music. Dibdin, who wrote The Padlock’s music and played Mungo, sang “Let
me when my heart a sinking hear the sweet Guittar a clinking.” The

Padlock opened at the John Street theatre in New York in 1769. The
13

younger Lewis Hallarn became affiliated with the role in the States.
Reputedly, be far surpassed Dibdin’s performance. Dunlap says, by
Laurence Hutton’s report, “In The Padlock Mr. Hallarn was unrivalled to his
death, giving Mungo with a truth, derived from the study of the negro slave
character, which Dibdin, the writer could not have conceived.”{37}
Cervantes’ grotesque Renaissance novella reborn as a comic opera with
a West Indian droll, inebriate slave as a showpiece presaged that
something strange loomed on the dramatic horizon. When Dar’s de Money,
Desdemonum et. a1 became the favorite pieces of the large Minstrel
Troupes in the 18503, it told that indeed Renaissance humanism and the
history of laughter took a wrong turn at Alberquerque. Othello lost his
renegade tenor over the centuries. In the minstrel theatre, misrule,
although camp, animated the staid and faded English dramatic icon. The
damn, despicable clown broke the Moor’s tension held by his transcendence
above the evil of blackness. And, people laughed. But, the laughter of the
Carnival was never washed snow white.
The rambling legacy of uniting personal “blackness” with the utopian
and the grotesque imbued the distinct American “Ethiopian” character of
the 19th—century. Blackface acts aimed only partially to fit the free and
slave Africans in the United States; concomitantly, black stage characters
embodied a theater inherited from early modern England and Europe. The
United States’ unique genre of “Negro” entertainer had a history stretching
back to the eighteenth century. In New York, in 1767, Mr. Tea performed at
the end of The Enchanted Lady and the Grove’s third part, “a Negro dance in
character.”{ 38} This performance may represent a perceptible harbinger of
“Ethiopian” minstrelsy. It was this the simple, vivid, grotesque

representation of blacks in utopian space which became the hallmark of
14

the “African” character. In the American theatre, the complexity of
Othello and Oroonoko fell away for the ebullience and ribaldry of music
and dance. While both tragedies played successfully in the colonies and
republic, neither stood against the fetish caught in the United States for
very simple, comedic performances by Negro characters. The pensiveness,
heroism, and humanity of Othello and Oroonoko presumably repulsed
Americans; similar to their distaste for the renowned Othello of early
19th-century Europe, Ira Aldridge, the expatriate African American.

Until the 19th-century, most musical or dance Negro performances
remained within plays. In addition to song performances in popular
English and Continental pieces, (The Padlock, Inkle and Yarico, The Prize,
Obi, and Paul and Virginia) native productions, like The Yorker’s
Stratagem, (1792) The Triumphs of Love, (1795) and General Burgoyne’s
Boston Blockade (1776) brought Negro dance and song to theatre audiences.
Simultaneously, the genuine predecessor of Ethiopian acts, the entr’actes
in Negro character, periodically took a place in evening performances. Mr.
Tea’s performance in 1767, ostensibly, fell in this category, as well as “A
Comic Dance, in Character of a female Negro,” presented in 1796.{39}

In 1815, a hallmark of blackface minstrelsy appeared on an Albany
stage in The Battle of Lake Champlain as ”The Seige of Plattsburgh” sung
by a comic character, a “Black Sailor.” Although not printed as sheet
music until 1837, as “Backside Albany,” the song, became a favorite in
local oral repertoire. It took the Irish “Boyne Water” for its tune, while
its text, by Micah Hawkins, appeared in the Columbian Harmonist (1815).
Hawkins molded the “Black Sailor” from the Anglo-European heritage of
dramatic blackness.

As an American “black,” the chap became a different
15

sort. The war with Britain technically began over the widely publicized
impressment of five sailors, including three African Americans, from the
Chesapeake in 1807. Blacks, also, comprised between ten to twenty
percent of the eight hundred and twenty-man American Navy at the Battle
of Lake Champlain. William J. Mahar sets an argument, against this
context, that the conspicuous role of black sailors in the war and the

victory, cast the character of a “Black” a particularly adept patriotic
mouthpiece. {40}

Hawkins failed to generate enthusiasm for a similar song, “Massa
Georgee Washington and General LaFayette,”{4l} he composed on the occasion
of General Lafayette’s visit to America in 1824, but “Backside Albany’s”
large popularity made it a favorite of the minstrel shows in the 403 and
503. {42}

“The Siege of Plattsburgh” and “Massa Georgee Washington and General
LaFayette” mark a step toward an indigenous “African” stage character,
drawn from Africans within the United States. Its use of American argot,
and, perhaps, real aphorisms of American slaves, distinguishes it from the
British Negro characters drawn from the language and lore of the West
Indies. “The Siege of Plattsburgh” uses slang like “vittle,” “tea party,” and
characteristic sayings such as “Catch fire too, jis like a tinder.” “Massa
Georgee Washington and General LaFayette” employs phrases, if not
originating with Africans, then associated with and popular among, like
“bymeby,” “Ole Furjinnee Nebber Tire,” and “What a dat?” The basic
dialect Hawkins uses incorporates the voiced labial stop substitute /b/
for the voiced labiodental fricative /v/ as in “ebber,” “debble,” and
“nebber” more extensively than British transcriptions of West Indian

language. He also uses, in “nudder” a voiceless apicoalveolar stop ld/ for

16

the voiceless apicodental fricative Ithl. While both these patterns
characterize all African based English creoles, the orthographic depiction
Hawkins chose was, and remained, characteristic of the United States. {43}

The cover of “Massa Georgee Washington and General LaFayette”
identifies the actor in blackface as “Mr. Roberts” (James Roberts) a
Scottish vocalist who died in 1833 and “legend” associates Pot Pie
Herbert, and Sam Tatall with “Backside Albany.” Yet, accessible
documents seem mute about the stage representation of these songs in
character; what if any of their style of motion or mannerisms imitated
African slaves is unknown. As a point of fact, the records of this era of
blackface acts at once are more plentiful and irrereparably muddled.
Writing on this period of minstrelsy, Laurence Hutton, in 1887, remarked,
“When historians disagree in this confusing way who can possibly decide?”
and, “That Sir Walter Raleigh, losing all confidence in the infallibility of
human testimony, should have thrown the second part of his History of the
World into the flames is not to be wondered at!”{44}

The distinct trend toward blackface performances which drew their
songs, dances, and “folk lore” if not their language and mannerisms from
Africans in the United States, in the formative decade of “Ethiopian”
minstrelsy, however, is unmistakable. African and Negro characters
endured as bit parts in plays, and as entr’actes. These enactments became
training fields for comic actors. The popular demand for “Ethiopian
delineations” created a specialty among the theatre crowd by which a
handful of men won reputations in the late 18203.

Although possessed of an unstable, and raspy tenor, George Washington
Dixon became well known for singing, in character “Zip Coon” and “Long

Tail Blue.” Alternatively, minstrel and theatre manager, Charles White,
17

and Col. T. Allston Brown, credit Robert Farrell with popularizing the song
and character of “Zip Coon,” and grant first performance rights of “The
Long Tail Blue” to Barney Burns. Allston and White also give George
Nichols composer’s title for “Zip Coon.” A clown with Purdy Brown’s
Theatre and Circus, South and West, Nichols also laid a “first users” claim,
against Thomas D. Rice’s, on the “Jim Crow” act. Allston reports Nichols
first sang “Jim Crow” as a clown, later as a black. His inspiration came
“from a French darkie, a banjo player known from New Orleans to
Cincinnati as Picayune Butler. . .”{45}

By and large, T. D. Rice receives credit both for originating and
popularizing “Jim Crow”—”Weel about and turn about and do jis so, eb’ry
time I weel about I jump Jim Crow.” Rice began his acting career as a
supemumerary at the Park Theatre (circa 1827). In Samuel Cowell’s
recollection, Rice attracted so much attention by his comic eccentricities
in a bit part of Bombastes Furioso that the leading men, Hilson and Barnes,
registered a complaint which caused his dismissal. Rice moved West in
1828, joining briefly, as property man, with the Mobile Theatre before
landing in with Samuel Drake’s company at the Columbia Theatre in
Cincinnati. The New York Times of June 5, 1881 published the reminisces
of an actor of this company, Edmon S. Conner. He recalled Rice as “a young
fellow (who) played small business’. . .” “Small business” amounted to
singing and dancing in the entr’acte, frequently in blackface. Conner
explains, “It was customary then always to have a song or dance between
the play and the farce, and young Rice was very good in either. Negro
minstrelsy was then in its infancy and attracted little attention but Rice
was particularly happy in little Negro bits.”’{46}

After a season in Cincinnati (ca. 1830-1831), Rice travelled with a

18

branch of Drake’s company under Noah Ludlow to Louisville. Edmon Conner
and Sol Smith also numbered in with the troupe. The company adOpted the
Louisville Theatre, the city’s first regular theater, as home. According to
Conner and Ludlow, the rear of the Louisville Theatre opened to a livery-
stable owned by a man named Crow. {47} From their dressing rooms, the
actors watched with amusement the capers of an elderly black man who
did odd jobs for Crow. Rheumatic, or otherwise crippled, this gentleman’s
right shoulder bent up to his neck and his left leg crooked in at the knee.

In his grotesque gait he shuffled out the steps of a dance which
accompanied a song he sang while cleaning and rubbing down horses. The
song and dance in its queer execution fascinated Rice. Seeing potential
rendering this song and dance as an act, Rice hired this gentleman to teach
umMm

Near this time, Drake produced The Rifle, a local play, for which Rice
was cast as a “Kentucky com-field negro.” Rice requested and earned
Drake’s permission to present his new character act as part of the play.

He wrote new verses, changed the tune, (with the help of Sol Smith by
Smith’s account), quickened it, and presented his new song “Jim Crow” to a
delighted Louisville crowd. {48}

This tale represents just one of several “Jim Crow” creation stories.
Courtney Wemyss, in Theatrical Biography, places the stable story in
Pittsburgh, while Robert P. Nevin offers a somewhat outlandish tale in a
piece in the Atlantic Monthly of November, 1867. {49} The accounts of Noah
Ludlow and Edmon S. Conner, however, tip the scales in favor of Louisville,
and most scholars who write on blackface minstrelsy accept the Rice,
stable-hand, Louisville origins of “Jim Crow.”

Within a span of several months, Rice accumulated a fantastic

19

following in the Western theatre audiences along the Drake circuit. The
rumbling of this success brought Rice, cresting on a wave, toward the East
taking, one by one, the major cities by storm. On November 12, 1832, Rice
first “jumped Jim Crow” in New York city on the stage of the Bowery
Theatre. The working class patrons of the Bowery Theatre welcomed Rice
with fervor. Night after night, the Bowery boys, in red shirts and
soaplocks, with their not-too-respectable seamstress partners jammed

the theatre’s pit and gallery to watch Rice jump “Jim Crow.” Rice’s
popularity drove him to pen full length Negro farces like Long Island J uba,
or Love by the Bushel and Oh! Hush! or, the Virginny Cupids. These hit the
Bowery audiences’ craving for comic “Ethiopian” songs like magic. In
1833, Oh! Hush! with the “blood and thunder” melodrarnas like Mazeppa,
provided the big guns for the Bowery’s repertoire.{50}

Although staged a decade before the beginning of the minstrel show,
Rice’s farces enunciate the most durable ingredients of “Ethiopian”
minstrelsy’s popularity. Loosely based on the song “Coal Black Rose,”
popularized by George Washington Dixon, Oh! Hush! won tremendous
acclaim in the theatres for over three decades. Revolving around two boot
blacks’ competition for Miss Dinah Rose, Oh! Hush! is a working men’s
allegory which presents concomitantly a monument of Rice’s theatric
brilliance and a barometer of the world view of New York’s white working-
men. Rice, as Gumbo Cuff, plays a work boss who has run-ins with a
lottery winner, Sambo Johnson, who affects airs around his erstwhile
colleagues. The plot and theme run on the humiliation of Cuff by Sambo,
both at work and with Rose, and Cuff’ s successful verbal and physical
abuse of Sambo. In essence, the farce expresses a performance at the root
of “Ethiopian” minstrelsy’s fantastic popularity: the articulation of

20

working class (or frontier, anti-genteel) perspective through “Negro”
characters—set in motifs taken from African American life and emulative
of African Americans.{51}

With “Jim Crow,” Rice became a landmark; his fame exceeded any other
American performer, but he also embodied a new type of performer, the
union of character and actor. Rice’s “J irn Crow” character not only drove
little boys crazy, but it also opened opportunities for a handful of entertainment-
prone men. In mid-303, the vocation of “Ethiopian” delineator expanded to
the circuses and many dramatic companies. In this flush of blackface
vogue, a score of rebellious souls with a love for the grotesque, and the
utopian enlisted as willing hands in the venture.

Of this crowd, which numbers include P.T. Barnum, Frank Lynch, and
John Diamond, the most conspicuous are the four original Virginia
Minstrels (Frank Brower, Dan Emmett, Dick Pelham, and William Whitlock)
and Joel Sweeny.{52} Emmett, the best known among these, was neither the
best musician nor the best acquainted with African and Afro-American
culture. By contrast, Joel Sweeny grew up on a plantation, where,
ostensibly, family slaves taught him to play the banjo. Sweeny’s
virtuosity on the banjo placed him, according to Robert Winans, in a
position with “Ethiopian” banjo playing “analogous to Earl Scruggs’
relationship to bluegrass banjo.” Sweeny travelled widely in circuses in
the United States and Great Britain. Along his way, he inspired countless
imitators in addition to personally introducing several of minstrelsy’s
best players to the banjo (e.g. William Whitlock, George Swaine Buckley,
and Fred Mather).{53}

Frank Brower held a name in the profession for able portrayals of

African Americans at the South. The New York Herald of December 5,
21

1842, for instance, called Brower “the perfect representation of the
Southern Negro characters.” Born in Baltimore in 1823, he made his debut
in blackface song and dance acts in Philadelphia in 1838. He gained a
reputation as a master of “Ethiopian” dance artistry, specifically for his
jumping and leaping which he putatively imitated from elderly African
Americans, and by which he set a new trend in blackface performances.
Nathan submits that the wording of a letter of C. J. Rogers to the New York
Clipper (June 20, 1874) strongly implies that Brower introduced the bones
to blackface performances in 1841 while with the Cincinnati Circus
Company. According to the first sheet music edition (Boston 1844),
Brower also “wrote and composed” the popular song “Old Joe.”{ 54}

Joel Sweeny’s student William Whitlock, a compositor by trade, had the
best name in blackface acts along the East among the early founders of the
minstrel show. Within a year of Whitlock’s introduction to the banjo by
Sweeny, P.T. Barnum hired him to accompany his “Negro” dancers John
Diamond and Frank Lynch. Whitlock’s talents won him his own billings
both as a musician and a dancer. Whitlock had a reputation for owning
“accurate knowledge of the peculiarities of plantation and cornfield
negroes” which he supposedly gained while on tour in the South. On this, a
New York Clipper article (April 13, 1873) drawn from Whitlock’s
autobiography reports: “Every night during his journey south, when he was
not playing, he would quietly steal off to some negro but to hear the
darkies sing and see them dance, taking with him a jug of whiskey to make
them all the merrier. . .”{55}

Dan Emmett learned to play the fiddle while growing up in Mt. Vernon
Ohio. At eighteen, he signed on for three years in the United States Army,

underage, while in Cincinnati on May 2, 1834. At Newport Barracks,
22

Kentucky, he took on the duties of drummer and fifer under the instruction

of John J. Clark (Juba) and Sandie McGregor.{ 56} He joined the Sixth Infantry
at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri on March 3, 1835 and became its “leading
fifer.” On July 8, 1835, the Army discharged him “by process of civil

authority by reason of minority,” listing him as a musician by vocation.

For the next four years, Nathan speculates Emmett split two careers,

working as a printer in Cincinnati in the winter and traveling with the

circus in summer.{57}

Emmett began playing banjo and singing in the circus ring in 1841
while with the Cincinnati Circus Company. C. J. Rogers, its manager,
reports Emmett learned the banjo from a West Virginian named Ferguson
who traveled with the circus in 1840. Ferguson, who Rogers describes as
“nigger all over except in color,” joined the circus on Emmett’s behest for
ten dollars a month after the circus owners refused to hire him outright.
Emmett took Ferguson’s place playing with Brower in 1841. At Lynchburg
during the week of Fourth of July, Brower introduced bones playing to an
audience while accompanying Emmett in the new song “Old Tar River.” In
1842, Emmett travelled with Spalding’s North American Circus, appearing
at Detroit, Mount Clemens, Utica, Pontiac, and Farrnington in late
September. Shortly after, Emmett and Brower journeyed to New York. By
November, they were performing at the Franklin Theatre on Chatharn
Square.{58}

By mid-January 1843, neither remained with the Franklin. Out of work
and restless, Emmett fell in with Whitlock who was also between
engagements. Later in life, Emmett and Whitlock provided The New York
Clipper their accounts of the Virginia Minstrels’ beginnings. Their stories

differ well beyond their prominent slant toward assigning formative

23

genius to the teller. The ensemble Emmett and Whitlock got together,

with Brower and dancer Dick Pelham, however, definitely appeared at the
Bowery Amphitheatre on February 6. The New York Herald advertised this
show as the “First Night of the novel, grotesque, original and surprisingly
melodious Ethiopian band, entitled the Virginia Minstrels. . .”{ 59}

The name the performers chose marks the official beginning of
“minstrelsy.” The inspiration came from the popularity of a group of
Tyrolese Minstrels, the Tyrolese Family Rainer, who came to the United
States in 1838 and whose fame triggered a spate of emulators, the
Hutchinsons being the most successful.{60} The New York Herald
advertisement of February 6, continued to pronounce the Virginia
Minstrels exempt from vulgarities etc. which “hitherto characterized
negro extravaganzas.” In retrospect, one wonders what fell in this
category. In fact, the Virginia Minstrels exceeded previous blackface acts
in freneticism and grotesqueness. A plausible fiction Nathan constructs
of the group’s stage appearance emphasizes chuckles, hoarse shouts and
laughter, rolling eyes, unruly poses with the legs and body, instrument
theatrics, vigorous and incessant motion, and spontaneous “breakdown”
and boot thumping “trucking” by the end men. Indubitably, the Virginia
Minstrels earned the grotesque essence the New York Herald advertised
and the pleasure of many audiences.{61}

The tangible evidence of the aura of the band, sheet music and
playbills, reveals a habit of featuring hideous caricatures of Africans to
an extent singular in “Ethiopian” entertainments. Artistically, these
illustrations are often enormously humorous. For example, the Virginia
Minstrels playbill for the Adelphi Theatre in London advertises an

“Ethiopian Concert” in letters made of oddly contorted and primitively
24

caricatured “Ethiopians.”{62} Yet, despite specifically lampoons of African

features, the Virginia Minstrels’ caricatures, especially on sheet music,

barely resemble humans let alone Africans. One wonders what the band,

the artists or the music publisher intended with these pieces. Was the

goal grotesque caricature for the sake of amusement, or were the

illustrations representations of Afro-Americans as they conceived them?
The “Ethiopian” caricatures bring on a question about the Virginia

Minstrels relative Afro-American culture. Emmett’s and Brower’s

familiarity with African Americans, with slaves, rests beyond question,

and Whitlock’s is practically assured. Pelham at least knew dances and

songs borrowed from slaves well enough to rank first among white “Negro”

dancers, and Sweeny, a “Virginia Minstrel” in Great Britain in the spring of

1844, of course, grew up on a plantation. All the Virginia Minstrel’s

instruments except the fiddle emanated from African American music

traditions, and a lengthy and robust African American fiddling tradition

existed years before Emmett ever picked up the instrument. Their

playbills always stressed the southern slave origins of their music,

usually in wildly prevaricating claims, but sometimes quite specific in

the sources of the band’s music. The playbill for their appearance in

Worcester, Massachusetts March, 1843 describes their music as the

“songs, refrains, and ditties as sung by the southern slaves at all their

merry meetings such as the gathering in of the cotton and sugar crops,

corn huskings, slave weddings, and junketings.”{63} The band’s program of

March 7th and 8th at the Masonic Temple in Boston consists, probably, of

five songs from folk tradition (three from African American), one “nigger”

parody of an English song written by Emmett, and—if consonant with

custom—two others (“Dan Tucker” and “Lucy Long”) borrowed from folk
25

tradition.{64}

The Virginia Minstrels, their roots, their performances, and the spark
they set in theatres reflects a solid investment in the music, dance and
lore of African Americans. Little doubt contests if the minstrel show had
even a minor impetus toward authentically representing Africans on stage
the entertainments would have taken a completely different shape. For
example, “Ethiopian” minstrels, probably, excluded the multiplicity of
African American dialects, most significantly French creole, in favor of
one canon contrived by 1820.{65} Reciprocally, if the entertainments had
not been based on Afro-American culture, not only would the antics, and
dialect, but also would the music and dance have been completely
different.

African American music and dance adapted and rendered by talented
musicians, mostly of Anglo-European stock, underpinned the minstrel
show’s archetype, the Virginia Minstrels.{66} Brower, Emmett etc. arrived
at their glory as creatures of several centuries of an appetite for
impersonations of black men in England and America. The eruption of
popular culture, popular entertainments in the United States and TD.
Rice’s fame account as their immediate progenitors. These contexts
imbued the dialogue in which their acts and imaginations spoke. Despite
the context, the act, art, and actions of the Virginia Minstrels just furnish
bait for fishing for answers. For what purpose did the “Negro” delineators
undertake these grotesque performances? Why did white men arrogate
Afro-American words, music and dance; why did they “hang out” with black
people; and why did they blatantly and vigorously degrade African
Americans? Inside this circus tent, rests a remnant, perhaps a rekindling,

refiguring of carnival.

26

A piece of carnival comes with the capers and tunes “Ethiopian”
delineators borrowed. The parts of Afro-American culture adopted were
drawn from, outside the Place Congo and Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the
nearest thing to carnival for Africans in the United States. At harvest,
plantation owners all over the South held corn shuckings for which they
sent invitations to neighboring plantations. At these the year’s corn crop
was piled up into heap. Customarily a song leader or a fiddler took a high
perch and fed the workers song while they shucked. Many of the songs
sung probably embodied a shoot of a large family of corn shucking songs
epitomized in “Roun the Corn Sally” and the children’s song “Liza Jane.”
Lewis Paine reports, in his area of Georgia, after the shucking it was a
tradition for the slaves to capture the host and carry him to the house.
There, everyone sat down to a lavish feast, after which an Afro-American
fiddler accompanied the whites’ dancing until they relinquished him to the
slaves gathered out in the clean-swept yard.{67}

Corn shuckings paint a pretty picture; ex-slave Joseph Holmes Prichard
aptly remarks, “My goodness, I would just love to be dar now.”{68} Their
atmosphere failed to reappear on the minstrel stage, but maybe, here, a
little residual spirit in the tunes came to life. Regardless, those tunes
the minstrels borrowed from African Americans showed little resistance
to enlivening theatre audiences. In the carnival space of theatres and
circuses, altered slave songs took on new identities; they became the
leitmotifs of the white citizenry, of rowdy Bowery crowds, of striking
cordwainers, of business men and republican mothers. { 69} The art which
injected this craving into the national bowels, as Eric Lott points out,
epitomizes Marshall McLuhan’s Shibboleth “the medium is the message.”{70}

The message, then, was grotesque rendering of poached Afro-American
27

music and dance in the carnival space of a free republican citizenry.

Spaces like the Bowery Theatre sheltered the carnival’s spirit as it had
been passed down to the theatre in Shakespeare’s time. Theatre goers
toasted the lower strata; it was an essential feature of an evening’s
performance. Favorite rituals of munching roasted peanuts and scattering
the husks or creating huge pools of tobacco “juice” ensconced the value of
bodily gratification; physical danger and physical pain celebrated in fistic
fighting expressed the value another way. As well, from a box or balcony,
one might see wobbly drunks, a gentleman vomiting, nursing babies, and as
well the customary stomping of feet and throwing of vegetables.{71 } New
York’s, Washington’s and the Western theatres, particularly, housed this
popular culture. Francis Kemble wrote of the Washington Theatre, “The
proprietors are poor, the actors poorer; and the grotesque mixture of
misery, vulgarity, stage-finery, and real raggedness is beyond anything
strange and sad, and revolting.”{72}

The sui of the United States’ sui generis theatre culture measured

out as galvanized politics. In the early19th-century, the United States witnessed a
current of popular and working-class politics not fully appreciated in
Britain until Benjamin Disraeli’s prime ministry. Theatre crowds bullied
orchestras to substitute patriotic and popular songs for planned airs and sonatas
with the threat of “apples, stones, and other missiles.”{73} The urban populace
lionized favorite native entertainers, such as Rice and Edwin Forrest, and
bitterly resented the criticisms of Mrs. Trollope and Kemble. The heat of
working-class, nativist political fervor periodically exploded into
violence in the theatres. The jeering crowds which greeted Charles
Mathew’s second visit to the United States foreshadowed the Astor Palace

riot, triggered by popular antipathy toward Charles MacReady, in which
28

shots from a force of two hundred police and three hundred militia
guarding the theatre killed thirty-one rioters and spectators. Nine years
later, a crowd from one to four thousand kicked off a week of anti-black
nativist rioting by storming the Bowery in search of its foreign-bom
stage manager George Farren. {74}

Blackface minstrelsy, by being political in content and form, enacted a
kind of utopian carnival. The Negro “mask,” the racist mien, allowed
splices of misogynism, homosexuality, social and political satire, and
“low brow” anti-elitism to transmit with staged impersonations as a kind
of omnipotent double-entendre. Through this process, “Ethiopian”
minstrelsy evinced an identity reciprocal with the national identity of its
audience. Thus, because of the unique republican political structure of the
United States, the aegis of the carnivalesque had become attached to the
nation state, and transfigured into an ambivalent celebration of caste.

“Ethiopians” gave more than a front for the common man’s nationalism;
Afro-Americans figured as an integral part of it.{75} This feature was a
constant impetus in “Ethiopian” entertainments. The first glimmer of
“Ethiopian” popularity sprung from a performance of a patriotic song by a
comic “Black Sailor;” and from at least T.D. Rice, “Negro” delineators
advertised the folk origins of their acts. The custom evinces an equation
of Africans with American distinctiveness; they were an unique and
essential part of the United States. Hence, their caricature became a
point of national pride. For example, on June 5, 1840, Whitlock’s playbill
for the National Theatre in Boston boasted “. . .Dis very partic’lar nigga
will jump, dance, and kick his heels in a way dat Mademoiselle Fanny
Elssler never did, neber can and neber will do.”{76 }.

In 1845, during the ascendancy of the minstrel craze, J. Kinnard Jr.’s
29

capriciously titled “Who Are Our National Poets?” appeared in the
Knickerbocker Magazine. The several irreconcilable readings ascribed
Kinnard by the minstrel show’s academic interpreters illustrate the

hazards of Kinnard’s heavily comically inflected essay. {77} Regardless the
instability within Kinnard’s article, a sensible viewpoint surfaces. He

looks at the indictment laid upon the United States by Britain and Europe,
that it has no poetry, and he advances the position that the songs and

poetry of Afro-Americans, which are somehow represented in the recently
popular minstrel shows, are analogous to the Scottish poetry collected by
Burns. He advises, hence, those who aspire to national poet, the Homer of
the fiftieth century, should follow the example of “Jim Crow,” “Dandy Jim”
and “Zip Coon” and look to our negro slaves. Voices which compete with
Kinnard’s tongue-in-cheek express some ambivalence of minstrelsy’s
seemliness, and his tribute to African American genius may evince an
unaffected condescension. Albeit, all the humor and prejudice works

inside the major ingenuous argument.

E.P. Christy’s Plantation Songster (1854) exalts Christy as the poet of
Kinnard’s conception. Its preface explains “. . .the next cry was, that we
had no NATIVE MUSIC;. . .until our countrymen found a triumphant
vindicating APOLLO in the genius of E.P. Christy, who. . .was the first to
catch our native airs as they floated wildly or hummed in the balmy
breezes of the sunny south.”{78} If Christy’s publicists came to their
conclusions, without Kinnard’s inspiration, at least such thought lay
consonant with other writers of the day. Increasingly, the ties between
Negro folk music, national art, and minstrelsy became worthy of
comment.{79} Eric Lott italicizes that, like Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, a

Herderian notion of folk underlay these tips to and trumpets of “Negro”
3O

songs.{ 80}

In the Northern antebellum United States, outside of debates over
slavery, blackface minstrelsy was its white citizenry’s main discourse of
Africans. Few Euro-Americans except, perhaps, North Star subscribers
sensed or fretted the minstrel show’s perversion of African identity. Yet,
like the “Rolling Stones,” “Ethiopian Minstrelsy” invited multifarious
responses. As it offered an attractive “racist” counterfeit of African
American music, it also conveyed a goad to explore the real. “Ethiopian”
minstrelsy provided the language and outlet for this exploration. For
example, in the Civil War, several music publishers adapted their minstrel
idiom to embrace songs collected among freed slaves. Two years after
George Swain published Lucy McKim’s arranged transcriptions of “Roll,
Jordan Roll” and “Poor Rosy,” Lee & Walker published C. Everest’s
arrangement of “Roll, Jordan Roll,” as “.. .one of the oldest Ethiopian
Melodies. . .” In the same year, Oliver Ditson published “0 Lord, remember
me,” with added hymn verses, as “A Shout Song of the Freedmen of Port
Royal;” from Ditson, in 1867, came “I’se a travlin’ to de grave”—”A
Southern Melody” with accompaniment by Gustave J. Stoeckel. This sheet
music betokens one direction interest in “Ethiopian” songs and melodies
took after the Civil War. Apparently derived from McKim’s, the publication
of Everest’s arrangement of “Roll, Jordan Roll” especially accents that
some music publishers perceived a market for authentic Afro-American
songs within the genre of “Ethiopian Melodies.”{ 81}

McKim’s renderings of the Port Royal songs, the dialect and
arrangements, minimally stem from the “Ethiopian” craft. The same
relationship extends to William Allen and other contributors to Slave

Songs of the United States. Yet, conventions of stage “Negro” dialect, the
3 1

“de” and “ob” helped the collectors make their transcriptions. As well, the
genesis of the project lay within the a larger interest of African

American music and culture, in which the “Ethiopian” tradition exerted a
heavy influence.

The quick disappearance of Slave Songs of the United States indicates
the enthusiasm for Freedmen which waxed in sheet music between 1864-
1867, had a shallow mooring. The volume met ample attention when
published, but quickly fell to the wayside in favor for the many volumes of
harmonized Fisk and Hampton song books. { 82} Its familiarity within
Abolitionist circles presumably piqued the curiosity of the first
Congregational audiences to witness the Fisk Jubilee Singers. It also sits
possible Allen’s book encouraged the initial insertion of two spirituals
into the Fisk Singers’ programmes. But, basically, Slave Songs created the
first collection of songs profiling the slave in the post-Emancipation
decades. { 83}

The Fisk Jubilee Singers launched the immense popularity of the
Spiritual. On their first tours, the public hooked them with or mistook
them as Negro minstrels. The review of an early Jubilee program in
Cincinnati, headlined “Negro Minstrelsy in Church—Novel Religious
Exercises,” in the Cincinnati Commercial reported a gentleman leaving in
disgust grumbling, “no bones, no end man, no middle man.” When the
Jubilee Singers performed at Henry Beecher’s Plymouth Church in
Brooklyn, the World and Herald had a field day. In contrast to the Tribune’s
review which applauded this alternative to the labored fun and dubious
sentiment of bumt-cork “Negroes,” the World complained the singers “had
the air of well-trained monkeys when put upon scientific.” Conceding the

singing shone when it “touched a wild darky air,” the reviewer rued the

32

absence of more camp-meeting songs on the program.
The Herald subtitled its review “The Great Plymouth Preacher as an
‘End Man’—a Full Troupe of Real Live Darkies in the Tabernacle of the
Lord—Rollicking Choruses, but no Sand Shaking or Jig Dancing.” Twice,
the review posed Beecher and the singers as a threat to Hooley’s and
Bryant’s minstrels, suggesting, for example, “If some of our crack
minstrels desire to hear singing that will take them down a peg, let them
go and hear Miss Maggie Porter.” Given over, in bulk, to “dialogue” with
audience members, the Herald’s review allows a precious insight into the
crowd more attuned to “Ethiopian” minstrelsy than the readers of Greeley’s Tribune. The

comments of one respondent included:

Now this is a precious humbug, to see all of these people come here and
patronize these poor niggers, who ought to be home in their beds. People
of a superior race—or who fancy they belong to a superior race—like to
patronize those whom they fancy to be of an inferior or docile race. { 84}

In England, where natural dark skin had greater appeal than bumt-cork,
the Jubilee Singers encountered a more earnest confusion. Audiences
acclimated to the “Christy’s” viewed the Fisk singers’ performances
through the image of blackface acts. A Liverpool reviewer noticed, “Our
association of the negro minstrelsy with what is grotesque and comical
often made the audience laugh when such a display was not in keeping
with the spirit of the song.”{85}

The effect of these receptions on the Jubilee Singers further pushed
their music in the direction it began when they took a gamble on carnp-
meeting songs in late October 1871. In a few years, the bleached Negro
spiritual became welcome fare even in countries where “Negro” minstrelsy

never took root as well as where it did. Accompanying this success

33

followed the spate of Spiritual song books. Like the Fisk performances,
these almost completely effaced the African distinctiveness of the music.
Properly harmonized, and proper in every way, on the piano stands of
Anglo-Europeans, these spirituals represented little better African
American culture than the popular “Ethiopian” airs of the 303, 403, and
503. In many collections, the two genres merged. Typical of these,
especially those aimed toward a popular white audience was the easy
intermingling of spirituals with old minstrel songs under titles like “The
Most Popular Plantation Songs” or, later, “Rolling Along in Song.”{86}

J. Rosamond Johnson and J. Weldon Johnson put together “Rolling Along
in Song” in 1937, a late year for the 19th-century, but this piece so
fervently exemplifies what took place within the printed body of
American “folk” music during the previous hundred years, from at least the
printing of “Jim Crow,” that it perhaps serves better than a piece more
temporally apropos. Rosamond puts about half his collection in three
chapters of African American religious songs, “Ring Shouts,” “Spirituals”
and “Jubilees.” In chapters four, five and six, he interjects twenty-six
songs from “Negro” minstrelsy headed under “Plantation Ballads,”
“Plantation and Levee Pastimes” and “Minstrel Songs.” These include songs
by James Bland, Stephen Foster, and Dan Emmett. But, like the “Ethiopian”
theater, “Rolling Along” uses songs with strong folk connections which
hold traditions in “Ethiopian” and folk music. “Chicken Reel,” “Shoo Fly,
Don’t Bother Me,” “Turkey in the Straw,” “Short’nin Bread” and “Carve Dat
‘Possum” inhabit this class. { 87}

Johnson’s collection is a emblem of how easily fiction and folk mixed
in popular music. Sources stand good enough to expose Johnson’s free

mixing. In earlier times, this sort of intermingling, as in the work of E.P.

34

Christy, becomes harder to fix.

Eclipsed by religious music, collections of secular African American
folk music surfaced first in the 19203. These three, Thomas Talley’s,
Dorothy Scarborough’s and Newman White’s, establish that “Ethiopian”
songs of the 19th-century burrowed deep within Afro-American culture.
Although these songs became folk songs at least in practice, as
Scarborough pointed out, their dual lives kindles a chicken and egg
question of their ultimate origins. Scarborough termed the problem of
the interrelation among folk and minstrel song worthy of a doctoral
dissertation. Surely she summons a doctoral scholar with patience.{88} The
convolution achieved in the search path by the combined effects of
prejudice, cultural borrowing, and popular culture matches the past
twelve seasons of Guiding Light sure. Dena Epstein and Bruce Jackson
echoed her thoughts in their works, respectively, on black and Negro folk
culture. Epstein terms the issue “a knotty one, still to be disentangled,”
and offers two leads in the Driscoll Collection at the Newberry Library in
Chicago: “Aunt Milly: A Popular Virginia Melody” (Boston: H. Prentiss c.
1844) and “Come Back, Steben, A Negro Cavatina, as sung by a Kentuckian”
(Philadelphia: Lee & Walker, c. 1848). Jackson takes a sane line by
asserting songs travelled in both directions, yet most from the dominant
culture. He speaks fatalistically, though, of the prospects of
disentangling the music’s history. “We’ll never know,” he says, whether
Dan Emmett lied in claiming authorship of “Old Dan Tucker” or Y.S.

N athanson completely missed the mark by claiming it authentic.

As E. P. Christy’s songster shows, people conceived music as an

important part of “Ethiopian” entertainment. It sounds fair to call it its

foundation. A song, “Backside Albany,” not a persona or a skit, was the

35

oldest piece of the minstrel tradition. The original minstrels, the

Virginia Minstrels, performed almost nothing but music. Early minstrel
programs carry the same aura. The best authority of early minstrel music,
Robert Winans, juxtaposes “musical theatre” against “theatrical music” to
describe the early shows. { 89} The typical early minstrel show opened with
a “Negro” medley and finished with a popular “Negro” song or a musical
burlesque. Indubitably, music furnished an indispensable element of the
minstrel show. However, it was not the minstrel show.

But, “Negro” songs lived a life outside of the minstrel theatre. They
became part of the first surge of American popular music. The birth of
this music makes a whole other tale. The adoption of lithography, for
example, played an instrumental role. Of its salient features, its place in
early national culture looms notable. Popular music helped articulate and
disseminate a common culture through the states. Like the free press, it
put a diverse population in touch with the same ideas and events. Indeed,
the historical perniciousness of “Ethiopian” songs lies in their favored
place within this homogenizing art.

At the minstrel shows, some folks mistook the “Negroes” for real ones.
The confusion extended wholesale to the songs. In journal and newspaper
articles, writers consistently blurred the “Negro” songs with Afro-
American music. Writing for the Dial in 1842, Margaret Fuller avows
American art, music and dance radiates from Africans. She confesses

9’ ‘6

having watched “Jump Jim Crow, not on the stage, where we have not

seen it, but as danced by children of an ebon hue in the street;” the words

of J. Kinnard Jr. and Y.S. Nathanson evince an almost identical mind.{90} Led
by playbill advertisements and popular rumors, other patrons of

“Ethiopian” performances who came to hear black music at minstrel shows

36

.54"

$1.7

followed a sensible impulse.

If not in performance, in sheet music the “Negro” songs fit well with
other folk based popular songs like “Old Colony Times” and “Pesky Sarpent”
from white Anglo-Saxon protestant tradition. If confections, “Negro”
songs like “Lucy Long” and “Jim Along Josey” uncannily imitated folk song
style.

Most of this music was arranged for the piano-forte. Through the
thirties and forties arrangements of “Negro Melodies” as quadrilles,
polkas, and country-dances remained popular. E. Riley printed a series
arranged by John C. Scherpf with the title “African Quadrilles.”{9l}

In 1848, Firth, Pond & Co. published an attractive series called “The Dark
Sett” arranged by 8.0. Dyer. Dance instructions accompany this set. “Zip
Coon,” for example, bids:

Right & left, Set to your partner, Turn your partner, Ladies chain, Half
promenade, Half Right & Left to your places. The other four dancers do the
same. {92}

Even though widely accepted, “Negro” songs rubbed against politeness
and genteel conventions. One owner of a revised version of “Coal Black
Rose” (Boston: D.J. Johnston 184?) felt compelled to substitute “Cuffee
handled me rough” for “Cuffee too d-n tough,” although he let “d-n nigger
Cuff’ of the previous stanza be. This new version, (a violent one) of “Coal
Black Rose” shows the tenor of the city. The ethic of ungentility also
emanated from other sources. As Hans Nathan avers, early minstrel tunes
came from the West and upper South, the “backwoods.” Specifically, many
came from the Anglo-Afro jig and reel tradition of the old-time
breakdowns.{93} As such, they carried an energetic, ribald spirit, the spirit

of “Forked Deer,” and “No Balls at All.”
37

NOTES

{ 1} Daniel D. Emmett, letter to New York Clipper April 6, 1872
reprinted in Hans Nathan, Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro
Minstrelsy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962), 286-87.

{2} ibid. Nathan, 265.

{3} ibid. Appendix 275-280. This lists Minstrel Troupes
chronologically 1855-1890, citing the city of the troupe’s first

appearance. Barbara Buchman “Dance in Denver’s Pioneer Theater” Ph.D.
dissertation, 105-112. Frank Costellow Davidson “The Rise, Development,
Decline and Influence of the American Minstrel Show” Ph.D. dissertation
New York University, 1952. 87-89, 97-102.

{4} Charles Hamm, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America (New York:
W.W. Norton, 1979), 126.

{5} Davidson, 90.

{6} Hans Nathan, Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy
(Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1962), 143,146—147. Alvin F. Harlow
Old Bowery Days: The Chronicles of a Famous Street (New York: D.
Appleton & Co. 1933), 260-261. Toll, 51-52.Hamm 130.

{7} Russell Sanjek, American Popular Music and its Business: The
First Four Hundred Years Volume II From 1790 to 1909, (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988), 172-174. Nathan, 143-146. Hamm, 130.

{8} Toll, 20-21.
{9} Davidson, 39. Sanjek, 132.

{10} Alexander Saxton, “Blackface Minstrelsy and J acksonian Ideology”
American Quarterly 27(1975):3-28, 4, 23, 26. Davidson, 40.

{11} Nicholas E. Tawa, Music for the Millions: Antebellum Democratic
Attitudes and the Birth of American Popular Music (New York: Pendragon
Press, 1984), vii-ix, 24-25.

{ 12} Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain ed. Charles Neider
(New York: Washington Square Press, 1961), 64.

{ 1 3} Gyanendra Pandey, “In Defense of the Fragment: Writing About
Hindu-Muslim Riots in India Today,” Representations 37(W inter l992):27-

38

55. 33, 50. Pandey advances a point worth accenting; that no chance
stands to create an accurate account of episodes surrounded by a high
degree of mass amnesia by offsetting a handful of biased accounts.

{14} Saxton, 23, 26-28.

{15} George Pullen Jackson, White and Negro Spirituals: Their Life Span
and Kinship (New York: J .J . Augustin, 1943), 294. Jackson shows, perhaps,
an apt example of persisting blackface minstrel stereotypes as he

conflates Africa with Ethiopia in “Farewell to Africa.” Yet, Negro
minstrelsy reflected and projected stereotypes, or rather archetypes.
Consider, for example, the image of Ethiopia in the Africanist perspective

of Freedom’s Journal, and the symbolic importance of the Ethiopian church
for Christian Africa.

{16} For a brief depiction of early l9th-century Belfast see Patrick
O’Farrell England and Ireland since 1800 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1975) 165-8.

{17} I thank Lewis Sielgelbaum for lending me this elegant witticism.

{18} Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World translated by Helene

Iswolsky. (Cambridge : Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1968),
Chapter 1, 80.

{19} Walter Stephens, Giants in Those Days (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1989. In Chapter one, Stephens refutes the view of
Gargantua as an ancient folk hero, but also sketches its historiographic
genesis. He, like Jerome Schwartz in Irony and Ideology in Rabelais:
Structures of Subversion, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990),

abrogates the Carnival interpretation of Rabelais projected by Mikhail
Bakhtin.

{20} Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a
Sixteenth-Century Miller translated by John and Anne Tedeschi, (New
York: Penguin Books, 1980), 28-29, 41-51. Roger Chartier, “Texts,
Printing, Readings” in The New Cultural History ed. Lynn Hunt (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1986), 154-175.

{21} Samuel Kinser, Rabelais’s Carnival: Text, Context, Metatext.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 64.

{22} Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms depicts the fascination
of Domenico Scandella with people of other lands and cultures. Mikhail
Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World trans. by Helene Iswolsky (Massachusetts

39

Institute of Technology Press, 1968), 345-348.
{23} Bahktin, 18, 22, 23, 37.

{24} Voyage to Parnassus (Numantia a Tragedy) (Commerce of Algiers)
translated from the Spanish by Gordon Wolloughby James Gyll London:
Alex, Murry & Son, 1870.

{25} Francois Rabelais, The Five Books of Gargantua and Pantagruel
trans. by Jacques Le Clercq (New York: Modern Library, 1936), 6. Domenico
Scandella (Menocchio) and Francois Rabelais use similar, earthy, grotesque
images. For examples of the uses of a cheese, see the penultimate

paragraph in “The Author’s Prologue” of the First Book of Gargantua and
Cheese and Worms 54-56.

{26} Nathan, 20-23.
{27} Bakhtin 275. Attila Farkas, conversation.

{28} Michael D. Bristol, “Carnival and the Institutions of Theater in
Elizabethan England” ELH 50:637-654 (Winter) 1983. Bristol’s thesis flat
out contradicts Bakhtin’s idea of Carnival [Bakhtin, 7 &c.]. see

also, Michael D.Bristol, Carnival and Theater: Plebeian Culture and the
Structure of Authority in Renaissance England (New York: Methuen, 1985).

{29} Wilson “13 This a Holiday” ELH 54:31-44 (Spring) 1987. 43.
Wilson gives examples of theater disturbances essentially like those in

the early United States. The principle of misrule, of course, extends
beyond rock throwing. Terry Castle, Masquerade and Civilization: The
Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction, (London:
Methuen, 1986).

{30} Bristol, “Carnival and the Institutions of Theater in Elizabethan
England” 651.

{31} Bristol, 651-652.
{32} Castle, 41.

{33} Anthony Gerard Barthelemy, Black Face Maligned Race: The
Representation of Black in English Drama from Shakespeare to Southeme
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 20. fn. 5
According to Hall, the Lady mary, sister of Henry VIII and later Queen of
France, was one of six ladies who, in 1510, “seemed to be a nigrost or
black Mores” (Hall, Henry VIII, 1, 17).

40

{34} Barthelemy, 23-25.
{35} Barthelemy, 159-163.
{36} Barthelemy, 150.

{37} Laurence Hutton, “The Negro on the Stage” Harper’s New Monthly
Magazine 79:(469—13)131-145. 132.

{38} Harry Birdoff, The World’s Greatest Hit (New York: S. F. Vanni,
1947), 127. cited in Molly N. Ramshaw “Jump, Jim Crow! A Biographical
Sketch of Thomas D. Rice (1808-1860), Theatre Annual 17:36-47 (1960),
37.

{39} Ramshaw, 37. Nathan, 34.

{40} William J. Mahar, “‘Backside Albany’ and Early Blackface
Minstrelsy: A Contextual Study of America’s First Blackface Song”
American Music 6: 1-27 (Spring) 1988.

{41} Washington’s title as “Massa” gives an insight into the condition
of patriotic culture in the early national period.

{42} see Mahar “'Backside Albany’ and Early Blackface Minstrelsy: A
Contextual Study of America’s First Blackface Song”

{43} Mahar, ibid. 11. “Black English in Early Blackface Minstrelsy: A
New Interpretation of the Sources of Minstrel Show Dialect” American
Quarterly 37:260-285.

{44} Hutton, 139, 141.

{45} “. . .—a copper colored gentleman, who gathered many a picayune

by singing “Picayune Butler is Going Away,” accompanying himself on his
four stringed banjo” Charles H. Day, Fun in Black; or Sketches of Minstrel
Life, with the Origin of Minstrelsy, by Colonel T. Allston Brown. . . (New
York: Robert M. DeWitt, 1874), 5-7.

{46} Ramshaw, 38.
{ 47} Crow is a fairly common surname.

{48} Ramshaw, 39. On an aside, Ramshaw, it appears, takes a lot of her
account (sometimes verbatim) from George Odell, Annals of the New York

41

Stage (see appendix).

{49} Ramshaw, 40. Hamm, Yesterdays reprints most of Nevin’s story
118-121.

{50} Ramshaw, 43. This sentence for example: “By the summer of

1833, Thomas S. Hamblin, manager of the Bowery, had a double gold mine,
with Mazeppa, one of that theatre’s typical “blood and thunder”

melodramas, supplemented by Rice’s Oh! Hush! or, the Virginny Cupids. On
the Bowery gals, see Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in
New York, 1789-1860, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 89-

101.

{51} Gary Engle This Grotesque Essence: Plays from the American
Minstrel Stage (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), l-
12.

{52} William Henry Lane is absented because this “crowd” refers to the
white contributors to blackface minstrelsy. For a good account of Lynch
see Ralph Keeler “Three Years a Negro Minstrel” Atlantic Monthly (July,
1869), 71-85. Keeler, who Hutton reports disappeared in Cuba in 1873,
includes a telling account of a black, Ephraim, who began following
Keeler’s troupe in Marshall, Michigan as a porter. Keeler makes no
reference of Ephraim in regards to the show outside of its motifs

presence when he introduces him as “. . .one of the most comical
specimens of the negro species.” 77-78.

{53} Nathan, 140. In the spring of 1844, Pelham led the Virginia
Minstrels back together without Whitlock. Sweeny took his place. When
Emmett came to join them in Liverpool from nearby Bolton, he gave up his
title as “Leader of the Virginia Minstrels” to Sweeny. Robert B. Winans
“The Folk, the Stage, and the Five-String Banjo in the Nineteenth Century”
Journal of American Folklore 89:407-437 (October-December) 1976, 417-
418.

{54} Nathan, 113-114.
{55} Nathan, 151. The New York Clipper (April 13, 1878).

{56} Mr. Clark’s nickname suggests an African American birthright. I
have not yet established the customs governing the US. Army in this
location. From Massachusetts to Pennsylvania, blacks did play a
prominent role in Military bands. Dena Epstein, Sinful Tunes and
Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1977.) Chapter 8 Additional Sources 5.

42

William J. Brown, born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1814, tried to
organize a band among his friends during his teens, modelling his

plans on the “colored band, led by Henry [Frankl] Johnson,” visiting
Providence from Philadelphia (Life pp. 54-81). A writer in 1834
commented, “They have formed many superior bands, and are much
patronized for their skill in our larger cities” (Baldwin,

Observations, p. 19). And a music journal reminisced in 1883, “Forty
years ago nearly every regimental band in New York was composed of
black musicians” (American Art Journal 39 [May 19, 1883]: 80).
Citations: Ebeneezer Baldwin, Observations on the Physical, Intellectual;
William J. Brown, The Life of William J. Brown of Providence RI. . . .

{57} Nathan, 109. Nathan draws from Charles T. White “Old Time
Minstrels” The World (New York, June 23, 1889) in Charles C. Moreau,
Negro Minstrelsy in New York 1891, Harvard Theatre Collection

{58} Nathan, 113

{59} Nathan, 118. fn.24 The New York Herald (February 6-11, 1843).
{60} Nathan, 158.

{61} Nathan, 123-134.

{62} Nathan, 137. Homberg and Schneider also comment on this flyer.
An analogous piece title “Amalgamation Waltz” (undated) is found the
Starr Collection of sheet music in the Josiah Lilly Library at Indiana
University, Bloomington. (.88 II Afro-Americans pre-1863) folder marked
“collections.”

{63} Nathan, 120 fn. 30. Playbills of Brinley Hall (Worcester, Mass.
20, 21, 22, 1842), Harvard Theatre Collection. This is a reasonably
accurate list of the occasions of during which secular music played a
prominent role.

{64} Nathan 119-120. Without proof, I have suspicions that “Uncle
Gabriel or a Chapter on Tails” is the widely collected Afro-American folk
song, “Tails” Thomas Talley, 5 Dorothy Scarborough, “Boil, Dem Cabbage
Down” 168-169.

{65} Mahar, “Backside Albany,” Nathan, 49.

{66} Some People (as a Glass might say) lean toward of reductive view
of ethnic background. O’Neill, for example, in Traditional Music of Ireland
includes “Turkey in the Straw” on the grounds that a well-known Irish-

43

American, Dan D. Emmett performed it in the last century. Emmett, whose
grandfather came from Ireland around 1710, was, as the third generation,

a “salad of racial genes,” Irish, Dutch, and “Indian,” ostensibly Iroquois. H.
Ogden Wintermute Daniel Decatur Emmett (Heer Printing, Columbus, 1955)
14-31. My personal favorite offhand claim for the Irish background of the
“Negro” songs appears in Charles Hamm’s “Recent Research in American
Music” in the International Musicological Society Report of 1977.
Introducing the entrance of the first wave of popular songs in the United
States, Harnm writes: “These were the minstrel songs, which stylistically,

of course, (we now know), drew mostly on Irish rather than black music.”
381.

{67} Lewis W. Paine, Six Years in a Georgia Prison (New York, 1851)
177-186; in Eileen Southern Readings in Black American Music (New York:
W.W. Norton, 1971), 88-92, 91.

{68} Southern, Readings “The Slave Narrative Collection” 119.

{69} Bruce Jackson, The Negro and His Folklore in N ineteenth-Century
Periodicals (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), 28; J. Kinnard, Jr.
“Who Are Our National Poets?” (1845), 37-38; Y.S. Nathanson, “Negro
Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern” (1855).

{70} also, Saxton, 25.

{71} Francis Hodge, Yankee Theatre: The Image of America on the
Stage, 1825-1850 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), 23-27. Toll,
10—13. see also Harlow.

{72} Hodge, 18.

{73} Toll, 11. (David Grimstead, American Melodrama, 1800-1850, 65).
{74} Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City & the Rise of the
American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York: Oxford University press,
1984), 265, 358-359. Dennison, 513-514. Harlow, 290-291. Toll. 16-17.
{75} I use this term reluctantly because I can find no better phrase to
capture what I mean; I specifically do not intend this to mean working or

lower class; several writers on the minstrels show, Wilentz, Lott, Toll,
Lumers—overemphasize the class basis of the minstrel show.

{76} Nathan 115, see Nathan on Virginia Minstrels in London, and Mahar,
“Backside Albany” on African Americans in national ideology

44

{77} Eric Lott, “‘The Seeming Counterfeit’ : Racial Politics and Early
Blackface Minstrelsy,” American Quarterly 43:(2):223-254, 1991, 236. H.
Bruce Franklin The Victim As Criminal and Artist: Literature from the
American Prison (New York: Oxford University press, 1978), 73-98.
Jackson, 23. “Black Musicians and Early Ethiopian Minstrelsy” Black
Perspective in Music 3:(1)77-99, 1975, 83.

{78} Alexander Saxton, “Blackface Minstrelsy and J acksonian Ideology”
American Quarterly 27: 7-28, 1975, 7; from Christy’s Plantation Melodies
No. 4 (Philadelphia: Fisher, 1854), pp. v-vii. The preface continues to give
a more realistic account, that Christy’s musical genius—the minstrels—
had musical talents which enabled them to harmonize the original Negro
30103.

{79} Y.S. Nathanson, “Negro Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern,” “Songs of
the Blacks” from Dwight’s Journal of Music 9:7(Boston, November 15,

1856), 51-52. Irving Sablosky, What They Heard: Music in America, 1852-
1881 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), “Letter from

a Teacher at the South” Dwight’s Journal of Music February 26, 1853, 260-
262.

{80} Lott, 224.

{81 } C. Everest, “Roll, Jordan Roll;” “This is one of the oldest Ethiopian
Melodies and is now sung by the Contrabands at Port Royal, South Carolina”
(Philadelphia: Lee & Walker, 1864). The arrangement of the tune matches
“Roll, Jordan, Roll” (1867) in Slave Songs rather than McKim’s which puts

the chorus first. Its verses also appear to be confections.

{82} John Lovell Jr. Black Song: The Forge and the Flame (New York:
MacMillan, 1972), 401. Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals 340.

{83} Lovell, 403.
{84} Lovell, 412413.
{85} ibid.

{86} The Most Popular Plantation Songs (New York: Hinds, Hayden &
Eldredge, 1911).

{87} J. Rosamond Johnson, Rolling Along in Song: A Chronological
Survey of American Negro Music (New York: Viking Press, 1937).

45

ACT H
“I heard it through the Grapevine”

In a great measure, Nathan enables and necessitates a reinterpretation
of the music of “Ethiopian” minstrelsy. In 1962, University of Oklahoma
Press published Nathan’s Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro
Minstrelsy. Michigan State University apoc1ypha posits a large portion of
the book’s research emerged from a stint at the Institute for Advanced
Studies in l952-53.{94} At least six of its chapters first appeared in
music, folklore and history journals. The study stemmed from Nathan’s
curiosity of his adopted country, his interest to know “what might be
called ‘American.”’ It became his exploration of Americana and a
confessed naive stumble outside of the serious fields of ethno-musicology
and musicology. The harvest, his statement to Americana, was as
cocksure as the man. In Dan Emmett and Negro minstrelsy, Nathan found a
characteristicly American art and artist; he found a grotesque union of
Brueghel and Mickey Mouse performed by a profane man, and he loudly
applauded the rascal. { 95}

Nathan’s book offers a puzzle. Of two minds, one condemns Dan Emmett
as the last place for unwary readers to look for an accurate impression of
blackface minstrelsy. {96} The other recommends it as the only text which
conveys a sense of the art. As Nathan intended, the book abides as a
treasury of Americana. The one hundred and nineteen musical examples,
the anthology of two hundred pages of songs, sermons and hymns, and the
illustrations justify its creation. Dan Emmett is a type of book whose
value is taken not just by reading the book, but by playing with its pieces.

The major liability of Nathan’s work lies in his acute contempt of the

African American mind, and his tangled acclimation to America’s race

46

problem. Nathan scanned a wide polar range in his attitude toward blacks.
In large portions of his writing, he extends liberal, sympathetic views
toward African Americans, and frequently a judicious, perspicacious
appraisal of racism. Alternately, Nathan advances views which appear

blatantly and frighteningly racist. {97} Readers of Dan Emmett encounter:

In Emmett’s second and third songs written for the Bryants, parody of
Negro characteristics became more and more tinged with political
overtones. In “Wide Awake” or “Dar’s a Darkey in de Tent,” performed in
early February 1859, the Negro is described as a worthless, troublesome
item which the white man could dispose of at his leisure

Cervantes, with his deep insight into human behavior, had made Luys a
most convincing Negro slave character—extremely droll, literally burning
with a love for music, by no means disdainful of a drink, and not too heroic
in the face of danger. The scene in which Luys, perspiring with terror,

creeps into his bed and hides under his blanket, clasping his guitar to his
bosom, was the result of very astute observation.{98}

A couple of his associates avow Nathan’s racial views prompted him to
marginalize African Americans.{99} One, Attila Farkas, a political refugee
from Hungary, stresses that Nathan requires estimation on his own terms.
As a refugee emigre from Nazi Germany, Nathan came from a puzzling
past, not to mention one completely alien to the United States’ intricate
racial politics. Extrapolating from Nathan’s book, one senses that besides
being a Jew, Nathan neither had a real affinity to Nazi minded politics;
yet, neither was he Emma Goldman. Farkas argues Nathan embodied the old
school German and European scholar. In this, he essentially means, by
upbringing, Nathan was apt to consider everyone and everything not
German as inferior, and took for granted the inferiority of primitive
people. At the least, Nathan was as brilliant, opinionated and un-

American as Farkas, himself, which underscores the portrait emphatically.

Mixing biography and history, Nathan’s work does several things; “in
addition, and emphatically, it is an anthology.” It traces the origins of

47

Negro characters to 17th and 18th century Britain, to Oroonoko, and a
comedic type scouted by Charles Dibdin, and later, by Charles Mathews
who performed American characters. It outlines the development of
vernacular “Negro” characters under the spur of national impulse. Between
these two, Nathan establishes the barbarism and brutality of blackface
impersonations of Negroes. In chapter five, Nathan draws out the uses the
Negro Minstrel made of black dance traditions; at the outset, Nathan sets
his thesis by reiterating, in the motif of the carnival, what most consider
the basic impulse of blackface minstrelsy: “With utter disregard for the
genteel traditions of the urban stage and to the delight of the populace, he
transferred to his art the loud gaiety of a low social stratum.”{ 100}

The chapters continue, unfolding the emergence of the first minstrel
band from the entr’actes and circus performances of the 303. In two
chapters he proves the English, Scottish, and Irish roots of early
“Ethiopian” music and the roots of jazz, past ragtime and Negro spirituals,
to “a few dozen banjo tunes which have the flavor of the plantation.” This
latter chapter sets out a useful assortment of structural attributes of the
“Negro” banjo tunes. In closing chapters, Nathan discusses the
relationship between Emmett’s walk-arounds and Negro shouts and
spirituals, and, in an impressive musicological moment, sketches the
genesis of “Dixie.”

Additionally the two hundred page catalogue of works from Emmett’ 3
career add another full story to the seventeen interpretive chapters.

Nathan refuted a swipe James Lovell Jr. took at him in The Forge and
the Flame; since his death, Sam Dennison and Paul Oliver added bites of
criticism; but, by and large most people leave Nathan’s work undisturbed,

and his musicological conclusions unchallenged. Hence, each statement in
48

books by: Eileen Southern, Robert Toll, Charles Hamm, Sam Dennison, Paul

Oliver, and Eric Lott’s upcoming book—which posit early minstrel songs

were based upon English, Scottish, and particularly, Irish, melodies derive

solely from N athan—except, the most frequently cited match of “Getting

Upstairs” with “Sich a Gettin’ Upstairs” which Nathan took from “Virginia

Dance Tunes” by Winston Wilkinson. Almost universally, these authors use

Nathan’s musicology to accent the racial travesty of the minstrel show.

Irony spills out of this, when seeing plainly all this derives from a man

who would not even concede African Americans title to jazz or blues.{ 101}
The Blackface Mask

In other realms, Nathan touches upon divers shibboleth’s developed by
later students of “Ethiopian” minstrelsy. He anticipates the emphasis
Robert Toll puts upon the refiguration of Afro-American culture in
blackface entertainments and the development of a common man’s culture
in the United States. Erratically, he features the defamation of African
Americans by Negro minstrels upon which Sam Dennison builds his
analysis of minstrelsy. Moreover, he colors his narrative in the grotesque
carnival motif with artistry, unction and understanding. In comparison,
Gary Engle’s reflections on the spirit in This Grotesque Essence, and
Toll’s, and Lott’s comments amble like little boys’ musings.{ 102}

The discourse on “Ethiopian” minstrelsy, the song annotations,
newspaper and journal articles, book chapters, video tape—travels too
broadly to center it all relative to Nathan. Dan Emmett also lacks
articulation of some standards of minstrelsy’s discourse. The function of
“Ethiopian” entertainments, as a political and cultural actor stands as one
of the more interesting and fully developed aspects of blackface

minstrelsy. Constance Rourke wrote of minstrelsy as a masquerade. Its
49

intent ran not toward the ecstasy of lost identity, but toward a janus—

faced identity. Thus, the mask allowed concomitant irnpugning of high-
mindedness and African Americans.{ 103} In Shadow and Act Ellison
describes the main impetus of “Ethiopian” acts as not the authentic
enactment of “Africaness” or the denigration of it, but the projection of
the white Americans’ inner fears and conflicts through the clown’s
grotesque black mask. Act mixed with ritual; the “Ethiopian” clown
became “a key figure in a magic rite by which the white American seeks to
resolve the dilemma arising between his democratic beliefs and certain
antidemocratic practices. . . .”{ 104}

In Blacking Up, Toll links this impulse with the “Zip Coon” family of
“aristocratic niggers” which prospered for several decades. “Spruce Pink”
et. a1 projected two identities. On one side, they inherited the
monstrosity of free Africans at the North who broke caste and advanced
financially beyond the lowest common labor. From their father, they
inherited the stench of smug, exploitative arrivistes like Arthur and
Lewis Tappan.

Citing Toll’s work still in dissertation form, Alexander Saxton pulls
some threads out of the “Long Tail Blue” in “Blackface Minstrelsy and
Jacksonian Ideology.”{ 105} Archetypally based on Mark Twain’s recollection
of the minstrel show in Hannibal, Saxton figures the appeal of minstrelsy
not in its black masquerade, but in its cultural message. Hence, the
blackface Broadway Dandies connoted an uncloyed celebration of city life.
In fllll, blackface minstrelsy served as a dialogue on American culture
which not only brought urban sensibility to small towns, but which
permitted its audiences to feel the contours of, and adjust to their

changing society through its various moments of celebration, nostalgia,
50

ribaldry, and white supremacy.

William J. Mahar’s “Black English in Early Blackface Minstrelsy: A New
Interpretation of the Sources of Minstrel Show Dialect” appeared in
American Quarterly in 1985.{ 106} The title shows Mahar’s major concern
lies with a reevaluation of, basically, the authenticity of “Ethiopian” stage
dialect. Yet, his essay, demonstrates how the desire to inspect the entire
meaning or look for the unobvious in minstrelsy at times obscures its
features. Mahar proposes the hypothesis that “Dandy J im,” instead of
enacting an African dandy, represented James Henry Hammond, a
congressman (1835-1836) and governor (1842-1844) of South Carolina.
Such a hypothesis, then, explains why the protagonist in both US. versions
of “Dandy Jim” dresses “Like Dandy Jim from Caroline.”

Mahar’s hypothesis speaks provocatively and owns a precedent.
Emmett’s walk-around “Billy Patterson” (1860) begins “Dar was an old
nigg dat got hit wid a brick, 0, Billy Patterson, He was’nt knock’d down
kaze his head too thick;” As the earlier quotation showed, Nathan, even,
recognized Emmett’s compositions took a decided turn toward glorifying
brutalizing African Americans during these years.{ 107} Emmett’s “Billy
Patterson,” however, reworks a popular Irish-American story of twenty
years before. Nathan found an article titled “Billy Patterson: A Story Of
The Broad Street Riot” in the March 25, 1840 issue of Boston’s Daily
Evening Transcript. It tells of Patrick Mahonie, an Irishman, with a loud
mouth and little courage. Mahonie assigned himself his friend, Billy
Patterson’s protector. After Billy “fell into the hands of a tall fireman. .
and was roughed up badly, Mahonie sallied forth with the cry “Och, by my
eyes, who struck Billy Patterson!”{ 108}

In essence, Mahar’s hypothesis has a precedent and a semantic
5 l

justification. His course, however, travels a hazardous road. In light of
the use made of Nathan’s work, given a few more incentives in the
direction Mahar points, the day may not lay far off when a historian
writes, “The enactment of the ostentatious, affected “Zip Coon” and
“Spruce Pink” characters embodied most often an indictment of leading
white men who, in one way or another, offended the sensibilities of the
egalitarian theatre crowds.”{ 109}

It marks a prudent gesture, then, to highlight the song sung by Virginia
Minstrel Richard Pelham in 1841—”The Free Nigger As Sung By R.W.
Pelham.” “The Free Nigger. . .” makes its object explicit. It helps to bear
in mind, also, the “Zip Coons” and “Spruce Pinks” had multifarious
counterparts off the stage. The editors Samuel Cornish and John Brown
Russwarm of New York’s Freedom’s Journal or their agents and yearly
subscribers, for example, gave themselves as perfect targets of the racial
prejudice and/or class animosity of those so actuated.{ 110}

Lott recounts this junction in “ The Seeming Counterfeit’: Racial
Politics and Early Blackface Minstrelsy,” which presages his book on race,
minstrelsy and working-class culture. Working with Oh! Hushl, Lott
detects, in the audience’s working-men’s cross-racial projection to the
“African” boot blacks, an acknowledgement white and colored share the
proletariat. Lott argues for more complexity; specifically, the allegory
retains inflection of the medium. The “African” dandy Sambo Johnson acts
less as a figurative punching bag to draw off general class enmity, than he
fictionalizes the real; rather than galvanizing working-class antipathy
toward the classes of capital, Oh! Hush!, and its audiences, directed that
anger specifically toward educated, well off Africans. The fictions

celebrated genuine impulses. The terror provoked by a feared inability to
52

enforce caste across class fed the rumors of well-off Africans’
aggressive wooing of white women which flew about just prior the New
York riots of 1834. The riots and Oh! Hushl, then, share an alignment:
Ritual invectives of Lewis Tappan’s world, through mockeries of “African”
swells operate in an almost identical current as the bunting of African
churches and schools.{ 111}
Slavery

Historiographically, slavery and the Slavery Question figure prominently
in calculating the contours of “Ethiopian” minstrelsy. Nathan notices the
spur the politics of slavery gave Emmett’s walk-arounds for Bryant’s
Minstrels. Toll expands the affinity to a assertion that the prominence of
the peculiar institution and the acrimony it engendered accounts for the
popularity of blackface minstrelsy. Cut as laughable caricatures the
Tuckahoe “Africans” acted a delightful and eclectic drama which
supplemented whites’ at the North thinking on slavery. “Ethiopian” acts
allowed the audiences to walk away contentedly laughing about the folks
whose fate was threatening to rend the nation in two. Toll concludes, “It
was no accident that the incredible popularity of minstrelsy coincided
with public concern about slavery and the proper position of Negroes in
America.{112}”

In Scandalize My Name Sam Dennison enlarges on Toll’s viewpoint. He
enlarges it to a portrait in which the Euro-Americans of the free states
seek refuge in “Negro” minstrelsy as respite from the overburdening moral
problem of slavery. The conflict inspired whites to create caricatures of
slaves and their music, dance and humor—with no grounding in the

realities of slavery or the plantation—in their search for national

53

identity; while the conflict’s proliferation simultaneously excluded

almost all other character types from the stage. At its root, minstrelsy
arose as an attempt to escape the moral conflict slavery inflicted.
“Audiences,” he writes, “were primed for almost anything except realism
with regard to slavery which imposed a heavy burden of guilt in return for
free labor.”{ 1 13}

While Dennison unquestionably buys his historical generalizations and
inaccuracies by the bushel, he at least attempts a perspective sorely
lacking within “Ethiopian” minstrelsy’s interpretive literature. His
overarching arguments augment Toll’s articulation of minstrelsy’s
plantation mythology. Unanimously, Dennison, Toll, Saxton and others
ascertain minstrelsy as a potent advocate of the “Southern Way,” by which
I mean, a world in which Africans live fully, happily, and productively on
farms and plantations as slaves with “massa” and “missus,” who spoil and
cherish their “niggers.” Marlon Rigg’s video production, Ethnic Notions,
elaborates upon Dennison’s and Toll’s conclusions. It posits in the
antebellum United States white Americans needed two beliefs: They
needed to believe slavery benefited Africans; so they created the happy
“Jim Crow” plantation “darky”; and they saw that he was good. In addition,
they needed to believe Africans within their social orbit could never be
like, and were inherently inferior to them; so, they created the foppish
“Zip Coon” dandy; and they saw he was good. On the seventh day, according
to James Lovell, they went to church and paid lip service to religion in
their own narrow, hypocritical and unspiritual way.{ 114}

Riggs and Dennison fittingly sketch the continuity of the stereotypical
images of Africans in American culture. The “Sambo,” “Wirginny Wolf,”

“Mammy” “Yaller Gal,” and “Pickininny” conventions tendered use beyond
54

slavery and the plantation because they laid basic with racism. The
perspective which lies implicit, but lacks in Scandalize My Name and
Ethnic Notions falls on the verity that the archetypal caricatures

inflected a mixture of fiction and reality. The images of “Ethiopian”
minstrelsy held tremendous leverage against the conception of Africans in
the United States and around the world because, and a necessity remains
to retain in mind, these images grew from and moved organically with
their native culture. The fictions of “Ethiopian” minstrelsy blended
ineluctably with Othello, Cervantes’ “El Celoso Estremeno,” Thomas
Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, Robert Kennedy’s Swallow Barn, and Joel
Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus. Moreover, the fictions existed as lived
stereotypes, not merely as representations.

Slavery, without a doubt, spawned “Ethiopian” minstrelsy; albeit, its importance to
minstrelsy’s popularity rests hazy. In regards to its genesis, from
“Sambo’s Address to His Bred’ren,” to the dynamic “Jim Crow,” to “Old
Black Joe,” “Ethiopian” minstrelsy seems like Americans’ deliberation upon
the problem of Africans and blackness which the founders of the republic
left hanging. If at the root blackface minstrelsy worked as a
carnivalesque debate on the place of Africans in America, its day to day
career ran a different track. The basic symbiosis between the unique art
and the peculiar institution lay dormant until inflamed by a stimulus.

Such stimuli appeared, for example, in the wide press coverage of the
periodically erupting debates and conflicts over slavery. Concerned with
slavery or not, most people were aware of the issues and debates. In the
theatres, these crowds must have related to the issues through the
“Negroes” on the stage.

A handful of loose ends trouble the vital connection Toll, Dennison, and
55

Riggs draw between minstrelsy and slavery. Toll asserts that minstrelsy
introduced an eclectic host of “Negro” characters and expressed divers
sentiments toward Africans until the mid 503. At this time, with the
brewing sectional storm, the “Negroes” became stripped down to three or
four innocuous darky types happy at home on the plantation.{115}

Impressions selected from a limited stock of evidence challenge Toll’s
conclusions. Nathan speaks of a general trend in “Ethiopian”
entertainments away from Negro acts during the 503.{ 116} Beginning with
its inception, even, the minstrel show fell out of its tentative “Negro”
style. As with any fashion, the dominant tastes of the majority culture
shaped “Negro” minstrelsy to its liking.

By 1860, Emmett marked an anomaly, both in his prominence relative
his penchant for crude satires of Africans, and his continued use of the
“Negro” song genre. His Walk ‘Rounds’ performance setting embodies
anything but an uncloyed revelry in “Ethiopianism.” Touting its front seats
reserved for ladies and bearing a notice of a changed curtain time, the
Bryant’s playbill for the evening of April 4, 1859 on which “Dixie” first
appeared advertises: Part First containing eight musical selections which
appear to be Irish and Anglo-European; Part Second presenting varieties
including a burlesque pas seul, “Padden Mac Fadden” by the Mac Dill
Darrolls, a violin solo, tambourine duet, and a favorite ballad, “We Come
From the Hills,” followed by a “Flutina Solo” and a “Burlesque Italian
Opera;” Part Third, subtitled “Plantation” offers a “Local Banjo Solo,”
“The Surprise Party,” and a “Wooden Shoe Dance” whereupon appears the
“Plantation Song and Dance Dixie’s Land;” while the whole of the
performance aimed to conclude with “ Our American Cousin’ Bill”

performed without any alterations from Laura Keene’s Theatre.{117} In all,
56

the program marks a colossal restyling since Emmett performed with the
Virginia Minstrels at Boston’s Masonic Temple in March, 1843. The
changes hint that the cliche affable “Negroes” Toll speaks of less reflect
the influence of the Slavery debate, than the basic impulse of the shows.
The “Ethiopian Opera” was, after all, a piece of popular culture, inhabiting
the same house as Chinese food and Finnish saunas, and, by virtue, holding
a marked impetus toward abbreviation and exaggeration.

A handful of songsters affirm and elaborate the argument against,
specifically, Toll’s conception of minstrelsy’s reaction to slavery. Two
songsters of 1857, Bryant’s Essence of Old Virginny and Buckely’s
Ethiopian Melodies (No. 4) show a substantial use of skin color and
Southern motifs. “De Nigger Legislator” in Buckley’s, though primarily
mockery, refutes the notion that minstrelsy simplified “Southern Negroes”

to happy darkies on the plantation.

De best ob all de joke would be

For nigger stroke his chin

An’ make de white man work all day
To ‘tone for all dere sin

An’ if dey din’t slave an’ work

As dey make de niggers now

Oh! wollop dem wid long tail whip
An’ at “cm kick up row.{ 118}

In contrast to the songsters of 1857, Bryant’s Songs From Dixie’s Land
(1861) contains considerably fewer “Plantation” songs. The A-I index
shows only two recognizably “Negro” songs. Of these, “Happy Land of
Canaan” by William Wray, has significant traits of African/Afro-American
music, and “Gum-Tree Canoe” was a broadly known sentimental melody at
least named after an African American innovation.{ 119} As well, the “Negro”
figures in the songs “The Broadway Dandy Swell” and “Next Election Day”

introduce weak caricatures. Besides being “. . .the grit, the go, the cheese”
57

the only bad features of “Count Jerolimus Mars Napo’eou Sinclair Brown”

are his glued on mustaches and lethal effect on “darky” or “yaller” girls.
At the onset of the Civil War, minstrel troupes dropped “Plantation”

and other “Negro” songs like hot potatoes. Rather than an interlude, as

Toll implies, the war put a final nail in the coffin of the “Ethiopian” craze

launched by TD. Rice and boxed and rekindled by the Virginia Minstrels.

The Clement collection of sheet music, which arranges chronologically,

shows a dramatic decline of “Plantation Songs” in minstrelsy between

1861-1867 accompanied by a flourishing entrance of dying, parting, or

returning soldier ballads, an enlargement of “Mothers’” presence, and a

spate of patriotic songs including the “Ethiopian Song & Chorus,” “Who

Says the Darkies Wont Fight” ( 1861) performed by A.J. Talbott of Wood’s

Minstrels and the anti-Dixie “The Other Side of Dixie” (1861) performed by

Bryant’s Minstrels. The Other Side of Dixie” advocates letting “old massa

pick and hoe the cotton,” while “Contraband 0’ war oh! yes! fight away,

T’other side 0’ Dixie for the Union!” Speaking from a marked Democratic

viewpoint, “Who Says the Darkies Wont Fight” opens,{ 120}

Some white folks have been heard to say

De niggers would not fight

But I guess dat dey look at it now

quite in another light:

Hush up your mouf you “Copperheads”

dont take dat for a plea:

To keep us from de battle field
where all oh you should be.{ 121}

The symbiosis of slavery's political controversy and the rise of stock plantation stereo-
types Toll claims falls short of plausibility by cause and by degree. The tendency of
popular entertainments toward abbreviation and stagnation must needs be regarded.

Moreover, Bryants' songsters of 1857 and 1861 indicate that a diversity of characters
58

remained in "Negro" minstrelsy through the fifties, and that, moreover, stereotype charac-
ters, such as the Swell, evolved as well. Finally, the rapid decline of minstrel material at
the outset of the War suggests, perhaps, that the potency of the minstrel show as a pallia-
tive against preoccupation with the fate of slavery lacked effectiveness.
A larger concern puzzles minstrelsy’s ties with slavery. Minstrelsy
won intercontinental fame. Blooming in the United States, “Ethiopian”
transplants thrived in Britain, Australia, India, and South Africa. The
worldwide popularity of minstrelsy mutes the aegis of slavery, in favor of
an accent upon an international gambit of white supremacy. “Christy’s” as
Britain called them, made a big hit there. T.D. Rice brought “Jim Crow” to
London in 1836. At two minor popular theatres, the Surrey and Adelphi, he
performed in his “Ethiopian” burlettas. As yet, the “Jim Crow” pas soul
and tune attracted the most attention. J.S. Bratton terms its effect in
Britain “overwhelming.” The tune travelled everywhere; hats gained its
name; an Edinburgh shop printed a parody; Bratton cites a Geordie version
of it.{ 122}
In Britain, the impulse toward “Ethiopian” performances which
surfaced in the United States as a toast to republican manhood through the
“Negro,” an abusable icon, emerged as a prided interest and concern for
blacks emanating from a national anti-slavery ethic.

Thus, the patriotic “American brag,” of the first “Jim Crow” edition,

De great Nullification,

And fuss in de South, (34)
Is now before Congress,

To be tried by word ob mouth

Should dey get to fighting, (37)
Perhaps de blacks will rise,
For deir wish for freedom,
13 shining in deir eyes,
59

And if de blacks should get free,

I guess dey’ll fee some bigger (38)
An I shall concider it,

A bold stroke for de niggar

I’m for freedom
An for Union altogether,

Aldough I’m a black man, (39)
De white is calld my brodder{ 123}

translates in the same spirit as Rice’s addenda to “Jim Crow” for
the English setting,

Den I jump aboard de big ship,

And cum across de sea,

And landed in ole England,
Where de nigger be free.{ 124}

Like the beggars who dyed their skin and stood pad as Africans as a
pecuniary ruse, “Ethiopian” delineators in England met opprobrium if
exposed.{ 125} Resembling the curiosity of Moors projected in 18th-century
masquerades, theatre audiences warmly welcomed African performers
from the United States, as in the case of Ira Aldridge, and William H. Lane.
The Virginia Minstrels benefitted from this sentiment during their stay in
London. The London Times introduced their second week at the Adelphi by
reminding readers the gentlemen were “the only representatives of the
Negro that have appeared in this country. . . .” When the Ethiopian
Serenaders began an English tour in 1846, they met a chorus of
accusations charging them with impersonating Negroes.{126}

In time, Britain evolved its own traditions of blackface theatre as well adjusted
to its audiences as the Americans’. Bratton avers this evolution

ascertains, its members—the customs of English music hall and a friendly

60

curiosity of blacks—made the basis of the “Ethiopian Opera” in Britain,

rather than an overweening interest in America. He says, “Mackney,

singing about Rifle Volunteers, crinolines, taxes, and Darwin, and jumping
like Jim Crow, on the platform of the Mechanics’ Hall in Birmingham, is a
strangely compounded, but I would suggest, a peculiarly English figure.”{ 127}

Around the years of “Jim Crow’s” first jump at the Royal Victoria,
Australians made institutions of minstrelsy’s “Ethiopian” caricatures and
democratic ungentility. In 1836, a published account of a fight among
Aboriginals identified an Aboriginal woman as “Old Mammy.” In Arabin, an
Aboriginal character, Warren Warren sang:

Merijig me sing,

When the birds are on de wing,

And me laugh at him whitefellow too—
Him preach and him pray

And him go de debil way

While him black fellow hunt kangaroo.{ 128}

As “Jim Crow” and the Christy’s did in Britain, blackface music and
images suffused Australian culture; proportionately contributing more,
perhaps, to the nascent society. In 1853, John Pettit wrote in a letter to
his father of pitching a tent in the Victorian goldfields “by de light ob de
moon.” Also, during the middle decades, this theatre of misrule became
the accepted forum for voicing social discontent. For example, in the
18903, inmates of insane ward of Parramatta Hospital organized the
Mascotte Minstrels whose original skits included “The Doctor Shop.”{129}

Richard Waterhouse proposes an admiration and interest in Americans’
culture and the country’s African slaves kindled Australians’ appetite for
“Ethiopian” minstrelsy above its white supremacy. For example, unlike

many American productions, Australia’s “Negro” minstrel versions of Uncle

61

Tom’s Cabin retained all of Stowe’s sentimental abolitionism. From the
Goldrush to the Depression of the 18903, Waterhouse argues, the United
States served Australia as a political, social and economic model. This
package contained a ritual affirmation of Anglo-European manliness, wit,
and industry through a parody of black men’s laziness, stupidity and
wickedness. Unlike imperialist Britain, and the half-slave United States,
though, Australia withheld the humanitarian sensibility of the early 19th-
century several decades past either. Looking into the 18803, Waterhouse

avers,

The popularity of the Georgia (Minstrels) programmes in the 18703, the
support for the Fisk Jubilee Singers’ concerts in the 18803, and the
continued drawing power of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” productions which
focussed on the theme of Uncle Tom’s Christian stoicism in the face of
Legree’s unhuman cruelty, indicated that popular sympathy for America’s
ex-slaves, a real curiosity about their culture, and a continuing equation
of slave character and Christian values persisted in the Australian
imagination. { 130}

Social Character of the “Ethiopian Opera”

The aura of the rabble which surrounds “Ethiopian” minstrelsy leaves a
trap in many academic delineations of the art. Men of arts favored the
association long before professionally credentialed scholars began
supplementing it. Frederick Douglass made the slander as vigorously as
anyone in 1848; in his eyes “Ethiopian” minstrels were the “the filthy
scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to
them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste

of their white fellow citizens.”{ 131 }
62

In academic writings, this assumption translates into astute inquiries,
friendly analyses, or the most blithely ignorant pigeonholing. In the last
category, perhaps atypical in consequence of the article’s excessive
stupidity, is Robert Lumer’s summation: “The Minstrel Show was generally
considered to be debased, unrefined, the lower dregs of music indubitably
because of its lower-class origins and audience” offered in his artlessly
titled “Good 01’ Slavery and the Minstrel Show.”{132}

Lumer’s prattling rings weakly in comparison with the dulcet chants
invented by Toll, Wilentz and Lott. Toll unfurls a “common man’s culture”
grown from a irreconcilable rift in the age of Jackson between “lowbrow”
and “highbrow” aesthetic criteria which houses “Ethiopian” minstrelsy.
Perry Miller spotlights a foreshadowing conflict in 18th-century Boston,
epitomized by the Franklin-Mather quarrel, among “leather apron men” and
Puritan ministers. The cultural battle Toll writes of, in part, extends
Boston’s ministerial controversy. The “leather apron men,” the middling
craftsmen, stand at the center of the “common man’s culture” Toll
pictures. Yet, he leaves these households anonymous as he features the
atmosphere of a burgeoning working-class culture in New York city along
the Bowery. This sub-culture promoted the first urban heroes, the Bowery
B’hoy and Gal who had counterparts in the seamstresses and butchers
around the low East side.

The image of the Bowery B’hoys, and the Dead Rabbits etc. as the
embodiment of a “common man’s culture” lingers still though Toll slides
among several genres of antebellum minstrelsy in divers locations.
Wilentz accentuates this collapsed portrait by equating minstrelsy
specifically as a working-men’s amusement. He conceives the “Ethiopian”

Opera as a type of carnival in which working-men ritually indicted and
63

lampooned their social betters through a grotesque dramatization of
acceptable prejudices.{133}

Lott takes this alliance between the working class and “Negro”
entertainments for granted. In “The Seeming Counterfeit,” he correctly
discerns the art contained a basic instability stemming from the
opposition between a genuine attraction to Afro-American culture and a
necessity to denigrate and control it. The instability of the voices of
“Ethiopian” opera mirrored a multiplicity of attitudes toward Africans and
slavery within the working class; the tangled message conveyed in the
“Ethiopian” medium vocalized existing divisions among working men,
epitomized in the irreconcilability of New York’s 1834 anti-black/anti-
abolitionist nativist riots to the Daily Sentinel’s singular published
defense of the Nat Turner insurrection.{134}

Lott’s search for working-class sensibility in a refraction of
minstrelsy’s “distorted and fantastic figurations of the racial attitudes
and ideologies in antebellum culture” carries an implicit prejudice. It
parallels possible future investigations of the working class in analyses
of adult entertainment. Besides extending a stereotypical conception, and
tacitly exculpating other social strata, it provides a poor means to reach
working class identity. The juxtaposition he sets with minstrelsy and
abolitionism intrigues. However, the prime motive of his search martials
to capture working class sensibility not politics. In regards to
the material he weaves around minstrelsy, a fuller look atworking-men’s
or working class sexual culture in the early 19th-century

behooves his ambitions better.
The “Ethiopian” acts unfolded outside of, antithetical to, and,

sometimes, competitive with elite and genteel convention. For this, they
64

incurred a strong inflection of the backwoods, and the working and lower
classes. This alignment came through other means than strictly the class

of the performers and audiences. Saxton draws a composite portrait of
early “African” entertainers from a sample of forty-three men born before
1838. Only five had childhood roots anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon
including Baltimore; seven were born in Europe (five English, one Irish and
French); of the remaining thirty-one born at the North, only five were born
in New England. Eleven major cities mark the birth places of twenty-four,
New York and Brooklyn accounting for nine, and Philadelphia for six.

This composite portrait compliments sketches from the lives of E.P.
Christy, Emmett, Stephen Foster and TD. Rice. All came from the North,
and only Emmett grew up in a small town. Rice’s family background is
unknown; of Christy, Emmett, and Foster, all came from Protestant
middle-class American families. Similar to vagabond waifs like Barnum,
Lynch and Ralph Keeler, Christy, Emmett and Foster landed in “Ethiopian”
delineation part and parcel of a rebellion against the straight ways of the
Protestant middle class. Christy and Emmett both ran off with the circus,
and Foster tagged after the nrinstrel shows from his youth. On the whole,
then, the creators of “Ethiopian” minstrelsy were Americans born at the
urban North who escaped from the straight life into the bohemian
atmosphere of the theater and circus; and among whom, moreover, often
rested a distinct fascination with African American culture.{ 135}

The four Virginia Minstrels brought the material for their show from
the travelling circuses of the West and South. Most innovation in
“Ethiopian” entertainments followed a similar pattern. The African
American material E.P. Christy and others sometimes introduced to the

shows, numerous dances, and the stump sermon came along these routes.
65

.I.ll.ll]‘.ll.f\r\

By contrast, the Bowery culture T011 and Lott cast as the forge of
“Ethiopian Opera” exerted pulls in the opposite direction. The Bowery and
Broadway theaters’ influence on minstrelsy appeared, mostly, in the
introduction of “Ethiopian” of Shakespeare, whose plays comprised the
main fare of almost every theatre in the city, and burlesques of Italian
opera.{ 136}

Despite Mechanics’ Hall, where Christy housed his “Ethiopian Opera,”
working-class theatre of the antebellum existed more in cultural style
than in institutions. The listing of “Amusements” in the New York Daily
Times of September 22, 1851, for example, suggests little stratification

among theatres by cost.

Niblo’s Garden: Kim-Ka (Chinese Pantomime) Raoul, or the Magic Star ad.
$.50 Private Boxes $5.00

Astor Place Opera House: “Grand Soirees Magique” ad. $.50

Broadway Theatre: Othello and Left in a Cab ad. Gallery $ .12 1/2, 3rd

Tier .25, Paraquet .50, Private Boxes $3.00 and $6.00

Burton’s Theatre: A Winter’s Tale, The Rough Diamonds ad. Second Tier
$.25, Paraquet .50, Orchestra $.75 P.B. $5.00

Brougham’s Lyceum MacBeth, Miss Malvina (pas seul) Mr. Fletcher & Miss
M. Tayleure (pas deux) $.25, $.50, Orchestra $1.00, P.B. $3.00

Bowery Theatre: Rob Roy, Ran the Riever Pit $.12 1/2, P.B. $.25, Orchestra

Box $.50
Christy’s Opera House: Mechanics’ Hall No. 472 Broadway above Grand St.
Open every night, Saturday afternoon shows discontinued $.25 [{ 137 }]

In the West and South, the same ecumenical spirit prevailed. T.D. Rice
won his fame first on the Western circuit—by apocrypha, specifically
Louisville whose audiences in 1844 were described as “a sort of social
exchange—a compendium of character and classes.” This compendium
ranged from the planters to plantation slaves. In Southern theatres,
riverboatmen and mechanics substituted noisy Bowery boys and boot

dangling shopkeepers. Like their counterparts, these gentlemen, also, now
66

and then fell into dispute with theatre managers. On separate occasions
managers Noah Ludlow and James H. Caldwell took to the press to refute
charges of “high brow” pretensions between 1834 and 1836.{ 138} In all the
theatres except Charleston, blacks attended as accepted practice.

Typically, managers reserved a section in the third tier. Free black,

William Johnson of Natchez, also a music lover, patronized the theatre and
allowed the same privilege to his slaves and apprentices.{ 139}

If neither the urban or national working classes fitfully incarnate the
social character of the “Ethiopian Opera,” what was its orientation?

Twain describes “worldlings” as the first audiences of the minstrel show
in Hannibal. Twain’s “worldlings” signified those citizens of Hannibal,
including himself, who advocated the damnation of their souls. Worldly
Huck Firm in contrast to Tom Sawyer lends a cast of social demarcation to
Twain’s understanding of the godly and the damned; in essence his humor
belies the economic character of the first audiences.{140} In later years,
only the old-fashionedly pious neglected the shows. Two such, Twain’s
elderly mother and her friend, even enjoyed themselves immensely when
led to the theater under an African Missionaries ruse.{ 141}

Twain liked both the riotous ungentility of minstrelsy and its nostalgic
sentimentality. “Negro” songs, particularly, shaped his memory; they
“were a delight to me as long as the Negro show continued in existence. In
the beginning the songs were rudely comic. . .but a little later sentimental
songs were introduced, such as. . .”Nelly Bly, “A Life on the Ocean Wave,”
“The Larboard Watch,” etc.” His broad identification with nrinstrel shows
overstepped a tenuous class valence of the entertainments.

During its heyday in the antebellum, minstrelsy made a double charge

on audiences. It organized a theater of disorder, an exaltation of a
67

r-V

f—fl

I!

Z. I

grotesque body in an utopian jubilee or, a continuous mincing of the
African within a powerful gravitational field—Carnival refigured in the
nation state. In this, the utopia played a march of the wildest freedom.
Such an appeal attracted and took its shape predominantly from the
productive classes.

Concomitantly, minstrel shows became involved in the characteristic
sentimentality of the middle classes. In Britain, United States, and
Australia during the 19th-century, the middle class adopted a broad ethic
of sentimentality as the standard of gentility. The minstrel show bowed
its head to this cult as it innovated the “Carry Me Back” plantation ballad
of which Stephen Foster became a masterful architect. In addition to
plantation ballads, “Ethiopian” shows performed non-dialect songs
expressing nostalgia for the mother and the family or a romantic love.
These songs resonated with the alienation middle class people felt in
urban life. For many, estrangement from a family home, or a departure
from dear friends was a reality. Songs like “My Old Kentucky Horne, Good
Night” fed a longing genteel Americans felt for a simpler, happier past.{ 142}

In each case, the racial alignments audiences carried to and from
“Ethiopian” entertainments formed an important part of the shows’ appeal.
This draw draws many opprobrious moral comments from academic
writers. Twain’s enigmatic “worldlings” offer a couple ideas away from
this. Common race prejudices crossed the worldly/godly boundary.
Believing she came to a concert by niggers, Twain’s mother initially
balked at the performance. To contemporaries, the moral boundaries
“Ethiopian” shows transgressed concerned its dance music, graphic sexual
imagery, and its decadence by definition of being theater. All these towed

more moral weight than how anyone portrayed or what anyone said about a
68

black.

Moreover, these Methodist-style mores reigned in the African American
community. During “shouts” Methodist and Baptist African Americans
performed a shuffle step without crossing their legs, ostensibly as a
accommodation to the Slave Codes and a compromise between African and
European worship manners. Before 1860, the strength of the feeling
against secular music and dance in the African (slave and free) churches
rose enough to earn comment in magazines and newspapers. Harriet
Prescott describes, in a piece of fiction published in Atlantic Monthly in
1865, the disdain a woman born in Africa received when she danced from
slaves in the church who danced only ring-shouts.{ 143} As late as 1950,
when Harold Courlander went poking around Alabama, an elderly man told
him,

Well, don’t you know, them folks all shouting, rockin’, and reelin’, and me
in the middle; and I ask you if it wasn’t the Holy Ghost that come into me,
who was it? Those feet of mine wouldn’t stay on the ground in no manner,

they jumped around and crossed over, back and forth, and the next thing I
know they turned me out of the church.{144}

The African evangelical churches took the same approach to secular
music. Favorite airs acquired Christian lyrics and became part of the
church’s property. Other songs, outside the pale, were condemned. In
1874, Harry Jarvis expressed sentiments often heard by slave song
collectors in the late 19th and early 20th century. After asking Jarvis to
sing some com-husking or boat songs, Mrs. Armstrong and Helen Ludlow

report this dialogue:

“Not 0’ dem com-shuckin songs, madam. Neber sung none 0’ dem sense I
‘sperienced religion. Dem’s wicked songs.”
“I have heard some of your people say something of that sort, but I didn’t
suppose they could all be wicked songs. Are there no good ones?”

69

“Nuffin’s good dat ain’t religious, madam. Nobody sings dem com-
shuckin’ songs arter dey’s done got religion.”{ 145}

The fiddle, however, bore the brunt of evangelical antipathy. The
instrument and its players owned a strong cast of the devil. The Journal
of American Folk-lore, of 1892, recounts the belief “de devil is a fiddler”
caused the dying out of banjo and fiddle playing long before the war.{ 146}
Testimony from fiddlers through the years affirm the fiddle was anathema
to the church. Willis Winn, born a slave in 1822 remarked, “When I joined
the church, I burned my fiddle up.” In 1930, seventy-six year old Green
Harris, St. Simon’s local fiddler, told Lydia Parrish he had lent his fiddle
and couldn’t play for her. “They’re holdin’ a revival this week,” he said, “an’
I don’t want it around the house.” The preacher, of course, held it first
among grounds against dancing. Pressed on the subject by a New England
“school-marm,” Rev. Mr. Tibbs of Gordonsville, Virginia countered, “But,
then, there’s the fiddle you know.” “But the fiddle is not wicked,” replied
Miss Chase. “I think it is,” said Mr. Tibbs.{147}

Although these tenets held through most of the 19th-century, before
the Civil War banjo and fiddle songs thrived in spite of their wickedness.
Sarah Fitzpatrick recounts, “We had plenty “Nigger” fiddlers; my cousin an’
brudder-in-law wuz fiddlers an’ my uncle wuz a banjo picker. Co’se dey
wuz all nothin’ but sinners, I wuz too, but we sho had a good time.”
Fitzpatrick characterizes herself like Twain characterizes himself and
the other sinners at the early “Ethiopian” shows. Even when using the
music of the African American fiddlers and banjo pickers, the theatric
aegis of minstrelsy marks it too far from folk music to pull in any direct
analogy. The similarity between Twain’s and Fitzpatrick’s thinking,
though, emphasizes a common ground and criteria for wickedness; which

70

suggests, contemporaries, slave and free, saw minstrelsy’s sin of pride in
terms very different from historians.

Without a doubt “Ethiopian” acts galled some African Americans,
Frederick Douglass being one. He, at least, had some tolerance for
minstrel “Negroes” when African Americans put on the show.{ 148} In this,
perhaps, he leaned liberal. Rudolph Lapp suspects the debut of African
Americans in California’s minstrel theatre, in 1858, at the mining town of
Columbia owed something to the frequent abuse the black leadership
groups in San Francisco and Sacramento heaped upon this
entertainment.{ 149} And, “Zip Coon,” “Spruce Pink,” and the other “free
triggers,” presumably brought the gentleman of Boston who wrote to the

editors of Freedom’s Journal on August 24, 1828:

NEGRO

Mr. Editor—With the derivation of the word at the head of this article, I
am well acquainted, but how it can, with any degree of propriety be
applied to us, I am at a loss to discover—I have been for years
endeavoring to ascertain the propriety of applying this term to us, but
without effect.{ 150}

—a greater piece of consternation. It seems likely the art also rubbed the
slave community’s ardent race pride the wrong way; if doing nothing other
than reinforcing their belief Heaven had few whites. Yet, the many
minstrel songs which moved into African American folk music indicates
the “Ethiopian” viewpoint sat within the pale of African American
understanding. The idea for consideration, then, is that the mass of
African Americans would have minded less the caricature—the blackface,
dialect and “African” title of the “Negroes,” than the basic immorality of
the shows.{ 151}

The motion marks just one line of inquiry oriented toward delineating

71

“Ethiopian” entertainment in its context—a direction antithetical to
historians’ all too common finger wagging tone. An unavoidable impulse
against minstrelsy’s provocation, and estimable in other lights, the tone
embodies a brief sublimation of the grossest ethnocentrism. Blackface
dialect, for example, gets either vilified or poked at for its resemblance
to African American creoles. Little attempt comes to grasp its meaning
in its setting. And, this context differs radically from post-modem
thinking. In short, the issue of blackface dialect is complex and rife with
ambiguity. Any word on the subject which fails to discern the performers’
and audiences’ and subjects’ understanding of blackface dialect and
account the aberrant voices in minstrelsy speculates.{ 152}

United States’ racial history, in whose in-basket “Ethiopian”
minstrelsy sits, severely retards accurate depictions of the art. Not only

do the sources lie like tom cats, but as Catherine Ricordeau points up:

L’analyse d’un tel phenomene prend inevitablement des dimensions racials,
et meme politiques, selon qu’elle considere comme negligeable l’apport de
la culture minoritaire et ne reconnaisse que la valuer creatrice des

artistes blancs, ou bien qu’elle estime au contraire (opinion plus a la

mode) que ces demiers ont pille saugement la culture noire. Le resultat

est le shema simplificatuer et moralisant: les <<Mechants>> (Les Blancs)
exploitent les <<Bons>> (les Noirs).

Above ambled a dialogue on three historiographic interests
undeniably suffused with racial and political considerations. The goal
situated on this seems not to shy from nor suppress such voices, but to
explore and mix them. Plenty of good space remains in the minstrel
theatre to encourage all of this. Particularly, “Ethiopian” minstrelsy, yet,
begs for analysis from three angles: A need exists for a solid appraisal of

various African American communities’ response to “Ethiopian”

72

minstrelsy. Specifically, the subject demands: a serious investigation
(not rhetorical condemnation) of how “Ethiopian” and “Negro”
entertainments shaped African identity in the United States; a look at how
African American culture “felt” about the black face materials it adopted;
and, a study of the thoughts and attitudes of African Americans who
entered blackface minstrelsy, of which Ethnic Notions and Blacking Up
embody a small beginning.

Simultaneously, a good look at blackface from the perspective of
Carnival waits. And, finally, a musicological inquiry which gives
sustenance to the opinion of Y. S. Nathanson, Col. T. Allston Brown, William
Allen, W.E.B. DuBois, James W. Johnson, Alexander Saxton, Catherine
Ricordeau, Robert B. Winans and Paul Oliver, among others, who believe
“Ethiopian” minstrels took their music from African Americans is needed.

The remainder of the unfolding essay aims to move in this last direction.

73

NOTES
{88} Scarborough, 287.
{89} Robert B. Winans, “Early Minstrel Show Music 1843-1852,” 71.

{90} Lott, 225. Margaret Fuller “Entertainments of the Past Winter”
Dial 3 (July 1842):52.

{91} John C. Scherpf arr. “African Quadrilles” 2nd ed. (New York: E.
Riley, 1844). My copy of the first set comes from Gurley & Cross of
Marietta, Ohio.

{92} “The Dark Sett” arr. by 8.0. Dyer (New York: Firth, Pond & Co.
1848), “Zip Coon.”

{93} Nathan, 188.
{94}
{95} Nathan, epigram, 247-248.

{96} The book originally came to me by recommendation of a fiddler
fiiend, Hanno Meingast. Another, Brian Hefferan, also a banjo player, who
keeps track of Elderly Instruments’ books, keeps it available. Elderly
Instruments, for those unfamiliar, is one of the most influential music
stores in the United States, especially in the area of traditional music. It
began in the basement of the 541 building on Grand River, in East Lansing
as a mail order shop, in 1972.

{97} Reading Nathan’s articles in Southern Folklore Quarterly drives
home this perspective strikingly. “Charles Mathews and the American
Negro” September, 1946.

{98} Nathan, 243, 23.

{ 99} Private conversations with Attila Farkas and Mary Black, June
1992.

{100} Nathan, 70.
{ 101 } It must be taken into account Nathan was working in the shadow
of Carl Wittke and GP. Jackson. I have absolutely no doubt if Nathan’s

scholarship was progressing today, it would be, in my eyes, the optimum,

74

far exceeding anything currently written or being written. Carl Wittke,
Tambo and bones: A History of the American Minstrel Stage (Durham: Duke
University press, 1930).

{102}
{103} Constance Rourke, American Humor

{104} Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke”
(New York: Random House, 1964), 45-59.

{105} Alexander Saxton, “Blackface Minstrelsy and Jacksonian Ideology”
cites Robert G. Toll, “Behind the Grinning Mask: Blackface Minstrelsy in
Nineteenth Century America,” Berkeley 1971.

{106} William J. Mahar, “Black English in Early Blackface Minstrelsy: A
New Interpretation of the Source of Minstrel Show Dialect” American
Quarterly 37:260-285, 282-283.

{107} The fifth verse of the previously cited, “Dar’s a Darkey in De
Tent, or Wide Awake,” recites,

Dey gib ‘im little some, keep ‘im in,
keep ‘im in, keep ‘im in,

“What paddy gib de drum,” kick ‘im out,
kick ‘im out, kick ‘im out,

A hat was usually associated with “Wide Awake” during the Civil War,
Russell, My Diary North and South.

{108} Nathan, 242

{ 109} Carl B. Holmberg and Gilbert D. Schneider “Daniel Decatur
Emmett’s Stump Sermons: Genuine Afro-American Culture, Language and
Rhetoric in the Negro Minstrel Show” Journal of Popular Culture 19:27-38
1986. 36; here, Holmberg and Schneider closely parallel this thought.

{110} Nathan, 57.

{ 111} Harlow, 292-293. Lott, 245-247.

{112} T011, 65.

{113}

75

{114} Marlon Riggs, Ethnic Notions. Lovell, 75-78.
{115} T011, 66, 87.
{116} Nathan, 151.
{117} Nathan, 246.

{118} Buckley’s Ethiopian Melodies, No. 4 (New York: Philip J. Cozans,
1857), 33.

{119} Peter Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina

form 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: W.W. Norton, 1974)

123, 201. The tune “Gum Tree Canoe” from a folk source appears in

Thomas W. Talley, Thomas W. Talley’s Negro Folk Rhymes, a New, Expanded
Edition, with Music ed. Charles K. Wolfe. (Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press, 1991) 212. William Wray, “Happy Land of Canaan” has
flatted seventh and a falsetto chorus, as well as is written in uneven

measure.

{120} Saxton, 15-23. The Bryant’s and Wood’s were nominally
affiliated with Tammany.

{ 121 } Notable seems the dialect use of the less positive song toward
African Americans.

{122} J .S. Bratton, “English Ethiopians: British Audiences and Black-
Face Acts, 1835-1865" Yearbook of English studies 11:127-142 1981,
134. Geordie is an English dialect of Tyneside in Northumberland.
{123} “Jim Crow” (New York: E. Riley, 1830-32).

{ 124} Bratton, 135; from Mr. and Mrs. Jim Crow’s Collection of Songs
(December, 1836).

{125} Bratton,131.

{126} Nathan 136, J.S. Bratton, 131-132.

{127 } Bratton, 142.

{ 128} Richard Waterhouse, “The Minstrel Show and Australian Culture”
Journal of Popular Culture 24: 147-66 (Winter) 1990, 149. Cited from

J .B.J . McLachlan, “Arabin, or the Adventures of a colonist,”

76

{129} Jules Zanger, “The Minstrel Shows as a Theatre of Misrule”
Quarterly Journal of Speech 60:33-38 (1974). Zanger’s phrase invokes the
“Lord of Misrule” of the medieval carnivals. Richard Waterhouse, 148-149.

{130} Waterhouse, 155.
{131} Cited from Eric Lott, 223; North Star (27 Oct. 1848).

{ 132} Robert Lumer, “Good 01’ Slavery and the Minstrel Show”
Zeitschrift Fur Anglistik un Amerikanistik 33:(1) 54-61, 1985, 56.

{133} Wilentz, 258-259.
{134} Lott, 243.
{135} Saxton, 6-7.

{136} Engle, 62. also the New York Daily Times “Amusements” usually
page 3, 1850-1851.

{137} New York Daily Times, Monday, September 22. 1(2):3/6. However, while
sponsoring Catharine Hayes’s concerts, the “Song Bird of Erin,” Astor’s offered tickets
only between 10:00 am. and 4:00 pm.

{138} James H. Dorrnon, Jr. Theater in the Ante Bellum South, 1815-
1861, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967), 231-233.

{139} ibid. 234. BE. Bailey “Music in the life of a Free Black Man of
Natchez (1835-1851)” Black Perspective in Music 13:(1) 3-12 1985.

{ 140} This was written a week before press broke of Shelly Fisher
Fishkin’s book Was Huck Black? which advances that an Afro-American
boy, Jimmy, gave the model for Huck.

{ 141} Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain ed. Charles Neider
(New York: Washington Square Press, 1961), 64.

{142}

Saxton, 28. Waterhouse, 151-152. The Sacks’s poke through the

Snowden’s scrapbook (Mt. Vemon’s family of black musicians)

verifies 1) professional antebellum African American musicians played

“My Old Kentucky Home Goodnight,” 2) at least one contemporary
Southerner (West Virginian) heard “My Old Kentucky Home Goodnight” as an
uncloyed argument against slavery. Writing in 1855, RC. Withrow asked

77

3“

llIll h. 3‘.

the Snowdens, “Will you be so kind as to copy the song of the old Kentucky
Home for me. I want to sing it to some of these old tyrants who hold in
bondage those who are endowed with much better ability than they. But I
shall free my mind to them whenever I have the opportunity.”

{143} Epstein, 211-216.

{144} Harold Courlander, Negro Folk Music, USA. (New York: Columbia,
1963). 195; also Southern “African Retentions in Afro-American Music

(U SA.) in the 19th Century” 88-98, African Roots in America ed. Gerard
Behague IMS Report 1977. 92.

{145 } John Blassingame, Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters,
Speeches, Autobiographies and Interviews (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1977), 610-611.

{146} Epstein, 215.

{ 147} Epstein, 212. Lydia Parrish, Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea
Islands (New York: Creative Age Press, 1942), 118.

{148} Waldo E. Martin, The Mind of Frederick Douglass (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 120.

{149} Rudolph Lapp, Blacks in Goldrush California New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1977. 255.

{150} Freedom’s Journal (New York) August, 24, 1828. eds. John Brown
Russwarm and Samuel E. Cornish.

{151} Rudolph M. Lapp Blacks in Goldrush California (New York: Yale
University Press, 1977), 255. (mentions the class valence of the minstrel
shows, black folk and black leadership)

{ 152} That pronouncement aims no malice toward William J. Mahar’s
work with blackface dialect in “Black English in Early Blackface
Minstrelsy: A New Interpretation of the Sources of Minstrel show Dialect”
and “Backside Albany and Early Blackface Minstrelsy.”

{ 153} see Tawa Music for the Millions and Gentle Songs for Genteel
Americans for discussion of this genre of song in the antebellum United
States. Blassingame, Slave Testimony 708.

{ 154} James Weldon Johnson, God’s Trombones quoted from Orrin
Suthren III “Minstrelsy and Popular Culture” Journal of Popular Culture

78

{155} Norris Yates, “Four Plantation Hymns Noted by William Cullen
Bryant” Southern Folklore Quarterly mecember 1951), 251. This
statement is in Yates’ rather than Bryant’s words.

{156} Lazarus Ekebwemebe, “African-Music Retentions in the New
World” Black Perspective in Music

{157} John Storm Roberts, Black Music of Two Worlds (New York:
Praeger Publishers, 1972), 5.

{158} Barbara Lambert, “Social Music, Musicians and Their Instruments

in and Around Colonial Boston” Music in Colonial Massachusetts Volume 11,
Publications of the Colonial Society of Boston, (Boston: 1985), 134.

{159} William D. Piersen, Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-
American Subculture in Eighteenth-Century New England (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 104.

{160} Epstein, 121.

{161} ibid.

{162} Epstein, 121.

{163} Blassingame, 641. Southern, 120.

{ 164} Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made
(New York: Random House, 1972), 644.

{165} Jackson, 7-8. The red and white are important colors in African
tradition.

{166} Epstein, 84, 130.
{167} Epstein, 150 from Yetrnan, 282
{168} Epstein, 153.

{169} Epstein, 159. Eddie W. Wilson, “The Gourd in Folk Music” Southern
Folklore Quarterly 1951 Wilson furnishes snatches from two sources

which show that the gourd fiddle became a well known instrument in the
Western mountains of North Carolina.

{170} Epstein, 152.
79

{171} Charles K. Wolfe, notes, Altamont: Black Stringband Music From
the Library of Congress Rounder 0238 (Cambridge: Rounder Records,
1989), front, c. l p. 3. Winans, “Black Instrumental Traditions in the Ex-
Slave Narratives” Black Music Research Newsletter 1:2-5, 1982, 2.

{172} Southern, 120.

{173} The minstrel theatre adopted “Run Nigger Run.” Alan J abbour
remarks the tune made its print appearance, text and skit, in Whites
Serenader’s Song Book (Philadelphia, 1851), 66-68. See Dennison, 136-
137.

{174} Cited from Talley, (1922) 238.
{175} Talley (1922), 236-238.

{176} Epstein, 164. William Tallmadge “The Folk Banjo and
clawhammer Performance Practice in the Upper South: A Study of Origins”
The Appalachian Experience: Proceedings of the Sixth Annual etc. 170-
179, 175-176.

{177} Nathan, 83.

{178} John Mason Brown, “Songs of the Slave” Lipincott’s Magazine
(1868) in Jackson, 114.

{179} Parrish, “Knock a Man Down” 205.

{180} The most prominent African features in my opinion are rhythm,
antiphony, and an inflection from tonal languages. Things which are not
are pentatonic, and accidentals, the “blue” notes. Of course, in the
American context, these features provide good clues, I believe, of the
influences and origins of music. “Performance” currently operates as the
dominant paradigm for studies of African American music. Olly Wilson
substantially helped lead this perspective in “The Association of
Movement and Music as a Manifestation of a Black Conceptual Approach to
Music Making” in the IMS Report 1977, ed. Gerard Behague. Its basic
principles organize under the assumption that African Americans approach
music with customs unlike European styles. For example, “standar ”
singing is done through the front “mask” using the sinus chambers as a
resonating box. African Americans sing more from the throat, using the
fatty tissues for resonance. I submit thanks to Christopher Brooks and
Horace Boyer for discussing some of these aspects with me.

80

{181} Henry Krehbiel, Afro-American Folk Songs: A Study of Racial and
National Music (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1914), 52-53.
Jackson, 109, 114. Allen, 89.

{182} Toll, 46.

{183} Nathan, 75. T011, 44, 45.

{184} Epstein, 223-224.

{185 } Holmberg and Schneider, “Daniel Decatur Emmett’s Stump
Sermons” Brudder Steben Guess requests stamps in lieu of money ninety
times in forty sermons. They cite his practice as realistic on the

evidence of William H. Pipe’s extremely biased account of “Old-Time Negro

Preaching: An Interpretive Study” Quarterly Journal of Speech 31 (1945),
16.

81

his

ACT III
A Rough Sketch of “Ethiopian” Music’s
Sponsoring Tradition

Now I’ a good big nigger,—Oh,

I reckon I won’t git bigger,—Ah.

But I’d like to see my mammy,—Oh,

Who lives in Alabamy,—Ah. (Slave Songs #111)

A gamut of representations appear in minstrelsy’s catalog. The
“Ethiopian” character itself resembles a diminutive Tower of Babel. Yet,
the art refuses reduction even to one quagmire. Ingredients wholly
outside the impersonation of negritude went into it. African American
folk music, embodying issues of music and Africaness, is one. That
African American music shaped “Negro” performances receives
acknowledgement from most commentators. A heap of confusion often
buries this verity deep. In the 19th-century writers at the North,
particularly, blithely intermixed “Negro” fictions with negro particulars.
The slave of the “Ethiopian Opera” enacted only one fiction. Others
competed. The most sympathetic Northemers toward Africans, the
abolitionists, commonly projected a romantic image of slaves. Being
spiritual, sorrowful, and pure hearted, only slow, moumful religious
laments passed the lips of these people. Former slaves in the abolitionist

crusade reported songs like this “as specimen” of the infamous coffle

songs

Oh! fare ye well, my bonny love,

I’m gwine* away to leave you,

A long farewell for ever love,

Don’t let our parting grieve you.
(Chorus) Oh! fare ye well, my bonny, &c.

The way is long before me, love,

82

And all my love’s behind me;
You’ll see me down by the old gum-tree
But none of you will find me.

I’ll think of you in the cotton fields;
I’ll pray for you when resting;

I’ll look for you in every gang,
Like the bird that’s lost her nesting.

I’ll send you my love by the whoop-o’-will;
The dove shall bring my sorrow;

I leave you a drop of my heart’s own blood,
For I won’t be back to-morrow.

And when we’re moldering in the clay,

All those will weep who live us;

But it won’t be long till my Jesus come,

He sees and reigns above us.{153}

Regards to these fictions, coupled with the United States’ perpetual
mistreatment of African Americans, inspires a certain reticence in
scholars to link “Ethiopian” entertainment and its contemporaneous
African American folk music closely.

Of the roots of “Ethiopian” minstrelsy, James Weldon Johnson remarks
“Every plantation had its talented band that could crack Negro jokes and
sing and dance. . . .When the planter wished to entertain his guests, he
needed only to call his troupe of black minstrels.”{154} Aptly, half-truth
applies to Johnson’s scenario; half truth which looks for confirmation. It
has echoes; in a chapter of Six Years in a Georgia Prison, Lewis Paine
avers, “It is useless to talk about Fellow’s Minstrels, or any other band of
merely artificial Ethiopians;’ for they will bear no comparison with the
plantation negroes. The latter, by frequenting these places of amusement
in the capacity of entertainers, become actors, and that of a high order,

for in this way they cultivate the faculties most necessary to success in

83

that profession—ideality, marvelousness, and imitation. . .”

Johnson’s idea makes a good guidepost for explicating a context which
stresses the plausibility of an African American musical foundation in
minstrelsy. Establishing the feasibility of the guidepost moves toward
accepting the African American background of “Negro” songs.

In 1982, Winans drew some conclusions from his survey of
instrumental music in the Ex-Slave Narratives supportive of Johnson’s
aphorism. The survey confirms the blackface ensemble, of fiddle, banjo,
bones and tambourine, accurately captured African American instrumental
tradition—the instruments ranking respectively, first, second, seventh
and tenth among all references to instruments in the narratives.

Moreover, of the instruments common to African slaves, “Negro”
minstrelsy apparently only omitted the quills.

Quite a few accounts fed his judgement that plantations fostered
analogues to the minstrel show. A number of ex-slaves indicated that
owners, sometimes with their guests, dropped in on the slave junkets for
entertainment, and that the slaves played up to this. In the instance of
William C. Bryant’s visit to a Barnwell plantation, probably William
Gillmore Simms’, Bryant notes his host organized a com-shucking strictly
for his entertainment.{ 155}

Winans also comments on the similar tune repertoires of slaves and
blackface musicians. A couple of pieces obviously come from the minstrel
show, such as “Dixie” and “Swanee River,” but most lie within the gray
area between traditional (Afro or Anglo?) and nrinstrel material.
“Arkansas Traveller,” and “Hop Light Ladies,” for example, own such a
strong place in oral tradition concurrent with their appearance as comic

“Negro” pieces, that their origination as the latter is doubtful—(if not
34

elsewhere disproven).

Music took a much smaller place in the lives of African American
slaves than in the lives of Africans. Traditional Africans live and die by
music, colloquially “from the womb to the tomb.”{156} All humans require
music, all people sing; musical impulses and patterns arrange similarly
across all cultures. By example, singing for religious expression takes the
greatest part of British Isles and African traditions. Most African
religion, however, absolutely requires its music, unlike Christianity in the
British Isles. African sensibility commissions more specialization within
species of music as well; on losing their first tooth, Fon children in
Dahomey learn a song to sing for the event.{157}

In the United States, the influence of British Isles thinking and the
institution of slavery attenuated the African music aesthetic. Exposure to
other traditions in America also enriched the Africans’ musical
experience. British Isle or European ideas of melody, rhythm, harmony,
and lyric style partially substituted, compensated and augmented their
own. And yet, little of this music came from a thinking totally alien to
Africans. The several centuries of contact between Europe and Africa
through the Arab world rendered this untrue.

African slaves sang during work—in the fields, on the river, in the
kitchen, or on the dock; they sang at camp meetings and church, illicit and
condoned; they sang and had music at corn shuckings, log rollings, candy
pullings, beer dances, weddings, funerals and Christmas celebrations. The
events accompanied by singing and playing of the fiddle or banjo, straws,
triangle, or jawbone encompassed those “Negro” minstrels, like the
Virginia Minstrels in Worcester, most often ascribed as the source of

their music.

85

From the outset, “minstrel” and African American songs felt an amount
of consanguinity. For at least one hundred years, African American slaves
took an active role in the balls, cotillions, etectera of whites of all
classes. Eighteenth century New England boasted a strong fiddling custom
in the African American community. The fust week of December 1734,
the Boston Gazette advertised “A negro Boy of gentle Behaviour who plays
exceedingly well on the Violin.”{ 158} Numerous ace fiddlers became known
throughout the country, like: Concord’s Samson, East Guilford’s Caesar,
Wallingford’s Cato, Meriden’s Robin Prinn, and N arragansett’s Polydore
Gardner. Many others never played beyond the neighborhood. Abiel Brown
described West Simsbury’s Simon Fletcher as “a second or third rate
fiddler, and the same may be said of a great share of the men of color of
those times.”{ 159}

The Jeffersons contribute an intriguing example of music on a Virginia
plantation. Thomas, a great lover of European music, gives only one tepid
notice of Afiicans’ music through all of his writings and correspondence.
His brother Randolph, by contrast, Isaac, a former Monticello slave, calls
“a mighty simple man: used to come out among black people, play the
fiddle and dance half the night.” Randolph’s style by no means embraced an
anomaly. In 1774, Philip Fithian reports finding Benjamin Carter and
Harry Willis among a group of Negroes having a dance to a fiddle; be
“dispersed them however immediately.”{ 160}

The amalgamation of African and British Isles music ensued in broader
forums. In a sketch of the “African Jig” Dena Epstein recounts two other
reports of the African jig in colonial Virginia. In 1775, at a ball attended
by roughly eighty people in Alexandria, Nicholas Creswall observed,

“Betwixt the Country dances they have what I call everlasting jigs. A
86

than one in a polite assembly.” An account published in Dublin the next
year adds generalized remarks about these “everlasting jigsz” “Towards
the close of an evening, when the company are pretty well tired with
country-dances, it is usual to dance jigs; a practice originally borrowed, I
am informed, from the Negroes.”{ 161}

Epstein says the three extant “Negro jigs”—”Pompey Ran Away,” “Negro
Dance,” and “Congo—A Jig” lack distinctive African qualities. In his own
Herrenvolkian idiom, Nathan pointed out one such feature in “Pompey Ran
Away” some years before Epstein wrote her evaluation. “It consists,” he
writes of the song, “of English and Scottish folk song elements, but the
frequent reiteration of a short-winded motive is the contribution of the
slave.” By short-winded motive, Nathan means the tonic quarter note
which closes every phrase. He, indeed, correctly assigns its origin. The
following examples illustrate the resemblance of “Pompey Ran Away” to
African music. They fail to impart, however, the added dimension leafing
through volumes of Scottish, Irish and African tunes in the same setting
gives.{ 162} Notice the prominence of a mono or bi-tone closing quarter note

among all three pieces:

87

Pommpey Ran Array (Negroe Jig c. 1775; no text)

 

 

Aslnntee Air trans. by Thomas Bovdich 1817

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Voice ant Mbira from Music of Africa (Nketia)

"*1
..:l

 

"l
.1

 

88

The fiddlers at these balls provided the music at com-shuckings and
other plantation junkets as well. In “Who Are Our National Poets?”
Kinnard describes the preeminence of the Virginian “type of negro
character” throughout the South; the thousands sent to the far South and
southwest each year for sale brought the songs, tunes, and dances of
Virginia to every part of the South, excepting parts of Florida and
Louisiana, forming “a system perfectly unique.” Kinnard’s
overgeneralization bears a lot of truth. With a little input from South
Carolina, Virginia set the model for slavery across the South; the same
comshucking, ring game, and spiritual songs, for example, tended to
reappear all over. Although the same kinds of junkets and celebrations
and attending songs existed ubiquitously, performance styles differed
remarkably from locale to locale. “Run Nigger Run” might be heard as a
shucking song, as a fiddle dance song at a com-shucking dance, as a fiddle
song without dancing at a log burning, or as a banjo song, with or without
singing. { 163}

A large number of customs abounded in com-shuckings alone. Jasper
Battle, from Athens and Prichard, from Mobile, recalled shucking corn to
the extemporized singing of a “foreman” or “comshucking captain” who sat
up on top of the highest pile of corn. James Deane from Baltimore,
recounts shucking corn while a fiddler sat up on “the highest barrel of
corn,” while another man dished out cider when wanted and liquor once
every hour.

Lewis Paine’s narration of a comshucking in Georgia describes
antiphonal work songs and fiddle dance music unfolding in stages. During

the comshucking competition, song leaders up top of the piles of corn sang

89

the “solo” parts of songs, like “Round the Corn Sally” and “Shock Along
John” while guarding the pile from stray ears coming from the other team.
As recounted earlier, after dinner a fiddler performed for the whites
before stepping out into the clean swept yard to lead the slaves’ dances,
which might last until daybreak.

Although a direct inheritor of African custom, beer dances, a distant
cousin to comshuckings, had a smaller life in the slave community. A keg
of persimmon beer, made from water, sweet potato peelings, hunks of corn
bread and persimmons, offered the usual article of celebration.{ 164}
William B. Smith describes a beer dance on the lower edge of Prince
Edward sound, where the “wild notes of a banjor’ lured him while visiting
a patient’s plantation “some years” before 1839. Outside the house the
slaves sang “who-zen John, who-za” as an overture to the celebration.
Inside the house, a banjor player led the ceremony around the keg of beer.
He “tummed” his banjor seated in a chair set on top of the beer keg,
punctuating his “wild notes” with ridiculous grins to the company. On his
head, he wore a three-cocked hat “decorated with peacock feathers, a rose
cockade, a bunch of ripe persimmons, and . . .three pods of red pepper. . .”
from under which a long white cowtail queued with red ribbon hung
gracefully down his back. In time with the banjor, the company in the

house patted J uba, and sang its song:

J uber up and J uber down,

J uber all around de town

J uber dis, and Juber dat

And Juber roun’ the sirnmon vat

Hoe corn, hill tobacco,

Get over double trouble, J uber boys, J uber.{ 165}

At Christmas, most slaves enjoyed several days vacation. Whether two

90

days or a week, dancing, singing and music went on almost nonstop during
the holiday. Employed as a tutor on William Allston’s plantation in South
Carolina, John Pierpont records on first waking Christmas morning, “the
sound of the serenading violin and drum saluted my ears, and for some
time continued. . .” Dancers to this music crowded the portico almost the
whole of the second and final afternoons. Native born Africans staged
their own dance, accompanied by clapping, in which they “distort[ed] their
frames into the most unnatural figures and emit[ted] the most hideous
noises,” concluding with “jumping, running and climbing trees.” Other
plantations in South Carolina had similar celebrations. Elizabeth Coxe
witnessed negroes dancing every afternoon of Christmas week on the
piazza to the music of two fiddlers, a bones player, and man who tapped
sticks on the floor, sometimes with singing, on Eutlaw plantation during
the Civil War.{ 166}

Acclaimed fiddlers travelled around the “neighborhood” to perform for
Christmas barbecues and dances. Gus Smith, born by Jefferson City,
Missouri, at the age of ninety-two recalled “In times of holidays, we
always had our own musicians. Sometimes we sent ten or twelve miles
for a fiddler. He’d stay a week or so in one place and den he would go to de
next farm.”{ 167} These musicians travelled about in other times of the year.
Solomon Nortlrup did this kind of travelling, often to play a ball or
festival. In 1852, he spent his holiday playing a circuit around the
neighboring plantations. On his second trip all of the slaves from his
plantation accompanied him to the party at Douglass Marshall’s. He
travelled alone, on Tuesday, to “old Norwood’s place.” Coming home the

next morning a gentleman, William Pierce, hailed him to relate that his

91

master had lent him to Pierce for a party that evening. The frolic, the last
ever he saw as a slave on Bayou Boeuf, lasted until broad daylight.

A musician before being kidnapped, Northup almost achieved a status of
a professional musician as a slave. Over the centuries, numerous other
slaves filled the same position. In the larger cities’ newspapers, Epstein
suggests nothing particularly troublesome frustrated finding

advertisements such as:

FOR HIRE, either for the remainder of the year, or by the month, week, or
job, the celebrated musician and fiddler, GEORGE WALKER. . . .—George
Walker is admitted, by common consent, to be the best leader of a band in
all eastern and middle Virginia.{168}

In 1921, the Richmond Times-Dispatch printed a lengthy epitaph by CA.
Bryce to “Dusky Fiddlers’ of Olden Days. . He recalls most evening
dances capered to a single fiddle. Larger affairs brought on more
elaborate ensembles. A trio of banjo, fiddle, and tambourine, he credits
for furnishing all the music “at the average dancing parties;” while a band
of “four violins, one fiddle (or bass, I suppose they called it), two banjos,
two tambourines and mandolin” occasionally surfaced.

Most of these entertainers played by ear. They were slave quarters’
musicians who also provided music for master’s merriments. Like their
banjos, they produced their fiddles, quills, and percussive instruments
domestically using African patterns. Analogous to later blues guitar
players, a good slave fiddler often began playing on a self-made
instrument made of a gourd or square pine box. At age ninety-nine, Henry

Wright described making a gourd fiddle for his WPA interviewer:

I made a fiddle out of a large sized gourd—a long wooden handle was used
a neck, and the hair from a horse’s tail was used for the bow. The strings
were made of cat gut.{ 169}

92

 

 

Mom Air 1817

 

 

By word of mouth, some individuals and ensembles won a semi-

professional status as had Northup. In a “Slave Narrative” Andy Brice,
from Winnesboro, draws some pictures of this life. One day, he saw
“Marse Thomas a twistin’ de ears on a fiddle.” When Thomas rubbed the
bow across the strings, Brice recalls he felt “Something bust loose in me
and sing all thru my head and tingle in my fingers.” By next Christmas he
owned a fiddle which he “learnt and been playin’. ..ever since.” He and his
fiddle played at dances at Cedar Shades and Blackstock for whites. Like
Northup, he came home from these with coin jingling in his pockets. He
attributes his marriage to Ellen Watson, “as pretty a ginger cake nigger as
ever fiied a batter cake or rolled her arms up in a wash tub” to his fiddle
and money it earned.

Master’s now and again cultivated the musical abilities of one or two
slaves. Three young men, Reuben, Henry and George who left the
steamboat Pike, (which they travelled on as waiters and entertainers), at

Cincinnati to escape to Canada stand as remarkable tokens of this genre of

93

musician. In previous years, the men travelled with a free Negro,
Williams, who taught them music by contract with their owner, Mr.
Graham. Under Williams’ charge, they performed at parties and balls in
the free states on several occasions. In the two years previous their
escape, they made headquarters in Lexington while travelling about the
countryside under their own contracts.{ 170}

Rather than sending slaves North for musical coaching, owners in
middle Tennessee presumably used New Orleans, the antebellum center of
black fiddling, as a training ground for plantation fiddlers. Charles K.
Wolfe, who avouches the idea, cites a post-war account of an African
American fiddler trained in New Orleans who played for Andrew Jackson’s
dancing; this he uses to extend the background to John Lusk’s story of a
grandfather who learned to play the fiddle in New Orleans in the 18403.
Winans’ survey of instrumental music in the Slave Narratives partially
backs his conception of New Orleans as a center of Afro-American
fiddling. Narratives from Louisiana tell of fiddle/banjo or fiddle/banjo &
other combinations in a greater percentage than those of other states.
However, on the basis of the prominence of the fiddle relative to the banjo
and other instruments, Mississippi ranks first.{ 171}

African American fiddlers and banjoists had two distinct song styles;
both had strong African features. Thomas Talley links one style with such
songs as “Run Nigger Run,” and “I’ll Wear Me a Short Cotton Dress.” Here,
the fiddle or banjo played a simple accompaniment. James Singleton, a
former slave, tells of log burnings in Mississippi where all sang songs,
“like Run nigger run, Pattyrollers ketch you, Run nigger run, It’s breaking
day,”’ with the accompaniment of the fiddle.{ 172} Robert Winans lists it as

the second most oft cited, behind “Turkey in the Straw,” tune in the Slave
94

Narratives.

“Run, Nigger, Run,” collected by El. Snow in Pine Bluff, Arkansas,
shows the sung melody. The tune basically runs on a pentatonic, except
with the incursion of the fourth leading into its denouement. Set in two
eighth notes on an accented beat,(the first taking the accent) this fourth,
produces a remarkable, blithe hook. Within the pentatonic range, the tune
carries a couple of particularly elegant motives. The emblematic African
American entry into the chorus over the last and first beat of two
measures, in this case an octave on 301, is arresting. The close of the
chorus’ first phrase through its transition to the second enunciates a regal
moment; more so in conjunction with the text. On the whole, the air flows
gracefully, lacking awkward phrases, and balancing melodically; it fits its
place in one of the most popular slave songs well.{ 173}

1 Nigger Run (Slave Song 110)

 

I
f
v

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7“ r I I i I 1 I l - A
L 1'1 7r 1 If it I F A L
‘4 i L A L J A' d l H II F I
I I T
0 son toll no that a nigger oon't stool, Bat
I 1 .
l L - - I I I n
' J l' A A I g l l l
E [I II E I J l l A 4 T
L I l 11 411 V l ' ‘l I
17 V v '
0 y u
I u. soon a nigga” In .9 cornfield; 0

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

r y 7
M, niggar rm, for tho patrol ulllcotch you, O
L I H~_l I l
I .' j; ' 'r‘ If L
M, niggar, rm, for’tis olnost day

95

Run Nigger Run from Thomas Tallefs 'Lealing Tlnnns' Notebook

 

Tally pronounces this type of song “born to die,” which seems a pity;
the art of the old time black fiddler, which earned him the reputation for
making it impossible for listeners, saints or sinners, to hold still their
feet, rolled in songs like “Devilish Pigs.” “The Party” by Paul L. Dunbar
eulogizes this music,
Cripple Joe, de ole rheumatic, danced dat flo’ frum

side to middle.
Throwed away his crutch an’ hopped it, what’s

rheumatics ‘gainst a fiddle?
Eldah Thompson got so tickled dat he lak to 103' his grace
Had to take bofe feet an' hold 'em, 30's to keep 'em

in deir place.
An' de Christuns an de sinnahs got so mixed up on

dat flo',

Dat I don't see how dey's pahted ef de tump had
chonced to blow.{174}

In the opening bars, the performers sang from one to four lines of the song, then letting
go, instruments alone finished the larger part of the tune; doubling back, it caught another
piece of rhyme on its variations. On each repetition it touched on its variations, which
evoked the prior rhymes. In full march, singing burst in at the beginning and middle; the
pieces always closed in instrumental. As dance songs, the pieces lasted ten to twenty
minutes. As it repeated, the tune drew into itself an air of self-will; the musicians tagged

96

along behind.{ 175}

African American rhyme and music composed on the plantation moved about the
land, travelling wherever slaves traveled, and elsewhere, migrating with free men of both
colors. African slaves brought their music to the factories in cities like Richmond and
Lexington, and to the salt mines in Appalachia Carter Co., Kentucky and Kanawha,
Virginia.{176} Free Africans leaving the South during slavery's retrenchment after 1820
carried it to northern cities such as Cincinnati and Philadelphia.{ 177} Along the rivers
and at ports, a separate body of African American music, faster moving and further cross-
bred, also wandered around the country and the world. This was the music of the re-
nowned steamboat roustabouts who travelled up and down the Mississippi, Ohio et. al
loading packets, feeding their fires, and sleeping on their decks. Crews of forty or fifty
men travelled on the large steamers of the Western and Southern rivers.{78} Likewise,
port and levee stevedores, routinely African at North and South, shaped and shared this
music.

Like all African American music, these song shared lyrics and tunes with divers
traditions. Stevedores and sailors at sea ports, particularly, engaged in a cosmopolitan
exchange of vemaculars. A tune like "Blow the Man Down," likely a British Isles
shanty, reappeared easily in the Georgia Sea Islands; but its basic form in call and re-
sponse evokes the notion its roots are international.{ 179} Leaving "Blow the Man
Down's" pedigree to speculation, it bears noting that while African music lacks a trade-
mark on many of its distinctive features, the call and response is an acutely African
form.{180} The songs of the ports and rivers used this part singing and several other
African habits. Falsetto, like call and response, flourished in eastern and western river
songs. A Georgia Sea Island version of "Ole Tar River" shares these features with "I'm
Gwine to Alabamy" from the Mississippi River, "Steamboat Song" transcribed by John
Mason Brown, and "Oh, Rock Me Julie" collected by George W. Cable late in the 19th-

century.{ 181} Ostensibly, the burden of all three repeats an undulating falsetto over two
97

syllables, like a yodel. "Alabamy" and "Julie" sit in minor which solidly accents their
African Ameican origin. Among all, the verse refrain descends gradually, "Ole Tar
River" and "I'm GWine to Alabamy" carrying this further. Two also begin their second
verse line lower, by a third or a fifth, duplicating, however, the same intervals.

Circus men who travelled the South during the winder, and occasionally settled down
for several monthsor a year, came into the opportunity to observe slaves on farms and
plantations; at least, they became familiar with slaves in the cities. While travelling--by
road troupes possibly heard the singing of the coffle gangs marching south. But, on the
river the songs of the firemen and deckhands were inescapable. In consequence, they
wielded a strong influence on the men of the "Ethiopian" shows. When working on the
riverboats, Ben Cotton recalled whiling away evenings at the front of black men‘s cabins,
"we would," he avers, "start the banjo twanging, and their voices would ring out in the
quiet night air in their weird melodies. . .I was the first white man they had seen who
sang as they did."{ 182} In the 18503, Dave Reed emerged from the steamboat Banjo
with a new dance, his ticket to national accaim, which he asserted he learned from Afri-
can Americans on the boat.{183} As well, the scatttering of adjusted African American
river songs which reemerged as popular "Negro" songs in the early 40s certifies this
sphere's influence.

At the North, interested whites had other venues for observing African American
culture open to them. African churches furnished journalists, foreigners, and others a
source of exotic fun and amusement. Visiting from England in 1820, William Faux
visited an African church in Philadelphia in which he observed an ecstatic, musical
service. In Cincinnati, Fredrika Bremer visited two black churches on November 27,
1850. the morning service at "a negro Baptist church belonging to the Episcopal creed"

she found a "little tedious," but at the African Methodist Episcopal church she encoun-

tered "African ardor and African life."{ 184}

98

Writing from America, Charles Mathews included a negro sermon he professedly
heard, in a New York church in 1823, in a long letter to James Smith. His piece offers
the first example of a long series of "Negro sermons" which joke on the black preacher's
greater interest in lucre than souls.{ 185} By the mid-18303, variants of the species
appear in Comic broadsides. Such is "Rev. Mr. Sambo's Sarmon" on the double faced
Comical Songs and Comical Characters. This dialect piece implies general readers had
an awarness of distinctive African American preaching.{ 186} Starting in the 603, The
New York Clipper published dialect sermons which, ostensibly, aped the preaching of
Brother Allen, a well-known African American preacher. Emmett submitted a number of
his own "Negro sermons" to the Clipper in 1872-1873. The paper published one,
"Blessed am dem dat 'spect nuttin', kase dey aint a gwine to git nuttin'," on August 9,
1873.{187}

Blacks' restriction from most public houses bred an alternative class of diversions. A
short lived theater, the African Grove, on Mercer Street in New York City, marks the
only brief success at drama, but taverns sprung up now and again in areas like New
York's Five Points.{ 188} Charles Dickens visited one of these, Almack's, during his stay
in the United States and recorded his impressions in Notes on America. On Dicken's
visit, the evening's music came from a fiddler and a tambourine man who stamped upon
the orchestra's boarding as they played a "lively measure." Five or six couples led by "a
lively young negro" capered on the floor. The Illustrated London News places this
gentleman as the celebrated "J uba" (William H. Lane) who then was the most popular
dancer of the day and the only African in "Ethiopian" minstrelsy.

By breaking into "Negro" minstrelsy, Juba stood at one end of a long tradition of
African American jig and reel dancing which the circus and theatre "negroes" set to
emulate. Long Island's African American dancers caught Washington Irving's attention
early in the 19th-century. In the fifth chapter of Salmagundi, he extols one of the best.

Marian Winter reports J uba supposedly learned the art of dancing from "Uncle" Jim
99

Lowe, a free black of wide repute as a dancer. Unlike the white "Negroes," and Juba,
Lowe did his dancing outside the regular theatre in the saloons and dance halls.{ 189}
When George G. Foster sojoumed on a "dark and muggy" Saturday night to Almack's
eight years later, now Dicken's Place, he found the usual fiddle fortified with trumpet and
bass drum. African women, "negresses" and their fair companions "bleary eyed, idiotic
beastly wretches" began an ecstatic, feral dance as the orchestra struck up "Coony in de
Holler. " Foster writes an intriguing depiction of the orchestra's music; one irresistible to

gratuitously recount:

With these instruments you may imagine that the music at Dicken's Place is of no ordi-
nary kind. You cannot, however, begin to imagine what it is. You cannot see the red-
hot knitting-needle spirted out by that red-face trumpeter, who looks precisely as if he
were blowing glass, which needles aforesaid penetrating thetympanum, pierce through
and through your brain without remorse. Nor can you perceive the frightful mechani-
cal controtions of the bass-drummer as he sweats and deals his blows on every side, in
all violation of the laws of rhythm, like a man beating a baulky mule and showering his
blows upon the unfortunate animal now on this side, now on that. If you could, it
would be unnecessary for us to write.{190}

The sources, for history, of African American music in Northern cities before the War,
are hardly picked over and short at the start. Epstein hits this note in a theme of our
"sadly defective" knowledge of black secular music in Sinful Tunes and Spirituals. She
avers, that, particularly, newspapers, magazines and manuscripts wait to have their
secrets plumbed.{191} Mt. Vernon's Snowdens, a family band of African American
professional musicians, brought to attention by Howard and Judith Sacks, gives a taste of
the treasure waiting. In "The Negroes of Cincinnati Prior to the Civil War," Carter
Woodson gives a taste, also, of the remarks on African American music in Northern
newspapers. The Cincinnati Daily Gazette, of September 14, 1841 makes mention of the
Negroes' "noisy frolics" which had aggravated racial tensions in the city prior the armed
melee on Broadway between Fifth and Sixth St. in the night of August twenty-
ninth. { 192}

100

Will the Real “Jim Crow” Please Stand Up?
Debasing the African, by arrogating the title while rrrirnicking a

crippled old slave for the amusement of “whites only” seems as debauched
as “Jim Crow’s” later career. Dennison, who renders this view most
acutely, emphasizes that written records contain multifarious accounts of
“Jim Crow’s” origins. Cincinnati, Baltimore, Louisville, Pittsburgh, as
well as Nashville and Memphis hold some affiliation with the act.{ 193} In an
earlier essay, the present writer avowed the accepted “Jim Crow” tale
spurious with an argument concluding that the conflicting stories made
the stable-hand in Louisville account look like a historian’s best guess
among tall tales.{ 194} Molly Ramshaw’s “Jump Jim Crow! A Biographical
Sketch of Thomas D. Rice (1808-1860)” later shook this faith. A further,
hasty probe into the issue evokes a reaffirmation of the charge, in this
case, accompanied by an original account of “Jim Crow.”

It begins with a second peek at George Nichol’s unconfirmed
performance of “Jim Crow” before T.D. Rice, first as a clown and later as a
“Negro.” The earlier performance and its medium convey importance.
Nichol’s “Jim Crow” act as a clown hooks this consummate “Ethiopian” act
onto mainstream entertainment prior to its explosion as a favorite
blackface character. Nichol’s source insinuates additional inferences
about “Jim Crow.” Picayune Butler, who purportedly taught Nichols “Jim
Crow,” put a large influence in blackface nrinstrelsy. His song, “Picayune
Butler is Going Away” became a standard in minstrel acts of the 403 and
503 as “Picayune Butler is Coming to Town,” a singular honor in “Ethiopian”
minstrelsy to an African musician. With Butler performing “Jim Crow,”
the history of the routine, as entertainment, stretches back to African

Americans. Butler as Nichol’s source untangles why Nichol’s initially

101

performed “Jim Crow” as a clown; ostensibly because the performance
lacked the burlesque of blackness as an inherent feature.

Butler, 3 “French darkie,” came from the West Indies. Thus, his
experience included a richer heritage of Africa than most African
Americans in the United States. Story traditions, in the West Indies,
reflect one feature of their stronger African heritage. The West Indies’
and United States’ story traditions share characters and core tales.

Albeit, the West Indies apparently retain a greater body of accompanying

music. Here, or in the larger tradition, reposes a gentleman who makes a
likely candidate for the original “Jim Crow.”

Crow is a minor figure in African American animal stories collected in
the United States and West Indies. Crow actually represents a
conglomerate of several birds. In Jamaica, a buzzard takes his name; in
the Bahamas the word crane attaches to crow to describe a bird (possibly
a blue heron) with a beak useful for ripping flesh or plucking eyes.{ 195}
Rather than a corneille, oiseau of several types surface in Elsie Parson’s
collections French West Indian folklore. In the United States, the Crow
stories of Jamaica and Bahamas reappear in tales of a Buzzard, a Crane-
Crow, and John Crow. An independent character, Hawk or Fowl Hawk, often
appears in stories with Buzzard/Crow. Universally, John Crow incarnates
a grotesque figure. His color, however, negligibly defines his ugliness.
Whereas the stories collected by Harris specify things like his bad breath
and poor song, an archetypal Jamaican tale just calls him “that ugly
fellah.” Crow and Buzzard play both trickster and victim usually, though,
without the flamboyance of Rabbit or ‘Bouki.{ 196}

African American tales espouse three root Crow/Buzzard stories. One

explains why Crow/Buzzard has a bald head; another

102

relates a singing match which Crow wins by starving his opponent; a third
has cautious Crow/Buzzard enjoying, corporeally, Hawk’s violent death.{ 197}
Like other African American animal stories, small songs attend John Crow
tales. Harris, who usually overlooked these, includes two Crow/Buzzard
songs in his Uncle Remus collections. One, sung by Bro’ Terrapin, says: “ I
foolee, I foolee, I foolee po’ Buzzud; Po’ Buzzud I foolee, I foolee, I foolee’.”
And, the little boy and Daddy Jack sang, “T-u Tukry, t-u Ti, T-u Tukry-
Buzzud y-eye! T-u Tukry, t—u Ting, T-u Tukry-Buzzud wing!” one night
during Christmas time. Thomas Talley includes the latter in his Wise and
Otherwise collection of “Negro Rhymes.” His volume contains several
other Buzzard and Hawk rhymes sung with animal stories such as “Judge
Buzzard,” “Hawk and Buzzard,” “Hawk and Chickens,” and “Hawk and
Chickens Play.”{ 198}

Some printings of “Jim Crow” contain allusions to other creatures of
the B’ animal stories. J. Edgar’s printing of 1832 includes the common
stanza, “I neeld to de buzzard, An I bou’d to de Crow, an eb’ry time I reel’d
Why I jump’t Jim Crow” Dorothy Scarborough agrees this stanza looks
authentically folk. She includes a fragment of verse translated from Creole (New
Orleans), although she surmises “I think that is probably a mistake, since

it appears to be a part of this familiar old song.”
Whar you gwine Buzzard?

Whar you gwine Crow?

I’se gwine down to New Ground

To jump Jim Crow

Every time I turn around

I jump Jim Crow.{ 199}

In 1843, William Cullen Bryant noted a com-shucking “John Crow” song

in the Barnwell District of South Carolina which parallels “Jim Crow’s”

103

stanzas of animal motifs chorused by a refrain syntactically similar to

“Jump Jim Crow:”

De cooter is de boatrnan

John, John Crow
De red-bird de soger

John, John Crow
De mockingbird de lawyer

John, John Crow
De alligator sawyer

John, John Crow
Unfortunately, Bryant noted only the text.{200}

The tale and tune most pressing in this “Jim Crow” discussion comes
from a collection of Jamaican folk-lore put under Walter Jekyll’s name in
1907. Of its two “John Crow” stories, one sets him down to dinner over
Hawk’s fresh corpse; the other explains his baldness in a tale of courtship.
This second includes two songs. One appears a variant of the ever popular
“Day Break, Light, Clean” family (alias, Banana Song, John B.). The other
could be a lost cousin of TD. Rice’s “Jim Crow.”{201}

Conspicuous motifs brook most of the burden of consanguinity.
Specifically, “Mr. Goldman’s” song captures John Crow “a wheel him gal.”
Regards to the context of the sample to oral tradition suggest “where
there is smoke there is fire”. From John Crow’s “a wheel dem,” the
imagination tends to conceive of another John Crow story in which John
“wheels about,” or “jumps John (or Jim) Crow.” Furthermore, the melodies,
while not bearing a strong resemblance balance with each other strikingly.
The precise means of this applies in fairly elusive figures. Contiguously,
this disclaimer extends a vigorous recommendation for aural comparison.

Listening affirms drawing a link of kinship between Jim and John on the

tunes alone seems unlikely. It as well entices a poke at the congruity

104

between the two.

Rice altered the tune of “Jim Crow,” and Sol Smith claimed a hand in
the work. Unfortunately, the “John Crow” song offers no indication of
these alterations. By all means, the amendments edge toward rendering an
African (or Afro-American) tune pleasing to white Americans. This
entailed removing the “queemess,” the “weirdness,” and the “savageness”
which most Anglo-Europeans found repugnant. Unfortunately, many of
“Jim Crow’s” features which demarcate it from “Mr. Goldman” hang in the
opposite direction. For one, its reliance upon tones used seldom for a
tune’s skeleton (ti, 301, la, and re {octave}) tinges its D major key with an
alien cast, even though the tune resists easy rotation into a minor. Within
this range, it shades around its high tonic axis with minor and major
seconds. Horace Boyer types this conjunct style fairly characteristic of
African American melody. { 202} Moreover, the refrain uses a sharp do, which
although more common in European than Afro-American music, lends the
piece an air of peculiarity. These incongruous features make a skeptical

backdrop for a musicological comparison.

As part of fitting a new text to a tune, Rice probably embellished and
extended the melodic line. It is also possible that be doubled the verse.
Under these assumptions, the first phrase of “Mr. Goldman” represents
“Jim Crow’s” verse, embodied in its initial phrase. Setting these together
italicizes the tunes’ melodic sinrilitude. “Goldman’s” mi, fa, and re
compliments the ti-sol design of “Jim Crow.” At the phrases’ end,
“Crow’s” ti and “Goldman’s” low 301 have a like valence moving to

resolution in do. The second motif introduces the tonic in each. Its lone

105

Mr. Goldman

Jim C rov

 

Poor airy bi- bi- rib bi- bi;

bi- bin, Gold cm a

 

meal hin gal, Gold am a

 

Cone listen all you galls

aid bogs, I'-

 

just fro. Tu- ckg- hoe; l'n goin to

sing a leetle song, My

 

nae's Jln Crou. lleel daout,

and torn drout, FM

 

do jis so; Eb'rg tine

 

 

 

 

jmp din Croo

106

l reel doout, I

manifestation over four eighth notes in “Goldman” leaves it fairly wide
open for concurrence with other tonic oriented phrases. “Jim Crow’s”
second verse phrase substantially runs a variant from its first. The
choruses diverge. Although the tunes share a rough contour, they sit at
odds both rhythmically and melodically. Some affinity rests conceivable.
For example, the descent from fa to re on “him gal” seems compatible with
the closing mi-do-fa on “do jis so.”

Again, aural comparison provides the best means to appreciate the
unlikely affinity between the two tunes. Their melodic resemblance
underscores their tie in text and context. The consummation of these
domains places the “Jim Crow” pas seul and song in close alliance with
African American animal stories. Despite Conner’s and Ludlow’s
testimony, it remains extremely plausible that Picayune Butler introduced
the “Jim Crow” act to the circus and theater set. Albeit, the Louisville
account also leaves “Jim Crow’s” folk origins open.

“Jim Crow,” of course, became the favorite song of the English speaking
world in the early 303. His popularity, however, had peculiar effects in
the United States. By the late 19th-century, at least, he became a
standard African American folk figure. When this extraction from folk
culture reentered its native tradition, he embellished and supplanted other
figures of Crow. Thus, the fragment of “Jim Crow” verse Scarborough
includes translated from Creole probably incarnates a mix of folk and
popular pieces.

A bit more interesting example is Talley’s elaborated version of a
rhyme first printed in “Clare de Kitchen” (1832). In “Bullfrog Put on
Soldiers Clothes,” a frog goes out to a field to shoot crows. After firing a

round, bullfrog does a little jig while Jim Crow fall. Before Rice’s “Jim
107

Crow” sensation, John Crow would have been the crow’s name.

The above “Jim Crow” story hinges on three tried and true techniques
for demonstrating family relationship among tunes. The favorite method
compares melodic similarities among tunes; Bertrand Harris Bronson,
George Pullen Jackson, and Nathan, for example, use this. A second method
matches song texts, sometimes only comparative and but also reductive
toward an “Ur” version in the style of the “Finnish” school and Josiah
Childs’ work with English ballads. A third uses context to ascertain the
likelihood of particular ingredients coming into a music. None of these
are carved in stone. Some respected musicologists favor different means
of comparison, like Alan Lomax’s cantonometrics, while others feel
misgivings even when using the conventional styles. Eileen Southern, for
example, prefaces her match of “Pray All de Member” with an “Accra
Fetish Hymn” collected by Thomas Bowdich with caveats for coincidence
and inexact transcription. { 203 }

Like “Jim Crow” many “Ethiopian” songs had explicit and oblique links
with African American culture. “Ethiopia’s” vernacular faith of reason,
however, leaves the proof of intercourse in bits and scraps at the bottom
of the waste bin. Fetched out and pieced together, these tatters of
evidence say precious little about who did what to whom, when. Boiled
down, the matter hangs on the duplication, in detail or analogy or form, of
virtually everything of blackface minstrelsy in records of African
American folk culture.{204} The United States’ historical “religion” runs
such a violent current, though, that its deposits often cannot be traced to
its sources. Such happens with the tangled ball of “Ethiopian” pieces and
African American folklore.

The temporal, philosophical and aesthetic orientation of virtually

108

every record apropos the ties of African American folk culture and
“Ethiopian” minstrelsy conspires to obscure the association. Two editions
of Thomas Talley’s Negro Folk Rhymes symbolize the myths elemental to
this schema. The rhymes printed on the initial sixteen pages of the 1922
edition exhibit fourteen shared phrases encompassing at least ten
blackface songs. Most of these satisfactorily trace to African American
folklore; the satisfaction, albeit, lacks assurance; and, some divulge the
almost frightening degree at which southern African Americans absorbed
blackface material. Talley makes no mention of the previous life of any of
this material. Page eleven holds a rhyme Talley titles “Negroes Never
Die.” At first glance it resembles a self-deprecating rolic; at a second it
suggests an air of protest; and in context it emerges as a caustic parody,
of the breed Lawrence Gellert collected, of the minstrel “Negro”
stereotype. “Nigger!” it says,

Nigger never die!

He gits choked on Chicken pie
Black face, white shiny eye. Nigger! Nigger!

Nigger! Nigger never knows!
mashed nose, an’ crooked toes;
Dat’s de way de Nigger goes. Nigger! Nigger!

Nigger! Nigger always sing;
Jump up, out do Pigeon’s wing;
Whirl, an’ give his feet a fling. Nigger! Nigger!
The rhyme apparently comes from Emmett’s “High Daddy” (1863) which

exemplifies Emmett’s more bellicose racism during the Civil War. Its

chorus’s text harks,

Then darky, never die,
Black face and china eye;

109

Go down to the barnyard, boys,
owl’s on the roos’,

High Daddy wont come nigh,
He’s chok’d on chicken pie;
’Tis all “OK,” I say

and right upon the goose

“High Daddy” resembles Emmett’s many other walk-arounds in status more
than “Dixie,” but its reappearance in African American folklore marks less
than an extraordinary occasion. How popular it became and how it became
so hangs cloudy. It at least appears in David Brody’s Fiddler’s Fakebook as
“High Dad in the Morning” with nearly five hundred other “classic”
American fiddle tunes.{205}

Charles Wolfe edited the expanded edition of Negro Folk Rhymes. This
version has the boon of many of the one hundred and fifty six tunes Talley
gathered during his search for “Negro rhymes.” Wolfe makes a becoming
effort to place credit to African American tradition for some of the songs
and tunes Talley recorded which later surfaced as “old time” and country
music standards. His serious absence of familiarity with the “Ethiopian”
repertoire and African American traditions, yet, compensates his
endeavor. Extreme, but indicative is Wolfe’s annotation of “Big Ball Down
Town” Talley recorded it as a 2/4 vocal piece of four phrases in Eb. The
second to fourth he writes with a solo and chorus. When Wolfe comes to
comment on the arrangement after sketching the song’s luxuriant career in
country, swing, and old-time traditions he proposes the musical theme, “is
unusual in that it suggests a vocal arrangement, possibly for a quartet.”
Rather, the form marks one of the accepted forms of notating African and
African American antiphonal singing. He repeats this talent consistently,

usually attributing to minstrelsy pieces which have documented histories

110

outside this realm.

Talley’s Negro Folk Rhymes shows that minstrelsy and African
American folklore shared many rhymes, but it evinces no evidence of the
direction of the borrowing. Wolfe lays a layer of erudition over Talley’s
silence which cases naught. As he points out, Negro Folk Rhymes embodies
an invaluable record of African American folklore. It offered the first
printed collection of the camouflaged and quickly fading body of
antebellum secular music.{206} Moreover, Talley surpassed all later
collectors in proximity to slave traditions and often in collecting skills.

As it stands, Talley’s work bears limited usefulness as a gauge of African
American folklore apropos minstrelsy. Negro Folk Rhymes only epitomizes
a problem ubiquitous to most records of antebellum African American
music and dance. Works like Slave Songs of the United States or Slave
Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands prove “Ethiopian” rrrinstrelsy and African
American folklore intermingled; on what terms comprises a monstrous
historical problem.

Add to Talley’s enigmatic, mishandled text Dennison’s Scandalize My
Name, where Dennison insensibly hammers out an image of “Ethiopian”
minstrelsy utterly devoid of any trace of the “real black.” Or, the
established scholarship of Cecil Sharp (who elsewhere proves Morris
dances have no relation to nigger music), George Pullen Jackson, Samuel P.
Bayard or Alan J abbour; it evokes frightful visions. { 207} At heart, the
visions constitute nothing worse than a profoundly distorted conception of
African American culture and a completely wrong idea of how this culture
and “Ethiopian” minstrelsy intermingled.{208}

These nightmarish dreams run counter a body of musical evidence

which certifies the “Ethiopian,” “Negro” and “Plantation” songs of
111

blackface entertainments borrowed African American music across the
antebellum decades. Minstrelsy never borrowed consistently nor
replicated African American song with ringing verisimilitude. It began
using, the banjo, an instrument brought from West Africa, the fiddle, with
which Africans, North and South, won acclaim, and the tambourine or
bones, two instruments favored by African Americans. Between 1828-
1867, “Negro” nrinstrelsy incorporated pieces of music from a variety of
African American styles—com-shucking, river, dance, and religious. The
incentives propelling all this expropriation lack documentation. Noting
two, on speculation, partially illuminates the context in which the
recreation of African American music in “Ethiopian” minstrelsy lay.

One pull, frequently disparaged or overlooked, haunts the vigor of the
music. Robert Winans avers the early minstrel bands resemble the
Southern string bands recorded toward the close of the 19th-century. In
this category also, is the John Lusk band which played for Stu Jamison’s
phonograph in the 19403. This African American string band, these men of
color, carried close ties with antebellum styles. Jamison described the
band’s playing as “far and away the most sophisticated square dance music
we had ever heard.” John Lusk played the fiddle of his grandfather who
learned to play in New Orleans in the 18403 on his Tennessee owner’s
account. Lusk had among his tunes in 1946 “Old Sage Friend” which his
grandfather supposedly used as signature piece. The piece epitomizes the
old time breakdown music like “Run Nigger Run” and “Devilish Pigs” and
“Old Dad” which Dunbar and Talley apostheosize. It starts high, slurring
the melody and gradually tightening it with rhythmic variation. Dropping
to the lower tonic at the third phrase it jigs into its lower second part.

Here, Lusk saws the bow up the strings with a bounce. The melody runs a
112

quick rise and fall. Yet, the sawing presses home the tune’s breakdown
angst over the slurred melody. Like the “Ethiopian” banjoists, Murphy
Gribble tuned his instrument, a store bought one (unlike the early minstrel
banjos), lower, by a third. Gribble played remarkably. On a banjo alone
take of “Altamont,” he twines a contrapunal “broken legged”
rhythmic/melodic tapestry, loosely related to the fiddle’s melody, which
thumps clustered bass notes and teeter totter’s around the tune’s rhythmic
flow. {209} Gribble foreswore title of any part of his playing. He played, he
said, just like the old folks. Although different from other African

derived banjo styles, the “old folk’s” style also, ostensibly, comes from
Africa in that Gribble’s thumped out bass notes have an affinity with the
playing styles of Charley Patton on “Boweavil Blues” and a Muslim “War
Song” from an area near Timbuktu which William Tallmadge remarks on in
connection with Paul Oliver’s Savannah Syncopators.{210} {211}

Winans recognizes that the “Ethiopian” bands used different
orchestration from tum-of-the-century string bands. The blackface bands
made their rhythm with the monotonal percussion instruments, bones and
tambourine, instead of the guitar.{212} Like the early nrinstrel banjos, the
tambourine was more resonant and percussive than later versions. With a
larger surface and fewer cymbals, it resembled a drum rather than a
rattle. {213} Bones make a bright, hard clatter. Typically they add fast
staccato rhythms but play divers tempos and rhythms as easily. The quick
rolling syncopated rhythms Percy Danforth plays on New World Record’s

Early Minstrel Show Music evinces this music as one of the more
rhythmically complex American styles. Organized by Winans, Early
Minstrel Show Music attempts an authentic reproduction of a typical

18403 rrrinstrel show. The several instrumental pieces reconstructed
113

from printed sources (sheet music, instruction books, narrative accounts,
songsters, and manuscripts) bring to life the simple melodies and

illustrate the liveliness of songs like “De Boatman’s Dance” and “Lucy
Long.” The instrumental accompaniment of “Old Joe,” which John Lusk’s
band calls “Christmas Eve,” has striking resemblance to current “old-time”
versions which underscores tradition’s conservation power. A blend of
British Isles and African styles mark these tunes, particularly the banjo
and fiddle solos, placing it similar to the old-time breakdown music.

A desire to experience African American culture manifested in
rrrinstrelsy at least through the Civil War. Before the war, “Ethiopian”
entertainments partially fulfilled the interest which greeted the Jubilee
Singers and their ilk in the 18703 and 18803. Dan Emmett commonly gets
recognition for 1003er basing his music, particularly the walk-arounds,
on the slaves’ music. E.P. Christy, however, apparently made a habit of
assimilating authentic, or restyled, African American music into his
shows.

The various styles of African American music more or less
opened its own doors. The interest in this culture in excess the music’s
pull flowed from several wells. The curiosity of African Americans which
subsequent generations of Americans evinced with an interest in
spirituals and folklore initially comprised part of the blackface
performances. Concomitantly, the esteem of national culture which later
emerged in a celebration of Negro folk-life made an undercurrent in the
shows. Other divers impulses spawned the insertion of African American
music in “Ethiopian” minstrelsy. Albeit the definite reasons remain
tenuous, the exchange of musical traditions indubitably created part of

the experience. {214}
l 14

“Uh, let me prove it to ya.”

A brief melodic comparison of the Slave Songs of the United States,
Stephen Foster’s “Plantation” or “Ethiopian” material and a scattering of
minstrel and related songs from the William Clement collection divulge
aspects of disheartening congruity among all the music. Major largely
fashioned the collection, (the “New Jersey Lovers” being the exception of
rrrinstrel songs), although the Slave Songs included nine percent minor
songs. Sol and do opened most songs. The rarer mi appeared about as
frequently in all the styles. Moreover, a count of the motion within I
melodic phrases suggests the melodies of eighty-eight Slave Songs
encompassed roughly the same number of intervals as sentimental
minstrel songs, Foster’s and other darky “Plantation” songs. Unlike
Bertrand H. Bronson’s melodic motion formula, the evaluation simply

measures the number of tone changes in a melodic phrase. For example:

Corn Shuttin' Song from Virginia : Nine Changes

 

 

 

Approximately thirty-eight changes in eight bars is archetypal. The
Slave Songs tend toward holding the archetype or showing less motion
while Foster’s stay fairly even (minus octaves) whereas the chorus of a
sentimental minstrel song, such as “I’ll Wait at the gate for Thee” scrapes
up to fifty-nine changes in eight bars. The African American songs also
have a dominating tone slightly more frequently. These tend to count for
forty to fifty percent of a phrases’ tones in contrast to the seventy
percent reached in some minstrel songs and the more common twenty-
eight to thirty-three percent.

115

Unlike most traditional music, the Slave Songs use duple time
exclusively. Only six, or less than five percent, have triple time. In this,
they stand close to the “Negro” songs of blackface minstrelsy. Once again,
chicken and egg march on the rainbow to chaos. The transcribers’ choice
of duple time exhibits something of an arbitrary decision. As a fact,
triple time and duple time exchange easily. Richard Waterman stresses,
that even musically trained Americans find it difficult not to situate a
beat in a familiar rhythm as they do with the trains which click-clack in
5/4 or 7/8 time. Hence, it stands conceivable that the contributors and
the editors of Slave Songs chose duple time to accord the music with the
widely popular “Negro” songs.

Using a checklist of salient musical features offers one sound means
for hunting the African American imprint in “Negro” songs. Earlier,
allusions to this or that tune’s prominently African or African American
trait filled out its general delineation. While looking for Afro-American
smatterings among early American popular music, this checklist basically
extended to ten items. African music frequently uses pentatonic scales.
Since all melody derives from the pentatonic form, its appearance in
American popular songs usually means little. Yet, its powerful presence
in a “Negro” song suggests a good reason to suspect an Afro-American
source.

Most of what formerly headed under “primitive” music has descending
melodies. Such is African music. African melodies, also, change little,
but balance around an epicenter with two or three tones. Moreover, when
an Afro-American melody uses ti it usually flattens it. This marks one
feature of the “blue” tonality; a flat mi and a re broken into several

smaller intervals are its other noted parts. Like other traditional musics
116

such as English and Sioux, African and African American melody occurs in
a minor key as a routine affair. Hence, a minor tune like the earthy “I’m
Gwine to Alabamy” appears in the Slave Songs at a time when an art
composer uses minor only to evoke melancholy.

Today, yet, timbre sets African and African American vocals apart
from European styles further than tone. In African music, falsetto is an
acceptable singing voice. Africans embedded their style in a variety of
solo and communal music settings in the Americas. Allston Brown’s
comment on Old Corn Meal’s “fine falsetto and baritone voice” hints that
rrrinstrels recognized and accepted the African approach toward falsetto.
Falsetto bears merit among the divers African vocal timbres because it
shows up in sheet music. Thus, the sheet music of William Wray’s “Happy

Land of Canaan” conspicuously emulates Afro-American music at its

chorus:

I860

 

 

Early “Negro” Songs

Following comes a brief expatiation upon thirteen early “Negro” songs
which obviously stemmed from folk music. Whether the tunes emanated
from Afro, Anglo or other traditions sometimes lingers unknown. Given
the performance customs of antebellum Southern music, from where the
tunes came, the effect of both
African and Euro-Anglo traditions stands assured. The African heritage
hardly ever looms patent. For many years, the “Old World” ties of Southern
music afforded a fruitful occupation to musicologists. Whether
deliberately, as did George Jackson, or inadvertently, these gentlemen

cleft Ethiopia from the “Old World.” Effecting a counterbalance compels

117

an imaginative leap of faith. This act alone renders the greater tone
repetition in “Zip Coon” than of its supposed ancestor “Rose Tree” the

impression of African music instead of the achievement of the arranger.

“Clare de Kitchen” (Baltimore: George Willig, 1832)

Samuel Foster Damon writes that T.D. Rice picked up a revised version
of the nonsense animal song George Willig Jr. of Baltimore copyrighted in
1832 as a companion piece to “Jim Crow.” Rice or someone else altered
the tune of this later version from the George Willig printing. In Rice’s
rendition also, a few other scenes and animals supplement the blind old
horse of the first edition. “Clare de Kitchen’s” three initial stanzas

epitomize ubiquitous motifs in African American folklore.
I went to de creek I couldn’t git acros,
I’d nobody wid me by an old blind horse;

But old Jim Crow came riding by,
Says be, old fellow your horse will die.

My horse fell down upon de spot,

Says he “dont you see his eyes is sot;”

So I took out my knife and off wid his skin
And when he comes to life I’ll ride him agin

A jay bird sot on a hickory limb,

He wink’d at me and I wink’d at him;

I pick’d up a stone and I hit his shin,

Says be you better not do dat agin.

The first two stanzas supposedly combine two distinct legends; one which
addresses a horse and river and the other which addresses an old horse
bound to die. The horse and river image also appears in several versions

of “Jim Crow,” such as J. Edgar’s 1832 edition. In the annotation of

Talley’s “Crossing the River” which includes it, Wolfe indicates the

118

couplet “I went down to de liver an’ I couldn’ git ‘cross, 80 I give a whole
dollar fer a ole blin’ hoss,” occurs commonly in white and black Southern
traditions. In Talley’s collection, it also appears in “Gray and Black
Horses,” which resembles the ring-garne song “Mary Mack” Harold
Courlander collected in Alabama in 1950. “Old man your horse will die”
appears in Talley under “He Is My Horse.” E.J. Snow from Pine Bluff
Arkansas contributed to Slave Songs the song “Charleston Gals” which
bridges the verses and chorus with “Along come an old man riding by: Old
man, if you don’t mind, your horse will die; If he dies I’ll tan his skin, And
if he lives I’ll ride him agin.” This scene also recurs frequently in black
and white traditions. Nathan, for example, erroneously gives it an English
heritage through W.B. Whall’s Sea Song and Shanties.{215 }

The third verse likely belongs to the “B’Rabbit” species of animal tales.
The Jaybird appears in seven rhymes Talley published. Other appearances
occur in the collections of Scarborough, Newman White, and Ray B. Browne.
Oddly, Wolfe suggests “Br’er Rabbit’s” presence in Talley’s “Jaybird”
implies a literary influence. More plausible is that the J aybird inhabited a
minor role in African American animal stories and songs. Toward the back
of the Talley’s collection, Br’er Rabbit and J aybird have another
conversation in “Speak Softly”—which confers satisfactory confirmation
that the two came from one tradition.{216}

The fourth stanza probably originated in African American tradition,

but little evidence marshals as proof.
A Bull frog dress’d sogers close,
Went in de field to shoot some crows;

De crows smell powder and fly away,
De Bull frog mighty mad dat day.

119

Talley includes a piece which extends this story he titles “Bullfrog Put on
the Soldier’s Clothes.” Jim Crow’s presence betrays the influence of
blackface songs. Whether this extends to the main theme seems hidden.
The “John Crow” song William C. Bryant collected from South Carolina
announces the equation “De red-bird de soger.” This at least establishes
the soldier as a animal persona in African American folklore.{217}

A match for the tune of “Clare de Kitchen” may rest somewhere in
recorded and transcribed collections of African or African American
music. The research for this essay failed to procure one. The known
alteration of the tune shakes out most likelihood of finding a companion to
stand as an antecedent. However, the change creates more latitude for
comparison. Accordingly, it is meet and right to contemplate the affinity
between “My Body Rock ‘Long Fever” and “Clare de Kitchen.”

Moving from a religious to a secular song causes no disquiet, similar that it
posed no problem to Africans and Anglo-Europeans at the South in the evangelical
churches.During the Great Awakenings and after, both Southern traditions converted
many traditional tunes to the service of the Lord. When sung at work or
for recreation, however, secular couplets tended to reappear.

“Clare de Kitchen” cannot be confirmed as an African American folk-
song. Its sheet music form leans heavily upon this tradition for text and
melody. If not an authentic Afro-American song, it at least embodies a

deliberate attempt to replicate its style.

120

(ilartaliezi(itclrarr

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

”If?
TI
'tno
...L
'3'
ill.

1 «it
“all

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

trier dot on for. a rlng, find
dis dosong dot. I. do sing, (I'll Clerc do > kitchen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IIIII Iji; I: I‘:a 2: iii It I' " i 5?

old folks young folks Clerc do kitchen old folks M folks

 

 

 

Old Ulrglng M UN.

My body rock '1ong fever (Slave Song 45)

‘ a n A n A n L A
l

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_-

~12
P
b
1-1
'-
Ir

 

 

 
  

 

  
   
 

 

   
  
 

.-
1-,2-7- .- ”1.?-
--/'---/-

 
  

-— .- n.-
-- -I- -I--I-I-o-I-I
'-|-’-I-'-- - , '
I v ' f r

   

D
I

 

   

 

 

121

“Long Time Ago” (Baltimore: G. Willig, 1833)

Historical folklore attributes “Long Time Ago” to African Americans at
least from the Civil War when William F. Allen wrote, “It is not generally
known that the beautiful air “Long time ago,” or “Near the lake Where
drooped the willow,” was borrowed from the negroes, by whom it was sung
to words beginning, “Way down in Raccoon Hollow.”{218} Unfortunately, this
last song absents itself from print and record.

Dennison puts up a reasonable argument against the authenticity of
“Long Time Ago.” Besides a textual critique, Dennison criticizes several
anomalous features of Damon’s annotation which convey the claim Allen
made in 1867. His case against these declarations of the tune’s African
American pedigree is well taken on the point that accepting the tune’s
alleged pre-sheet music history demands an act of faith. His other
arguments fall flat. For example, a large portion of the tune’s credibility
rests in its distinct call and response pattern. In the context of early
American songs, this pattern is arrestingly singular. Given the
prominence of antiphonal singing in African music, the African slave
context of the song puts reason behind a faith in “Long Time Ago’s”
authenticity. Against this Dennison professes, “The so-called call and
response’ pattern cannot be cited effectually inasmuch as the device is
common to many other types of music closer to Western experience.” Long
before, but especially when Africans became over fifty percent of the
population of South Carolina, at least thirty percent of Virginia’s
population, and even nine percent of the population of New York City, they
became a part of the Western experience, especially the American.{219}

122

Dennison missed Nathan’s better argument against the African
American origin of “Long Time Ago.” The Southern Harmony (1835), he
notes, included an identical tune of the same name with different text. As
George Morris did in 1852, William Walker conceivably adapted Willig’s
sheet music. However, “Long Time Ago” appearing in The Southern
Harmony primarily accents its folk credentials. Of whose culture is
speculative.

The tune of the TD. Rice version of “Long Time Ago” has features
related to African or African American music, but these fail to establish
an alliance. Unlike most folk songs of the white people of America, the
melody of “Long Time Ago” runs linearly, similar to many African songs,
rather than as a wave. Moreover, within the opening single-tone phrase
the notes divide into a rhythm common in the Slave Songs and other

collections of African American songs. .{220}
Rhythmic Enmpla

W

“Turn Sinner, Turn 0,” and “Rain Fall and Wet Becca Lawton” have this

 

feature. British Isles styled songs contain these forms to a degree which
prevents definitely claiming them as marks of African or African
American music.{221} The close of each single tone phrase on a antherrric
refrain, though, pulls close to distinctive African American styles,

exemplified by “Bound to Go.”

123

Long Time Ago Boulrlto Go

 

Long Tire a go

 

Long Tire a l

 

buildrg house to- on rock 0, gas Lordlio

 

Iird no slorr cm 1110' 'el door 0 1,6,

 

Ho‘chon Ierber

“Zip Coon:” as Sung by All The Celebrated Comic Singers (New York:

Atwill’s Music Saloon, 1834).

Atwill’s Music Saloon printed “Zip Coon” arranged for the piano forte.

Damon identifies the figure in the cover illustration as George W. Dixon;

Dixon’s picture in Lawrence Hutton’s “The Negro on the Stage” affirms

Damon’s assertion.{222} Either in the 603 or the 703, the tune reemerged as

“Turkey in the Straw,” according to Nathan by Emmett’s aegis.{223} Nathan

ostensibly errs. Winans found this variant title the most frequently

mentioned instrumental song referred to in the Slave Narratives. Under

this title, “Zip Coon” endures as one of the most popular American

124

melodies.

The tune existed in oral tradition before it became an “Ethiopian” hit.
“Natchez Under the Hill” was its predecessor. Natchez played a key role in
the trade along the Mississippi river. Like most booming riverboat towns
Natchez attracted a wild crowd and acquired a wild atmosphere. T.
Allston Brown depicts the tune originating “from a rough jig dance, called
Natchez Under the Hill,’ where the boatrnen, river pirates, gamblers and
courtesans congregated for the enjoyment of a regular hoe-down, in the
old time.” Whether Brown speaks of a specific locale or metaphorically of
Natchez town lacks convenient documentation. At such wharfside hoe-
downs, African fiddlers probably provided the entertainment.

Alan J abbour claims “Natchez Under the Hill” derives from a popular
Scottish-English song “Rose Tree,” which like “Turkey in the Straw” and
“Natchez” remains current in oral tradition. J abbour’s coupling of
“Natchez” with “Rose Tree” presents a persuasive case. Still, the unlike

tenors of the tunes, especially, leave coincidence an open door.

Rose Tree 0824-1826}

 

125

Natctnz Unler the Hill

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zip Coon

‘

i

 

 

 

 

 

tanned their 0

Zip Coon

O

rm skolar-

 

 

 

%
oon

#7
I

oi. Zip

 

 

 

 

 

E

L

L

 

A
A

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1m skolw

oi. Zip

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a notion

wagon-tn“

Gino. poor-

 

 

 

 

it

 

poor.- to

 

 

 

 

 

stump Don

coong o

tm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

trubbl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

zip or

zip a

Zip Coon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zip a

m
11
JA

-'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A

 

 

 

 

 

‘

 

 

 

dud-5mm xlpo dud-today

Zip a

126

Setting “Rose Tree” as a precedent of “Natchez Under the Hill” embodies
a problem above melody. J abbour’s use of “Rose Tree” took direction from
the work of Samuel Bayard, Cecil Sharp, and Winston Wilkinson. These
three spent an immense effort tracing tunes in America back to the “Old
World.” Despite the tremendous value of their work, its purely Anglo-
European perspective projects a stilted view of America’s musical
tradition. It states, basically, that despite the vigorous participation of
Africans in America’s early secular music they added practically nothing
to it.

The tunes of “Rose Tree,” “Natchez Under the Hill” and “Zip Coon” vary
quite a lot. Part of the difference, indubitably, is the imprint of black
fiddlers. Where in notable melody and rhythm apparently lies beyond knowing; mostly
because, unlike British Isles and European music, the
African music which came to the Americas never went outside of oral
tradition. And here, is the problem of writing about the music of the

United States in the manner of Bayard, Sharp and Wilkinson.

127

“Ole Tare Riven” As sung with tremendous applause at. . .by J .W. Sweeny
(Boston, Henry Prentiss, 1840)

Nathan adds to the facsimile of “Ole Tare River” in Dan Emmett,
without explanation, a chorus which does not appear in the original. His
model may have been the text of “Ole Tare River” in a Negro Extravaganza,
Hard Times (1854). This adjustment italicizes its similarity with “Ole
Tar River” as it exists in African American tradition. Regardless if
“Ethiopians” sang this chorus, Nathan’s assumption that the musical
interludes in the sheet music replace a vocal refrain has justification.

For, like the chorus of “Long Time Ago,” the regular musical breaks in “Ole
Tar River” beget distinctiveness.

In the version collected by Lydia Parrish in the Georgia Sea Islands,
this burden becomes a falsetto whoop, O-ee-ee. Frederick L. Olmsted
labels this “The Carolina Yell” or “Jodeling” in Seaboard Slave States. Its
presence in African American singing embodies a continuation of African
styles. Falsetto refrains, similar to “Ole Tar River” from the Sea Islands
recur in “I”m Gwine Away to Alabamy,” and “0, Rock Me, Julie.” The sheet
music of Sweeny’s rendition suggests be replaced the falsetto chorus with a banjo solo, or
that a long chorus on “oh” or “ah” violated admissible
fashions in printed sheet music.

The melody of Sweeny’s “Ole Tare River” shares a likeness with the Sea
Island’s “Ole Tar River,” “I’m Gwine to Alabamy,” and “0, Rock Me, Julie.”
In different figures, the two opening verse phrases of “Ole Tare River”
parallel the “Ole Tar River” collected by Parrish. The opening tonic of “Ole
Tar River” roughly fits the lower tonic phrase beginning with subaltem 301

in “Ole Tare River.” The sub-mediant (e) and mediant (b) retain the tunes’

128

harmonic congruity into their second motive, or tonal sense. The drop
from 301 to mi before the close of “Ole Tar River’s” first phrase scarcely
resembles the roll between re-do-la-do in “Ole Tare River,” but the change
adds a bit of bite which imparts an analogous feel. While sharing a closer
contour line, the tones of the second phrase harmonize less. Notably, the
opening tonic against a lower mediant (major sixth) and “Ole Tar’ 3”
following la against one or two of “Ole Tare’s” sol disagree. Comparison
of the melodies on the final “ole tar(e) river” exhibits greater concurrence.
Rhythmically they match perfectly; both use the conventional method of
enunciating “river” by shortening the initial stressed syllable.{224} Taking
tonality primarily from mi and subaltem la, on one hand, and 301 and re on
the other, the two differ in melodic flavor, but basically run variations

from the same pentatonic based resolution.

013 Tara River

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

129

“Ole Pee Dee”: Written and composed by J .P. Carter (Boston, Keith’s
Publishing House, 1844)

This song has one of two identities. Carter either rewrote a popular
African American song, changing it considerably, or he applied the title of
a popular African American song to a different tune, presumably to lend
his work an air of authenticity. Two factors argue for the first scenario.
The melody of the traditional dance or ring-play song, “Ole Pee Dee”
sounds very beautiful. It grabbed Fredrika Bremer’s attention in the spring
of 1850 when she heard a man sing it in Columbia, South Carolina. She
wrote, “I would that I could give you an idea, so fresh was the melody, and
so peculiar the key.” The stanza Bremer recalled matches the version of
this song Parrish collected. Most of the difference encompasses the
change of the protagonist’s action from active in Bremer’s to passive in
Julia’s and the abbreviation of the prepositional phrases around /moon and

shine/. Julia’s rhymes: { 225 }

Way down in the Ole Peedee (2X)
Summer night the moon shine bright
Sally you can see

Secondly, Carter sets “Ole Pee Dee” in mixolydian. This modality was
rare. Except for Andrew Law’s “The American Hero,” it never appears in
the fifty tunes of Damon’s Series of Old American Songs. Although Henry
Krehbiel finds the mixolydian mode in less than four percent of half a
thousand Afro-American songs, his figure lacks relevance by virtue of its
dependence upon the several refurbished anthologies put out by Hampton
and Fisk.{226} Something extraordinary prompted Carter to use the
nrixolydian scale. Grafting a new image on a folk song offers a good

source of the use’s cause.

130

Ole Pee Dee (and)

Way Dovn in the Ole Peedee (and)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘n . 2: t. ‘. ‘
r r, E 115$
' V
Crunch nigur a stlaflnm Indiana: in ch
l rkx (4‘! IL‘ I I q
r n 1 I :
L V '1 1 I— r 1]
10mm ital H mm Wheel
L L. 2. . I - .
mm tit-moon shin-bright $117,011 on no.

“Walk Along, John” (Boston: C. H. Keith, 1843)
“Walk Along, John” and “Oh, Come Along John” use motifs and stanzas

common in African American folklore and “Ethiopian” songs. For example,

“Oh Come Along John’s”

Johnny’s cheese was nine years old,
De skippers gittin mighty bold;
A long tail rat in a bucket of souse

J ist come from de white folks house.

reappears in Scarborough as,

NIilk and de veal

Six weeks old,

Mice and skippers
Gettin’ mighty bold!
Long-tailed mouse

Wid a pail of souse,
Skippin’ from de kitchen
To do white folks’ house!

131

Ubiquitous Aunt Dinah, a chunk of ember and a goose, as well as lines from
other “Negro” songs materialize in the two songs. The couplet known best
from “Old Dan Tucker”—”He pair’d his corn wid a rail road wheel, It gib ‘im
de tooth ache in de heel,” shows up in the contemporaneous “Walk Along,
John.”

A song fragment contributed by Dr. W.A. Hammond to the Slave Songs
hints that “Walk Along, John” existed on the plantation before it became a
“Plantation” melody. Hammond only recalled the tune and the refrain of
this com-song Slave Songs titles, “Shock Along, John.” Shock means
shuck, and its refrain matches the “Come along John” formerly “Walk

along, John” of Keith’s printing.

Shock Along John Walk Along John

L
n 1 i

 

 

 

I
l.
E;

L

j

 

I
Shock along John shock along Shock along John

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I L
- Ft}; 1! LIL- i4 2'1
shockalong Conoolong John
Conolong John

“Lubly Fan Will You Cum Out To Night?” Composed by Cool White (Boston,
Keith’s Publishing, 1844).

Damon cites this as the original of the multifarious “Come Out Tonight”
songs rampant in 19th-century song collections, also known in upper
South fiddling as “Round Town Gals.” Jabbour identifies this precursor of

“Buffalo Gals” as an adaptation of “Midnight Serenade” which appears in
132

George P. Knauff’s fourth volume of Virginia Reels (1839). Chris Goertzen

notes the common semantics of “Midnight Serenade” and “dance by de light

ob de moon” imply a joined text and tune existed in Virginia before Cool

White adapted it to the nrinstrel stage. Samuel Bayard, apparently,

establishes the German roots of “Midnight Serenade.” Whether this is true

matters little in light of the absolutely ethnocentric means he used.{227}

Allen points out a corollary of the tune in Slave Songs. He takes it as

evidence of the unauthenticity of “Gwine Follow.” Nothing guided his conclusion other

than the tune’s wide familiarity.

Gwine to Follov (sworn part)

 

 

 

 

 

“De Boatman’s Dancez” An original Banjo melody by Old Dan D. Emrnit;
Leader of the Virginia Minstrels (Boston, C.H. Keith, 1843).

Knauffs fourth volume of Virginia Reels also contains “Ohio River”
which shares a tune with the “Boatman’s Dance” the Virginia Minstrels
popularized. { 228} Nathan uncovered an antecedent of the song’s chorus in
W.P. Strickland’s The Pioneers of the West. Strickland, who travelled
through the West in the 203 and 303, recalled hearing boatrnen on the Ohio

river sing,

Dance, boatmen, dance

Dance, dance away

Dance all night till broad day light

And go home with the gals in the morning

“De Boatman’s Dance” differs only by substituting the second line with a

133

De Boatman's Dance

trier

i $ :h a I\ h

{I—
«7
117
I?
.7

.l.l
i

 

HHHH

Hiw, roe, de boateen roe,

 

 

 

 

 

 

23H»
srn

 

 

 

 

 

 

'7 I l
floatin down do river de Ohio do
‘ ‘h' ‘h' k l ‘b 5" 32%
v - - J‘Iqhy I ~ I
boateen darce, de boateen sing, de

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1H-
“:7
7
‘
U27
7
r
.7
7'
r

boot-en up to ebrg ting, Eh Ihen do boat-en

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Em

'5
H:

‘5
":7
151:

urnh

I':
7

r

gets on shore, he spends his cash on corks for eore, Den

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘f‘

:2.

I

.1

nhhn

e If"
Iii,

dmcede boateen dmceO dance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

r . Is It
I. 1' 1‘1 1 I} r“ J L 4‘ t“
I iii-I 1 J 12.1.;
dance, 0 dance all nidrt till brood dag ligtt, m 90

 

 

 

 

 

'2:-
g

hoee old do gals in do earning

134

repetition of the first.

Both other melodic phrases descend. Folk melodies, especially Native
American and African, typically follow these contours. In older times,
musicologists typed it a “primitive” style, appearing as it does most often
in tribal or ancient folk melodies. Its appearance in “De Boatman’s Dance”

provides evidence for the tune’s folk origin.

“Whar Did You Come From?” as Sung with great Applause at the Broadway
Circus by Mr. J .W. Sweeny. (New York: Firth & Hall, 1840) r

This sheet music version bearing Sweeny’s name runs a close race with
“Where Did You Come From” published in Virginia Reels. “Whar Did You
Come From” also witnesses the fight between an alligator and a
“Rangaroo.” Its other stanzas have the same cast as the “Jim Crow” texts.
This style, in which a persona engages a series of non-sequitur scenarios,
contrasts with the “higher” style in which the action occurs in the third

person, such as “Uncle Ned.” Emmett’s work exemplifies the synthesis of
these two genres of narrative.

Sweeny’s habitual use of traditional material partially assuages the
apprehension made by the near publication dates. Although the appearance
of “Where Did You Come From” in Virginia Reels, and even its other life as
“Black-eyed Daisy, Susie” &c., keeps the tune’s cultural background a
secret, its presence here at least confers that African fiddlers at the
South played the tune. Robert Winans’ survey of ex-Slave Narratives
turned up “Black Eyed Susan” as representative of those songs mentioned

once. { 229 }

135

Whar Did You Come From?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 K L F—g F1
1 13 r “ n L 3 fl
- I é W ;
I~_____,/
Soee folks eat dot a nigger eont. steal
: d 3 fig:
But. i catch one corn field
3 I“ 312:1:in
a _. H -
ask hie bout. dot corn an he call ee a liar so I
m
- - I I A k k. . RH 2L . 1'“
% l i
up aid my foot. and I kick hie in de fire 0

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

uhrr did you cone fro. knock a nigger dam.

“J uba”

In Dan Emmett Nathan gives a text of “Juba” from White’s New
Illustrated Melodeon Song Book of 1848. White’s version, presumably,
represents the earliest printing of this classic “Negro” and African
American song. Within the “Negro” genre, he found no published melody.
Gauging from “Juba” given by W.C. Handy and Scarborough compared against
Phil. Rice’s banjo version, he posits all three genres, the folk, the banjo,
and the minstrel, used the same tune.

While “patting Juba,” folks sang the song “Juba”—”Juba dis, Juba dat”—

which accompanied a Juba dance. Marian Winter calls Juba (simplified

136

from giouba) an African step dance.{230} The rhythmic “patting Juba” made
the pith of the performance. Epstein, and others, suggest the practice
marks an accommodation to the prohibition of drums in the United
States.{231} Juba, however, attaches to divers things, giving it a status
akin to “High John de Conqueror” in Afro-American folklore. Scarborough
indicates African Americans associated Juba with “an old African ghost.”
In Jamaica, the J uba-bush (Rivina humilis L.) provides a remedy for bowel
discomfort and women’s pain after child-birth; Myal-song leader, William
Forbes calls it a “number one medicine,——-what it can’t cure are hard.”{232}
Epstein locates the first reference to patting J uba in the United States
in the self-published narrative of an ex-slave, Henry Bibb, born in Shelby
Kentucky in 1815. By January 1833, just the word Juba appears in T.D.
Rice’s Long Island J uba, or Love by the Bushel. However, William Smith’s
account of “J uba” in “The Persimmon Tree and Beer Dance” includes
phrases then known in “Ethiopian” dances, and around New York at the
beginning of the century. “Hoe corn, hill tobacco, Get over double trouble,
Juber boys, Juber,” minus “Juber”, materialize in a description of a “long
Island negro” in Washington Irving’s Salamgundi (1807). An 1832
Philadelphia edition of “James Crow” mentions “Hop ober dubble trubble
Jump Jim Crow.” And, James S. French’s Sketches and Eccentricities of
Col. Crockett of West Tennessee (1833) depicts a black banjoist adjuring
the dancers “Now, weed kom, kiver taters, an’ double shuffle.”{233} In the
centers of “Ethiopian Opera,” New York and Philadelphia, the separate
terms “Juba” and “double trouble et. a1.” exist in the theater and circus by
1830. Eighteen thirty-seven, or earlier marks a likely date that the song
“J uba” became established in blackface acts.

The tune Scarborough reprints comes from Dr. John A. Wyeth. He claims
137

it an African melody. Two reasons support his contention. The Juba dance
has a verified African analogue. An African origin of its attendant air
seems as likely. Moreover, the production of a melody with only a few
tones, sometimes scarcely dulcet, takes after African traditions much

more than British Isles or European.

Wyeth provides Scarborough with another jig, “Ole Aunt Kate,” he calls
an elaboration of “Juba.” This song’s textual ties with the Juba verses in
White’s Melodeon provides further illustration of how “juba” sounded on
the antebellum stage. Wyeth’s “Ole Aunt Kate” includes these common
Afro-American folk rhymes,

Ole Aunt Kate she bake de cake

She bake hit ‘hine de garden gate;

She sift de meal, she gimme de dust,
She bake de bread, she gimme de crust,

She eat de meat, she gimme de skin,
An’ dat’s de way she tuck me in.{234}

which resembles White’s,

Make de fire most too hot,

Fotch along de waterin’ pot,

Bake de bread, gib me de crust,

Shock de corn gib me de husk,

Bile de beef, gib me de bone,

Gib me a kick and send me home,
Peel de tater, gib me de skin,

And dats de way she suck me in.{235}

138

Juba (m. we. Handy) Juba (trans. Dr. Wyeth) Aunt Kate (trans. Dr. Wyeth)

 
  
  

 

  
   

     
  

 

 

 

 

I l
e— —e—-_e— I I m fl

r-e—'— —r-e-e—11 I m
r ' ' r—: I I J

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A J r I L r I r . A A I
I r l I u
I I II
V I 11 II I r I I u 1 f v
' ' d,

 

‘-
III
1
I
I

 

 

A A K I J a K I

L n n n 4 n n 41 4x I I
II II I n I IL [I I .I
‘l’ A; i u I .I' .I' H I v
v v ' '

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

f ‘1’ IT 'Ill 5'
sift de eeal, she gieee de dust she, bake de bread, she

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

gieee de crust, She eat. de neat, she gleee de skin M',

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘ K A A I "
II n ‘ l I L ‘ A [I
4'
' W
' ' 4'

dat's de eag she tuck no in.

139

“Peter Story” (Philadelphia, 1854) and “Peter Story Jig” (Emmett
Manuscript)

“Peter Story” furnishes evidence that minstrels emulated the
celebrated style of black fiddlers which Talley describes in “A Study of
Negro Folk Rhymes.” Like the Sukey breakdown jigs and reels, “Peter
Story” follows the first line of each stanza with a banjo solo. After four
more lines, a line of rhyme ends on a solo. Each stanza and the tune also

closes in instrumental in the style of the old-time songs.

Do little Liz (banjo solo)

De cold chills run down de back ob de chair,

Do little Lizzy do.

Slap on de linsy-woolsy,

De colored gemmen ob de town am gettin’ berry tickelar about you.
Look out for little Lizzy (banjo solo)

By-an-by she like her missy, (banjo solo)

Dat’s all so come an’ kiss me. (banjo solo)

The character of “little Lizzy” implies “Peter Story” borrowed from
“Liza Jane.” At least textually this seems the case. Although the tune of
“Peter Story” is not extant, Nathan found “Peter Story J ig” in Emmett’s
manuscripts. The jig gives a rough estimate of the banjo interludes. The
tune’s second part also invokes “Liza Jane.” Truthfully, this resemblance

only extends to a basic kinship of melodic texture. Yet, Nathan labels

“Peter Story Jig” a banjo tune. If this tune was the banjo part of an

ensemble performance, its second part definitely seems fitting for “Liza
Jane.”

140

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i - L I'M I k 49
I i mtg—H { 11 L w
I I ' I 1
O, E liza! Li'l Liza date! 0, E- Iizo Li'l Li'zo
Jane!

“Old Aunt Sally” Composed by Old Dan D. Emmit (Boston: C.H. Keith, 1843)
Emmett’s “Ra re ri ro round de corner Sally” at the close of the chorus

fairly establishes he patterned his song from “Round the Corn Sally.” The

apparent prevalence of “Round the Corn Sally” places it as a good model for

Emmett’s song. In The Old Plantation &c., James Hungerford claims he

heard it in a Maryland plantation in 1832. Allen includes a similar song in

Slave Songs which he collected in Virginia. He types it as a song mixed of

barbaric and other passages. Barbaric, to Allen, usually indicated

conjunct

minor melodies, or minor melodies with little pitch variation.

A match of imitation to model looks like this:

141

Aunt Sally and Round the Corn Sally
aunt Sal lg Roma the Com

    
    

amt Sallg

 

142

Stephen Foster

Stephen Foster’s “Plantation Melodies” exemplifies the cross
borrowing between African American culture and blackface minstrelsy.
Winan’s survey of instrumental music in the Slave Narratives turned up
“Swanee River” as one of the more frequently recalled instrumental songs.
Slaves on the Underground Railroad learned a rendition of Foster’s “Oh,
Susannah,” titled “I’m On My Way to Canada,” which, Phillip Foner writes,
“a whole party of fugitives” sang “as they followed their conductor north. .
.” Abolitionists also reworked Foster’s “Uncle Ned” into a ballad for Henry
Box Brown.{236}

“Uncle Ned” later became a staple in Afro-American folk song. A
version appears in Talley as well as the collections of White and Brown;
Elsie Crew Parsons’ variant in Folk-Lore of the Sea Islands, South Carolina
illustrates the ineluctable buoyancy African Americans worked into old
minstrel songs. Besides reworking the “So hang up the fiddle and the bow”
into a distinctive African melodic phrase, the song slurs together Ned’s
lack of “wool” and teeth, and then, later, says also his wife “have’n’ got
ha’r by de top of de skull,”{237}

A lively apocryphal canon attributes Foster’s work with a foundation in
Afro-American music. In Souls of Black Folk W.E.B. DuBois states the
belief that Foster based “Old Folks at Home” and “Old Black Joe” on black
airs. On the printed page, C. Coons, Edward Lueders, and N. Clifford Page
also contend Afro-American song, especially spirituals, shaped Foster’s
work. Even less hesitant beliefs putatively abide in oral tradition.

Emblematic of Americans’ sentiment is Pittsburgh’s bronze statue in

143

Foster’s honor which depicts an African banjo player seated beside his
feet.

Although Foster had little contact with the South during his short life,
his contact with Afro-American music reached deep. Foster only made
two trips to the South; in his youth he travelled to Louisville and Augusta.
As an adult, he took a trip to New Orleans, although a brief one. When he
lived in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, the packet crews of the Ohio River
brought Southern Afro-American music within earshot. Foster came in
contact with these songs through other sources in both areas. His family
employed a “bound boy” Thomas Hunter, and a “bound girl” Olivia Pise.
Olivia, called Lieve, introduced Stephen to religious shout songs. These so
impressed him that he pressed Lieve to take him to her Southern style
African church.

In addition to the transient roustabouts, Cincinnati held a growing
African population in the last decades before the war. Between 1830-
1850, the African population of both Cincinnati and Ohio increased an
average of little better than three percent a year. For example, the
population of Cincinnati swelled from 690 in 1826, despite the riots of
1829, to 2,255 in 1840, and increased to 3,237 in 1850. Even through the
18703, this community retained the culture of the plantation. In the
“ball-rooms” of Sausage Row and Bucktown, free Africans and freedmen
danced “the old slave dances” to a fiddle, banjo, and string-bass.{238}

Given Foster’s good grounding in its traditions, disappointingly few of
his tunes disclose adaptations of African American music. Doubtless,
more exists than this survey found. The course of the search partially
explains its failure. It used the tenable assumption that Foster borrowed

early during his career before expertise and confidence allowed him to pen

144

“Southern Melodies” off the cuff. It also took direction from textual and
melodic clues suggestive of authenticity. Using these, the search

basically encompassed only a handful of likely tunes; a task of some hours
itself. With a little more time and planning, proceeding by computer
offers to produce more fruitful results.

Foster’s “Gwine to Run All Night” is the big find. Its identification as a
borrowed song reinforces the search’s assumptions. Published in 1850, it
stands within the first flurry of Foster’s “Plantation Melodies;” yet,
neither has it first place in the long index of Foster’s compositions.

Unlike much of Foster’s work, it uses a solo/chorus structure similar to

Dan Emmett’s emulation of Afro-American music. It is one of Foster’s few
truly pentatonic tunes. Foster makes staggering use of this scale in the
mi-re of the chorus. Firmly supported in sol’s register, these notes

capture a perfect tension struck between sol and do. In the long chorus,
Foster twines another piece into the song’s balance. The chorus, “Gwine to
run all night” rises from do to its octave. From this phrase, Foster

repeats the melody of the verse, here, tapering it down to do.

Foster rolls two African American songs into “Gwine to Run All Night.”
The initial section takes after a family of com-shucking and ring game
songs epitomized by “Round the Corn Sally,” and “Liza Jane.” None of the
many folk-song variants match the line of “Camptown ladies sing this
song” exactly, but the affinity rests beyond question. “Liza Jane,”
collected by Natalie Curtis Burlin, particularly, easily confuses with “De
Camptown Races.” Foster’s differs from the other tunes mostly by basing
mi as the strain’s main pull. “Liza Jane,” by contrast, spreads this out
between mi, do and sol. “Gwine to Run All Night” also most closely

resembles“Liza Jane” in rhythmic structure. In many Afro-American songs, African
145

sensibility bends the lyric into odd cadences. This includes the
application of African meter, or the disregard of meter for tone, and the
subjugation of text to rhythmic sense. In contrast, both “Gwine to Run All
Night” and “Liza Jane” run on straight eighth notes through the main phrase
except where the text demands a different rhythm.
Krehbiel points out the similarity between “Camptown Races” and “O,

Lord Remember Me,” in Slave Songs, in the second chapter of his study.
Krehbiel suspects Afro-Americans borrowed the melody from Foster,
citing the myriad snatches of other traditions in Afro-American religious
songs as evidence. Charles Edward’s collection of songs from the Bahamas
refutes his doubt. These songs roughly reflect the condition of Afro-
American religious song at the close of the 18th-century.{239} Although
substantially different from American versions, the chorus of “Lawd,
Remember Me” uses the suspect melodic passage as one of its phrases.{240}

The likeness Krehbiel notes extends to the fifth bar of the refrain of
“O, Lord Remember Me.” The accuracy of Foster’s transposition evokes a
hunch he used a written copy of the spiritual. The two airs match note for
note, tone and rhythm, for two lines, save where Foster reverses the tones
on "run all" the second time.

The "bob tail nag" clising refrain embodies an illuminating instance.
Here, Foster injects into an AFro-American spiritual a popular corn shucking or ring
game regrain. By splicing so, he produces a synthetic Afro-American song, publishes as
a "Southern Melody," and adopted by folk tradition. Returned to the "folk," it joined
Anglo-European and African tradition; thus, this confection became an agent within its
native culture. "Gwine to Run All Night," illustrates Charles Seeger's maxim that plagia-
rism is basic to all culture, but, moreover, what a snarl of fiction, folk and fusion
everythin in "Negro" minstrelsy is.

146

Camptovn Rams and Liza Jane Rhythmic variations of Camptovn Rates am Liza Jane

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IL! I lL‘ IL‘ L ILX 1 IL\ I I l I
I 1 L41 ’1' IL I II I
i 35%; g iii-T; ; 1 EH
De Captoen ladies sing Js song

 

Cane, no love, an 90 Illd lee l

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

l...

'l
~1an
..fl.

 

 

 

IL, L L
fl} I}: I “J '.
‘ i "r 4 -l'
COD.

dom duh aid as; hat cJCcd in

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

  
 
 

 

   

 

 

 

I got ahouse in Baltieo',
Gwine to Run All Night Lord, Remember Me (Slave Songs 15) Lavd, Remember Me
42'
Y
Seine to rm all nlwt! Gwine to run all do,”
§:=:;:==l-;i--i 44¥4147 if It if I 444?

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ill.
. 5'
F
:17
hF-H
4-~
'1
"
q
)1
I-l-
1

l
Lord, reeeeber me, 00, Lord reeeeber ee;

 

Do, Laud, reeeeber no Do, Laed, nee-her me!

147

"Way Down in Ca-i-ro" gives an even better illustration of the mess. "Way Down in
Ca-i-ro" attracts attention to itself with its ominous chorus, "I hear by true lub weep, I
hear my true lub sigh, 'Way down in Ca—i-ro dis niggar's guine to die." It counts as one of
Foster's mildly anti-slavery songs like "Long Ago Day" which T.D. Rice bought but set
asidein deference to Southern audiences. Its fourth verse appears frequently in AFro-

American folklore:

Massa bought a bran new coat and hung it on de wall,
Dis nigga's guine to take dat coat, and wear it to de ball.{241}

A variant of this accompanied by "Ca-i-ro's" chorus Lt.-Col. Trowbridge collected in
Georgia for the Slave Songs. With this, a folk precedent for Foster's tune seems likely.
Textual and melodic issues trouble the notion. The melodies of "Way Down in Ca-i-ro"
and "Away Down in Sunbury" deviate entirely. Farkas ranks the chorus of "Sunbury"
traditional, but its verse suspect because of an unusual rise of an minor sixth in the first
bar; he suggests these two pieces came together from separate histories.

If a separate, possibly borrowed tune, the verse of “Away Down in
Sunbury” certainly has no debt to Foster’s “Away Down in Ca-i-ro.”

Foster’s, indeed, looks much more like what one might call a folk melody.
On the whole, though, looking for a composed antecedent of “Sunbury’s”
verse follows a wrong direction. The suspect interval of a sixth occurs in
eleven, or eight percent, of the one hundred thirty—six Slave Songs. These
happen in several fashions, of which some parallel the incongruous minor
sixth of “Sunbury.” Yet, although Farkas errs in his classification, he is
right that the two parts noticeably differ in mood and style. And, he is
almost certainly right that the pieces came together from separate pasts.
What route they took to their meeting makes just one more confusing part
of the “Ca-i-ro” mystery.

148

The evidence which tilts authorship toward Foster appears in On the

Trail. It includes “Karo Song” which Scarborough describes as a local song

named for Cuero, Texas. She errs. “Karo’s” life in Upper Southern fiddling

tradition questions its origin in Texas. The shared chorus of “Ca-i-ro,”

“Sunbury” and “Karo Song” refutes it. Scarborough’s version essentially

repeats “Ca-i-ro’s” chorus with the “live and die” also in “Sunbury.” This reveals "Karo"
as a perversion of "Cairo" and places "Away Down in Sunbury" as a derivative of

Foster's song.

Way Dovn in Cairo Stephen C. Foster Firth, Ford, 8: Co. 1850

 

Hassa brought a bran new coat md

 

hung it on de call his nigga's gwine to take dat coat, md

 

wear it to de ball. I bed“ so true lib eeep

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hear e9 true Iub sign 'Uagdoen in Cairo dis
nigga‘s geine to die.

149

Away Down in Sunbury Slave Song 121

 

O mssatakedat netbrancoatllnd hangitonde wall
vat darkeetakedat aameoleaoathnd wear‘emtode ball 0

 

don't: you hear my true lub sing? 0 don't you hear 'em sign? A- way down in

 

sunbury I'm band to live and die.

150

Dan Emmett

More than anything else, Emmett’s work establishes that an ethic of
adaptation from folk sources rather than originality dominated “Ethiopian”
minstrelsy. In consequence of the immutable source impasse, definite
judgments evade invention. It rests clear, yet, that despite a
demonstrated ability to compose rhymes Emmett scarcely wrote an
original lyric in his life. He borrowed from African American folklore
often. A fairly dramatic occurrence in prose appears in “Bressed Am Dem
Dat ‘Spects Nuttin’, Kaze Dey Aint A Gwine to Git Nuttin’ !” which the
Clipper published in 1873. Emmett puts in his sermon several traditional
African American religious stories. At one point he repeats a fairly
elusive tidbit of anti-white Christianity:

“Hearr yea! hearr yea! de white man’s a buck goat; de niggar am he sheep!
kase de whites had straight harr an’ de niggars wearr wool! de wharfoa
culled man call ‘im a ram. Hallyooyer to sheep, an’ free cheers for de
wool!”{242}

In addition to most references of “boss’s” “jaybirds” “pigeon wings” or
“whooping cough,” other images and phrases rooted in African American
folklore crop up in Emmett’s work. “Oh, Ladies All!” epitomizes Emmett’s
artistic relationship with African American music while concomitantly
attesting his artistic genius. The title was a well-known ejaculation at
breakdowns. In the tune, Emmett sets it in an arpeggio along a triad
topped by the tonic octave before closing with a camp dissonant phrase.
The couplets which give rise to its first verse customarily appear with

“Liza Jane.”

I got a house in Baltimo’
Streetcar runs right by ma do,’
I got a house in Baltimo’

151

Brussels carpit on de flo’,
which, in proper rhythm, Emmett reworks into,

I went from here to Baltimore

De long tail blue an coat what I had on,

I lay my head agin de door,

My heel work a hole right thro’ de carpet.{243}

At least back to Winters, scholars recognize Emmett made an effort to
recreate African American music and dance. She proposes Emmett, “made
a particular effort to keep Negro elements in his work, especially in the
walk-around’ finales for which he was noted.” Emmett, himself, drew
attention to this effort. In the introduction of a “Complete sett of Walk

‘Rounds” left in manuscript he wrote,

In the composition of a ‘Walk ‘Round (by this I mean the style of music and
character of the words), I have always strictly confined myself to the
habit and crude ideas of the slaves of the South.

Nathan amasses an decent amount of material which verifies Emmett
lifted tunes and lyrics from African American tradition. In closing
remarks, after labelling him a folk artist, Nathan intensely apprehends
his, and perhaps the whole of “Ethiopian” minstrelsy’s, relation to Afro-
American culture. “There was,” Nathan says, “a naive, sinewy quality in
what he did, and be preserved it as long as popular demand encouraged
him.” Emmett’s personal relationship with this culture betokens
something of a mystery; at least, he picked up its influence during his
jaunts in the South, in his life in New York, maybe Chicago, and possibly
from Ben and Lou Snowden back home in Mt. Vernon. Variations of black
music, dance, and lore translated into his early and late work. Yet, he

mispoke his custom of composing ‘Walk ‘Rounds; he did not strictly confine

152

himself to the habits and ideas of slaves. Knowing Emmett’s intention,
though, throws his work in vivid portraiture.

“De Boatman’s Dance,” “Old Aunt Sally” and “Hop Light Loo” Emmett
borrowed from secular traditions. Even before he began his Walk ‘Rounds,
which loosely enacted the “shout,” he also recycled
African American religious music. The title and refrain of “Jordan Is a
Hard Road to Travel” (1853) betrays its debt to Afro-American hymns.
Nathan claims the main motive of its first section and the refrain of
“Jordan” take after “early Negro spirituals.”

Strangely, the famous “Roll, Jordan, Roll” resembles Emmett’s song
much more. Strange, in regards to Allen’s silence on this affinity in Slave
Songs. Before the Civil War, “Jordan” became enormously popular, both in
minstrel shows, and as one of the Hutchinson’s popular anti-slavery songs.
If, in performance, “Roll, Jordan, Roll” sounded like “Jordan,” Allen
assuredly knew the latter song well enough to recognize the resemblance.

Albeit, the unmistakable tonal and harmonic congruence among the two
strongly implies Emmett arrogated a well known African American hymn.
The tunes correspond loosely, rhythmically and melodically. through the
first phrase. Despite the disparity, the two stay in touch harmonically.
Moreover, the difference between them may spread no farther than the
variation in “Roll, Jordan, Roll” from plantation to plantation.{244} “Jordan”
furnishes another example of the extension and duplication of melodic
passages in “Negro” songs to fit the composer’s text; this feature further sets the tunes
apart.

Emmett’s chorus of “Jordan” indubitably takes after “Roll, Jordan, Roll,”
yet it lacks some of the latter’s best features. “Sleeves” in “Jordan”

roughly corresponds with the first “march” of the folk song. The
153

 

I just irriued in toen For to pass de tiee a-

 

eagfhd I settled all my bisness ac- cordin

 

But I found it so cold lihen I went up de

 

street Oat I wish'd I eas on de oder side ob

 

Jordon So take of f gow coat bogs, Pnd

 

roll to you“ sleeves, For Jordan is a

 

hard road to trabel So take of 1' your

 

coat bogs and roll up yaw sleeves, For

 

Jordm is a had road to trcbel I be- Iieve
154

 

l‘lg brudder sittin' on de tree of

 

gearde when Jordan roll Roll, Jordm

 

Roll, Jordm roll! 0 lurch de mgel

 

arch de mgelearch; 0 my narcch; 0 lug soul

life, in he

Boll, Jordan

arise

 

Heaven Lord, For to gerrde when Jordan

Recurrent Phrase of "Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel"

 

155

roll.

Emrpts of ”Jordan is. . and "0 Daniel" 8111 'Good-Bye' (Slave Songs 114 8c 70)
* Ml

 

 

156

“trimmings” he adds to “roll” and the reversal of the sol and la, as it
occurs in “Roll, Jordan,” produces a moment much less regal than its
analogue. The penultimate phrase of “Jordan” begins after a two and a half
beat rest; this contrasts the distinctively African American syncopated
jump into the close of “Roll, Jordan.” Ostensibly, in later compositions, he
began to emulate this feature also; he uses it in “Dixie” on “Look Away.”

“Dixie” emulates Afro-American music beyond this, if in nothing else
but its antiphony. In Mt. Vernon, three miles north of Emmett’s grave,
with its marker commemorating “Dixie’s” composer, sits another grave
marker in an obscure graveyard along an old clapboard church. Here, on the
common grave marker of Ben and Lou Snowden, two members of one of the
first African American families in Knox County, is carved “They taught
Dixie’ to Dan Emmett.” The Snowden family made a living playing music
for over thirty years. Their band, reduced by 1860 to Ellen Snowden and
seven children, had a name from Missouri to Maryland as a matchless
evening’s entertainment. { 245} Their handbill from these years advertise
performances on “violin, triangular, and dulcimer, with castinet
accompaniments!” The youngest boy, Lewis, played the banjo. By 1910,
rumors flourished in the black community that Emmett learned either the
words, or both the tune and the words from the Snowdens. This dying
legend lacks supporting documentary evidence. It gives food for thought,
though; especially in consideration that, excepting two published personal
recollections, the Louisville legend of “Jim Crow” which appears in
countless books and articles essentially is the same color horse.

Legends of “Dixie’s” black roots abound beyond Mt. Vernon. Such tales
frequently emanated from the South during the late l9th-century.{246} In

Dan Emmett, Nathan respectably organizes the mess of “Dixie’s” musical

157

ancestry. He locates two antecedents of its melody which Emmett

possibly picked up from Afro-Americans. The opening of Emmett’s “De
Wild Goose-Nation” (1844) coincides with the initial phrase of “Dixie.”
Nathan links this tune to an earlier “Negro” song, “Gumbo Chaff” which he
avers derives from the English song “Bow Wow Wow.” Nathan’s match of
“Gumbo Chaff” to “Bow Wow Wow” comprises one of his best examples.
Despite this, it remains possible the melody entered the “Ethiopian”

tradition through an African American folk song.

158

Bov Woe Wov

 

159

Gumbo Clnff

 

160

Give Up the World (Slave Song 37)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

161

A Southern song writer, William S. Hays, who put his name on “Dixie”
later claimed the air came from an old Afro-American tune. He referred
to an English theater song popular in America with two texts. Both

circulated in black and white folk tradition during the 30s and 40s.

ll 1 Had a Donkey I Wish I Was in Dude's Land

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Dixie” also draws textually from Afro-American folksong. Nathan
traces “Away down souf whar I was born” to the song “Picayune Butler”
(1847) which insinuates the line comes from Picayune Butler. Unlike his
previous pro-slavery Walk ‘Rounds, “J onny Roach” and “I Ain’t Got Time to
Tarry, in “Dixie’s Land” Emmett moves into a story of “old missus” after
the introductory paean to Southern life. Emmett enthusiastically marries
“missus” to Will de Weaber; the ensuing story develops from this event.
Emmett’s practice of adapting folk materials conceivably inspired the
erratic tale of Will and missus. A verse in Allen’s version of “Round the

Corn Sally” appears related to Will de Weaber:

I can bank, ‘ginny bank, ‘ginny bank the weaver.

Antiphony inflected by the repetition of short word and melodic
phrases placed Emmett’s work much closer to African American music
than most current minstrel fare. Nathan detects that the Walk ‘Rounds

favor the interval of a descending or ascending minor third set within a

162

pentatonic form, while operating formally within a hepatonic tonality in
the manner of its African American models. {247}

The resemblance of Emmett’s work to black religious songs struck the
attention of contemporaries. The Clipper’s report on an African church
service in late 1861 opined one of the hymns resembled “Old K.Y., Ky.”
Nathan tosses out “O’er the Crossing” as a likely prospect of the identity
of this hymn. Unlike several of Nathan’s examples, the two tunes only
roughly concur. Besides the disparities in rhythm and intervals, the two
tunes sit altogether unalike in their scales. In Dan Emmett, Nathan
rnislabels the key signature to which he transposes “O’er the Crossing,”
but this merely alters its coordinating tones (b and d) from sol/ti to
do/rni.{248}

On the subsequent two pages, he gives analogues in Afro-American
music to five other Emmett Walk ‘Rounds. Two of his examples he labels
white hymns, but these concomitantly abide in Afro-American
tradition.{249} In the case of “Old Ship of Zion” against “Sandy Gibson’s,” the
African American version collected in Maryland by Dr. Hammond, called the
“North Carolina” version by Jackson, approximates the Walk ‘Round closer
than other regular Protestant versions. { 250} “Road to Richmond” and “I’m
Going Home to Dixie” against “The Lonesome Valley” shows the best fit.
Nathan emphasizes that the short-long note closing pattern found in “I’m
Going Home,” and its analogue “The Lonesome Valley,” carries a distinctive
mark of Afro-American tradition. This instance of melodic consanguinity

implies Emmett found a useful strain in his travels.{251}

163

Old KY, Ky

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lay This Body Dovn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old Ship of Zion

  

 

 

 

V-I-I_I--—-—

 

 

 

 

164

Tm Lomsome Valley What 0' Dat

 

%

Road to Richmond I'm Going Home to Dixie

 

@

Black Brigade

 

 

 

 

 

I'm in Trouble

 

165

“Road to Richmond” takes after folk songs in other aspects. Surmising
the tune’s key induces anxiety attacks. Marked as A major, its resolution
and accidentals shade it toward B major with a flatted sixth. Its sharp a’s
and d’s (properly do and fa) perhaps derives from military fife music.
Nathan finds “Richmond’s” phrase “ten to on, nebber done, jis begun”
analogous to passages in Nos. 72 and 73 of Emmett’s Fife Instructor.{252}
With “Labor nebber done,” these phrases embrace all the tune’s
accidentals.

These tonal ambiguities and modulations lay more consonantwith
traditional music than with popular comic or art music. However, in the
same year Emmett published “Road to Richmond” (1864) he also came out
with “Jack on de Green.” This song continued Emmett’s experiment with
the Slave Songs.{255}

The prior existence of the “Old Horse” story both in blackface songs and
African American culture questions whether Emmett took the chorus
directly from a folk song. The fuller elaboration of this story in “Billy
Patterson” (1860) than in early “Negro” songs, though, indicates a new
contact with folklore. Unless “Charleston Galls” (1844) uses this
melodic/textual phrase, “Charleston Gals” carries precedence over “Billy
Patterson” in regards to the close dates of publication.

At best, the melodies match roughly; owning different tenors, and
agreeing fully only in harmonic sense. “Billy Patterson” unwinds very neat
and evenly with a martial sound. “Charleston Gals” carries the laziness
and stirring beauty of a folk song. Especially, rhythmically the two

deviate. “Charleston Gals” demonstrates the traditional pattern of

Rhythmic Example

dividing four notes as this: W:

 

 

166

Charleston Gals Billy Patterson

 

Fl long coee at old son riding by; Old

 

em f you don't mind your horse eill die If he dies I'll

 

tan his skin, Find if he lives I’ll ride hie again.

 

Bill Patterson rode bye Old

 

Bill 90w horse ell ie, “He dies I'll tm his

 

skin; He lives I'll rdea- gin!‘

167

This works within a context of subordination of the English text to an
alien rhythmic sense. By contrast, “Billy Patterson” fits its melodic
rhythm to the conventions of spoken English.
Assuming Emmett took “Charleston Gals” as a pattern for his chorus, he

transfigured the most ostentatious motive of its melody into a facsimile
of its whole. Varying this phrase, he followed the basic contour of the
original—resolving low, resolving high. His touch abbreviated and
regularly ordered the original tune and accentuated its brightness.

“Loozyanna Low Grounds” perhaps embodies the pinnacle of “Ethiopian”
music. It is a salad of folk and theatric material. Martial patriotism
raised in the paeans to Andrew Jackson and Winifield Scott invokes the
best American style. If nowhere else, its title has a precedent in the
variants of “The Golden Vanity.” Emmett’s statement of the popular image
in, “W har de cane brakes grow and de cotton blossom,” compares with
“Whar de corn-top blossom and de canebrake grow” in Foster’s “Away Down
Souf.” The chorus “Ah, ah my love I’m gwine away” on a straight melodic
descent comes from African American music. And, the tune’s flatted
seventh further accents its reliance upon this tradition.{256}

Emmett was, as Nathan describes, a folk artist. He took the poetry of
the folk, particularly of blacks, for his muse. In this, he stood with the
bulk of the “Ethiopian” performer/songwriters. William Clifton or G.W.H.
Griffith or other “poetasters,” of course, put a significant accent on the
music. But, their work stood far and away from the heart and soul of
“Negro” minstrelsy.

By adapting folk material Emmett, Sweeny, Whitlock, Rice, & Co.

worked within the most common approach to music. Traditional music

considers making up things bad form. When Chuck Berry came to Chess
168

Loozyanna Lovgrounds (manuscript 1859)

 

Dir is a place ca I'd Loozymn I-‘h,
niggas fat at

 

(11, at; I , l'e geine Dat 'zactlu suits
lnde Loozuana

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rnn ehar cme brdtes groe md de
raccoons hoel at de

 

 

cotton blossoe Rnn Loozy an, I
roar ob de posse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

eish I was doen dar now; an, Loozg
é mna Ioe wounds Vloe.

169

 

Records in 1954, to record “Mabelline” as a variant of “Ida Red” he brought
a similar attitude. In Steamboatin’ Days, Mary Wheeler tells of her
informants’ curiosity of song transcription, which they called “composin’.”
In fact, she says, they believed a song only became composed when
written down or printed. Not much indicates whether “Negro” minstrelsy
etc. shaped these African Americans’ commonplace attitude. The “Negro”
minstrels, though, definitely brought the attitude to their art.
Edwin P. Christy

In the land of high-stakes Showmanship, Edwin P. Christy situates
between Barnum and Emmett. Ostensibly, he grew up in Philadelphia the
son of respectable parents. Saxton, the source of this information, places
Christy’s year of birth as 1815. Toll, albeit, on the basis of an “Authentic
Memoir of E.P. Christy” in the New York Age, describes Christy as a
supervisor of a ropewalk in New Orleans in 1827. Regardless, as a young
man Christy moved to New Orleans. Saxton suggests his parents arranged
a position there for him in a counting house. The ropewalk story Toll
recounts aims to account for Christy’s knowledge of African American
music. While on the ropewalk, Christy heard singing, but he also
witnessed dancing and drumming at Place Congo. Place Congo became a
refuge for African music and dance while the French controlled New
Orleans. After the United States took control of the city, the tradition
continued. Christy reportedly turned into a frequent visitor of “Congo
Green;” here he studied the “queer words and simple but expressive
melodies” of the blacks.

From New Orleans, Christy joined with the circus as a blackface

performer. In the late 30s, he came to Buffalo and ensconced himself as

170

the leader of a band of “Negro” impersonators. On the word of the Virginia
Minstrel’s success, Christy moved his band to New York city. He settled in
Mechanics’ Hall which became the “Ethiopian Opera,” seven days a week.
On the road in 1843, he called his troupe “Christy’s Original Band of
Virginia Minstrels.” He later effaced the arrogated name, and advertised
his band as “The Oldest Established Band in the United States.” In the late
40s, the New York Supreme Court ruled for his claim and granted him a
patent for the minstrel show.

Like other contemporary entertainers and songwriters, Christy claimed
authorship of songs not his own. His title on “Old Folks at Home,” the
consequence of a legitimate deal, marks the most famous example of his
custom. His genteel approach to caricature emerged part and parcel, but
dissimilar with his cutthroat practices in the trade. While broad-
mouthed, bony kneed, inhuman caricatures filled the covers of Emmett’s
songs for the Virginia Minstrels, Christy’s sheet music showed dusky
cherubirn, pirouetting sable ladies, and orderly “colored” musicians in bow
ties and plaid cotton shirts; emblazoned with his handsome countenance
overlooking each setting. A Hartford correspondent to Dwight’s Journal of
Music pictured him as a prince as he drove down Broadway. Dedicated “to
the Prince of Ethiopians,” the sheet music of “Lilly Clyde” bore out the
description.

Christy’s mannerly image presages his approach to “Ethiopian”
entertainment. Several pieces in the collection of Christy Minstrels
contrast the affiliations Foster and Emmett had with folk music. The
songs suggest that Christy took representation of African American music
as an aim of the shows. The Christy sheet music of Henry C. Work’s “We

Are Coming Sister Mary,” for example, advertises “Founded on the
17 1

Superstition of a portion of the Colored Race that the approach of Death is
forewarned in Dream Song.” Henry Clay, son of underground railroader
Alan Work, was near escaping slaves all through his childhood. Work
probably composed the melody of “Sister Mary,” but it seems derivative
like its theme. Like African American religious songs, and unlike 19th-
century denominational songs, it uses a minor key. It differs from Work’s
other compositions by setting the chorus higher. Not terribly indicative of
African American styles, this form appears in songs like “Bound to Go” and
“Pray All De Member.” Given the setting, the similarity and the uniqueness
imply Work patterned “We Are Coming Sister Mary” after songs he heard
from escaping slaves.

Near this time, “Uncle Gabriel the Negro General” became part of the
Christy’s song collection. Y.S. Nathanson celebrates it in “Negro
Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern” (1855). He contributes a version from a
banjo songster as a representative of folk poetry. “It’s genuineness,” he
says, “no one at all familiar with negro literature will presume to
question.” Comparing it to Gil Maurice and Sir Charles Bawdin, he argues
that his compatriots who look forward to the coming of a national poet
should take up a subscription and buy song’s author.{257}

His judgement of its authenticity rings true. One glance at “Uncle
Gabriel” among a collection of minstrel songs betrays it as the proverbial
red ear of corn. Except for its one or two distinctive African features,
“Uncle Gabriel’s” text stands as candidate for either a white or black folk
song:

Oh, my boys I’m bound to tell you

Oh! Oh!
Listen a while and I will tell you

172

Oh! Oh!
I’ll tell you little bout Uncle Gabriel
Oh! boys I’ve just begun
Hard times in Old Virginy.

Oh dont you know Uncle Gabriel
Oh! he war a niger General

He war de Chief of de Insurgents
Way down in Southampton

Hard times in Old Virginy

It war a little boy betrayed him,

A little boy by the name of Denel,
Betrayed him at de Norfolk landing,
Oh! boys I’m gettin done.

Hard times in Old Virginy

Says he how de do my Uncle Gabriel
I am not your Uncle Gabriel

My name it is Jim McCullen

Some dey calls me Archey Mullin
Hard times in Old Virginy

The whites dey fought him and dey caught him
To Richmond Court House dey did brought him
Twelve men sot up on de jury

Oh! boys I’m most done.

Hard times in Old Virginy

Dey took him down to de Gallows

Dey drove him down, wid four grey horses
Brice’s Ben, he drove de wagon,

Oh! boys, I’m most done.

Hard times in Old Virginy

And dare dey hung him an dey swung him,
And dey swung him and dey hung him,
And that war the last of the Niger General
Oh! boys I’m just one.

Hard times in Old Virginy.

The first stanza shows a lyrical form predominant in African American

folk narratives. Here, as in blues lyric, the emotive power tumbles out in

173

the third line, pushed on by the mounted pressure of the previous two.
Christy’s version likely took some changes being adopted to the minstrel
stage. Yet, the narrative’s loose, abstract progression favorably compares
with traditional ballads. The image of “four grey horses,” has a patent
folk character. Its use of rhyme in small bursts of successive rhymes
rather than in a consistent rhyme scheme invokes folk forms.

The cover of “Uncle Gabriel” tells it performance stood above typical
minstrel routines. “Uncle Gabriel” stands out from most of Christy’s
“Gems” by labelling E.P. Christy, himself, as the song’s singer. This hints
that the melody, or its performance, embraced aspects which closely
imitated African American music; for Christy’s familiarity with the music
of Place Congo gave him a grounding the New York area members of his
troupe lacked. Indeed, besides using a flatted seventh, “Uncle Gabriel’s”
melody patterns in the style of conjunct melody which Horace Boyer types
as characteristic of African melodies. Notice, in its excerpt, below, that
the melody centers on an axis, rising slightly above, or falling scarcely
below, but, mostly staying near one pitch.

A good argument of “Uncle Gabriel’s” traditional origin comes from
Lorenzo Turner’s tape recorded in the Sea Island. Tom Lemon of Sapeloe
Island, Georgia sang a song with roots in the 18408 called “Hard Laws in
Ole Virginia” for Turner in the summer of 1933. Its title echoes its main
phrase. Although Lemon makes “hard laws” the song’s burden, he breaks
off the song on “Hard times.” If not here, Lemon shows his song’s debt to
the music which appear in the minstrel shows by the couplet “Missus
promised me; when she died she set me free.” The transcribed melody
gives an idea of the affinity of “Uncle Gabriel” to Lemon’s performance.

The songs may share a direct relation. Obviously, neither Lemon nor

174

 

Christy made up either.

Uncle Gabriel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

h: r F
I I
I I I I J L
1 I I I i - I +
V v V

Un'cle Wiel Oh! bogs I'e Just tie-gm m tiles

 

 

I“
si i

Old Uirglnu

Hard Lavs in Ole Virginia sung by Tom Lemon July 29, 1933 Sapeloe Islam GA

 

 

One last example contains pure speculation. “What Shall A
Darky Do?” (New York: William Hall & Son, 1850) lists “Harry and Lucy” as
its composers. Appellation by first name only rarely, possibly never,
occurs on other antebellum sheet music. Its diminutive cast, and
impotence for copyright enhance an idea that Harry and Lucy occupied an
unique social station. Suppose that an African American couple Christy
knew wrote the song. Unlike “Old Folks at Home” which Christy bought and
put his name on, “What Shall a Darky Do?” lists Christy only as its singer,
but the song probably came into his hands through a similar deal.

Overall the song speaks fairly defamatory of blacks. Its plot uses the
age’s popular story of a rural boy who finds fortune and ruin in the city.{258}
In this “dark’s” case, he comes to New York, Broadway, and finds a pair of
“dandy” boots and a buys a brand new hat with a shiny crown. If written by

African Americans, a few features of its text gain conspicuous meaning.

Oh! when I was a little dark’ I used to
lib at case

175

I used to peel de ‘taters and I used to

shell de peas (first)

But when I grew older I went to work on

de plantation

Where dis lament would draw de tears from all

de darky nation

(Chorus) What shall dis darky do? What shall dis darky do?
I’d like to leave dis cotton work and be a gemmen too.

Dey took me to a gentleman who sent me

to a college

Whar I got an education and warious

sorts ob knowledge (final)

I learned to make and pick a lock,

I learned to make a shoe

And I used to boil de homminy

when I’d nuffin else to do

(Chorus) What shall dis darky do? What shall dis darky do?
He’s got his Sing Sing larnin’ and he’s a gemmen too.

The image of joyless toil on the plantation arises occasionally in
“Ethiopian” songs. However, its unexpected introduction, as a categorical
accompaniment of plantation work, adds an accent. The phrase, “darky
nation,” possibly marks a singularity. It obviously had wide enough use to
hold coherency, but it definitely does not appear frequently in minstrel
songs.

The chorus, also, broaches a familiar “Negro” image. In the late 503,
its tone became common.{259} Yet, it sounds anomalous in the context of
1850. Guessing toward the song’s African American authors, the desire to
leave low work seems to speak with more directness than other
contemporary songs.

The gentleman of the final stanza presents another curious feature.

Not universally, but typically, “Negro” song composers poked fun at white
characters almost as thoroughly as black. These songs had little room for

gentlemen, and it becomes harder to find one accompanied by a “gemmen.”

176

 

The Bryant’s also invoked Sing Sing in both the songsters cited earlier.
In the case of “What Shall A Darky Do?” the punchline Sing Sing extends

into a performance double-entendre.

What Will This Darkee Do?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

d I V ’1 f . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

177

Curiosity of Negro music paid Christy, Emmett, and Foster in spades.
Each, at a fairly young age, ostensibly made an excursion into genuine
Afro-American music. In turn, they proffered a thin imitation of it to
audiences who flocked to their art basically out of the same interest.

This impulse made the core of the “Ethiopian Opera.” A spirit of rebellion
abetted the business. Across the decades, from George Nichols to Sam
Sharpley, “Negro” artists met Afro-American song and dance tangential
with free-spirited adventure.

In l6th-century Italy, a similar curiosity eventually led another
rebellious soul, Domenico Scandella, to the stake. Scandella never blacked
up nor ever really ran off to the circus. But, his curiosity of people of
different cultures and customs, of unorthodox ideas, or the whole world
outside of his, resembles the mind of the blackface entertainers in the
United States. In his liminality, Scandella embodies the Zeitgeist of
Renaissance Europe. When the vernaculars heaved forth into dominant
culture, they imbued discursive figurations with a reconditioning,
revitalizing, renewing carnivalesque laughter.

The “Ethiopian” delineators of the United States inherited from
Scandella’s world a tradition of exotic curiosity and carnivalesque
rebelliousness. These ancient spirits shaped the “Ethiopian Opera” and
pulled audiences toward it. The United States, however, bore an unique
cultural milieu. Its turbulent, energetic soul and its multi-racial
countenance fed into its art a strain of African American material. The
young vagabonds who founded “Ethiopian” minstrelsy borrowed from black
culture offhand. Neither an ethic to avoid the manners of slaves and free

blacks nor render them accurately swayed their enterprise. The

178

minstrels, instead, created acceptable fictions of Africans. Fictions

which worked a pretty cruel trick on African Americans. Historians of the
minstrel theatre paint this in different ways. But, Ricordeau speaks the
truth; the topic inevitably takes a racial and political tenor.

Like the minstrels, historians make acceptable fictions of the
“Ethiopian Opera.” So clear is it fiction that the United States’ changing
racial politics shows through as easily as the contours of the minstrel
show. The incredible amnesia, duplicity, and fascism grown from the
racial traditions of the United States just makes Negro minstrelSy
historically a fine can of worms. As such, it resembles the rest of life.

The art of living lies in adeptly remembering and forgetting. So it is with
history. Fiction allows a multiplicity of perspectives. Looking at the
popularity of blackface minstrel clowns as emanating from a gnawing
appetite to ridicule Afro-Americans or from a callous curiosity remains
largely a matter of free choice.

Rose tinted glasses seldom produce blindness. On hazy, Indian summer
afternoons on the country highways of Iowa rose lenses abet a serene,
carnivalesque sense. Cutting a fading, narrow ribbon through the
prelapsarian corn fields, the road closes to a point, evoking an uneasiness
beyond the horizon the corn closes in and envelops everything. Behind the
eyes, that cheese shaped organ conjures a fear that in the jungle of corn
there lurks a tribe who ritually sacrifice and cannibalize captives from

the highway. But, at least it would be a carnival.

179

 

NOTES

{186} Starr collection, .S8 H Afro-Americans pro-1863; folder marked
66A,}.

{187} Nathan, 278, 410-412.

{188} Odell gives the best account of this. I really have no records of
other spots, both MSU and IU Bloomingotn lack Jacob’s index to antebellum
black papers so I haven’t scanned any for advertisements. I base the
sentence on the assumption that Almack’s only appears in historical

record because Dickens visited it; thus, many went unnoticed. The
Freedom’s Journal ran an advertisement of Nicholas Pierson, proprietor of
Mead Garden, No. 13 Delaney Street, stating his establishment opened the
first of June (1827) for “the accommodation of genteel and respectable
persons of color.” Mead Garden refused admittance to unprotected

females.

{189} Marian Hannah Winter, “Juba and American Minstrelsy” 39-64 in
Chronicles of the American Dance ed. Paul Magriel, (New York: Henry Holt
and Co.), 42.

{ 190} Southern, 129; from George S. Foster New York by Gas Light
(1850), 72-76.

{191} Epstein, 189.

{192} Carter G. Woodson, “The Negroes of Cincinnati Prior to the Civil
War,” in Free Blacks in America, 1800-1850 ed.John H. Bracey, August
Meier, and Elliot Rudwick, (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing, 1970), 77, 83.

{193} Dennison, 45, 47.

{194} Mark Morris, “The Early American Minstrel Show” unpublished
paper, Michigan State University, 1992.

{195} Charles L. Edwards, Bahama Songs and Stories (Memoirs of the
American Folk-Lore Society) 3: (1895), 71-72. Joel Chandler Harris, Told
by Uncle Remus: New Stories of the Old Plantation (New York: McClure
Phillips & Co., 1903). 127.

{196} Walter Jekyll, Jamaican Song and Story (London: 1907), 132.

{197} Joel Chandler Harris, “Mr. Crow and brother Buzzard” in Seven
Tales of Uncle Remus ed. Thomas H. English (Atlanta: Emory University,

180

1948), 13-15.

{198} Harris, Nights With Uncle Remus Talley, (1922) 6. see also

Richard M. Dorson, “Black Legends of Calvin” in C. Kurt Dewhurst and
Yvonne R. Lockwood eds. Michigan Folklife Reader (East Lansing: Michigan
State University Press, 1987), 152.

{199} “Jim Crow” (Philadelphia, J. Edgar, 1832) Dorothy Scarborough,
On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1925), 127.

{200} Yates, 252.
{201} Walter Jekyll, 132-135.
{202} Horace Boyer, notes from telephone conversation, July, 11 1992.

{203} Eileen Southern “African Retentions in Afro-American Music
(U.S.A.) in the 19th Century” 93.

{204} Two interesting examples: Yates, 253;

After the actual work of husking the corn was done the slaves

adjourned to a “spacious kitchen,” where, after some dancing, they

staged “a mock military parade, a sort of burlesque of our militia
trainings,” following which the Negro “commander” parodied the

stump speeches of white orators. Once could wish that the poet had
noted down more of this last effort than a few scattered references

to “‘de majority of Sous Carolina’,” “‘de interests of de State’,” and

“‘de honor of Ole Barnwell district’,” even as one could desire that

the tang and savor, if not the substance, of local idiom were more in
evidence in his poetry.

And, at Bloomington Archives of Traditional Music, within Lorenzo Turner,
United States, Sea Islands, Gullah, 1932-1933 cassette 2889, ATL 9902-3
of 87-107-F one of the selections includes an introduction which, ifI am
not mistaken, says “My name is James Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of
France, (ju{ ?}mp) like a monkey, hop like a turkey, I dance.” Mr.
Bonaparte’s salutation wonderfully resembles the frontier brags popular
in the Davy Crockett literature and Ethiopian Opera of the J acksonian era.

{205} David Brody, The Fiddler’s Fakebook (New York: Oak Publications,
1983).

{206} see Wolfe’s introduction of Thomas Talley’s for a discussion of

181

 

the goad John W. Work’s denial of the existence of secular music produced
for Talley’s collection.

{207} Cecil J. Sharp and Herbet C. Macilwaine, The Morris Book with a
Description of Dances as Performed by the Morris-Men of England

{208} I don’t want to paint a binary view, but I am at a loss for terms;
basically I desire to shade in that there was a culture built of African and
other traditions shared between white and blacks which worked with
Ethiopian minstrelsy, before—you know what I mean?

{209} Wolfe, “Notes” Altamont: Black Stringband Music; Stu Jamison
provides the description of Gribble’s playing.

{210} Samuel Charters, Roots of Black Music in America Folkways
FA2694 The following performances share a palpable resemblance—Side
C: Band 1, Senegal, Wolof-Tara; Band 3, Kentucky Banjo Instrumental.

{211} William Tallmadge, “Blue Notes and Blue Tonality” Black
Perspective in Music 12:(2)155-l65. 159-160.

{212} Winans, “The Folk, the Stage, and the Five-String Banjo in the
Nineteenth Century” 416. Winans quotes from Eric Davidson’s notes to
Folkways Album FS 3811, Traditional Music from Grayson and Carroll
Counties, Guitars were unknown there (Virginia mountains) before 1900
according to every local informant asked. The guitar is a chorded
instrument. . . .Only very skillful guitar players can fit their instrument to
traditional Grayson and Carroll Counties {modal} banjo and fiddle music.
it was simpler to adapt the older music to the attractive, easy-to-learn

new instrument. . . .Chording appeared on the banjo soon afterward, along
with fingerpicking. Wade Ward states that when he was a boy there was
no chording and no fingerpicking use by Grayson County banjo players.

{213} Winans, “Early Minstrel Show Music, 1843-1852” in Musical
Theatre in America 71-97. ed. Glenn Loney, (Wesport: Greenwood press,
1984), 73-75.

{214} The ensuing attempt to verify the replication of African

American folk music in “Ethiopian” minstrelsy embodies a weak shot. One
acute handicap comes from the writer’s limited musical skills. This
encompasses deficiencies like an inability to transcribe music, hear a
melody from sheet music, or count written rhythm proficiently. Even

more grievous is the lack of access to materials necessary for the study.

In the context of Michigan State University this includes an absence of
sheet music, songsters, relevant musical documents and recordings,

182

periodicals, and computer support. In compensation, a fair chunk of the
investigation proceeded at Indiana University’s Bloomington campus.
Although Indiana University Operates the required facilities, this time
failed to procure the computer analysis the study requires. In addition to
a more knowledgeable researcher, the investigation absolutely needs a
structural comparison of at least five hundred songs from the British
Isles, Africa and America and a computer operation capable of

enumerating similarities among individual pieces.

{215} Nathan, 242.

{216} Talley, 214.

{217} Talley, 20. Yates, 252.

{218} Allen, *,i.

{219} Mechal Sobel, The World They Made Together: Black and White
Values in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1987) 100. Wilentz, 48. Wood, 142-153.

{220} See for example, Allen #38, “Jesus on the Water-Side” and
Parrish p. 233 “Peas and Rice.”

{221} John Harrington Cox, Folk-Songs of the South: Collected Under
the Auspices of the West Virginia Folk-Lore Society (Hatboro: Folklore
Associates, 1963), 531, 524 & c.

{222} Hutton, 139.

{223} Nathan, 300.

{224} see “Old Colony Times”—mishap.

{225} Julia was Parrish’s cook on St. Simon’s Island.

{226} Krehbiel, 42-43.

{227 } J abbour, 24. Goertzen and Jabbour, “George P. Knauff’s Virginia
Reels and Fiddling in the Antebellum South” 133.

{228} Chris Goertzen, “George P. Knauff’s Virginia Reels and Fiddling in
the Antebellum South” American Music 5: 121-144 (Summer) 1987. 134.

183

 

{229} Winans, “Black Instrumental Music Traditions in the Ex-Slave
Narratives,” 5.

{230} Marian Hannah Winter’s article is a dramatic enigma. It is

probably the best article written on American Minstrelsy, presaging the

work of Toll by almost thirty years. I assume her information on “J uba” is

taken from Courlander’s Haiti Singing (1939). Winter includes many other

“elusive” pieces of information such as the supposition that William Henry

Lane learned to dance from “Uncle” Jim Lowe. However, the “Notes and
Bibliographical Data” appendix of Magriel’s compilation mysteriously omits Winter’s
references.

{231} Winters, 40.

{232} Epstein, 141-144. Elsie Parsons, Jamaican Folklore, Memoirs of
the American Folk-Lore Society 21, 1928 (New York: GB. Stechert & Co.),
“Notes on Jamaican Ethnobotany” 20. Scarborough, 98.

{233} Nathan, 85.

{234} Scarborough, 99. Genovese, 581; from Life and Times of
Frederick Douglass 146-147. Talley, ( 1922), 179.

{235} Nathan, 441.

{236} Winans, “Black Instrumental Music Traditions in the Ex-Slave
Narratives,” 5. Philip Foner American Labor Songs of the Nineteenth
Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 90-91.

{237} Lorenzo Turner song which copies froggy went a courtin and has
the urn hmm real low, a lower tone n artifical voice as Parson’s seems to
suggest last part “Old Cow Died” different from other versions I believe,
different text from what appears elsewhere

{238} Nathan, 83; cites Laficadio Hearn, Levee Life (1876).

{239} see Parrish, 5-9.

{240} Edwards, 59.

{241} Allen, #121. Foster, vs. 4 “Away Down in Ca-i-ro” “Written and

Composed for James F. Taunt of the Empire Minstrels” (New York: Firth,
Pond & Co., 1850).

184

{242} Nathan, 410—412: Dan Enunett, “Bressed Am Dem Dat ‘Spects
Nuttin’, Kaze Dey Aint a Gwine to Git Nuttin’! A Negro Sermon (New York,
1873. Genovese, 265-266.

{243} Nathan, 332-333.

{244} Allen, xi.

{245} Howard L. Sacks and Judith R. Sacks, “Way Up North in Dixie:
Black White Musical Interaction in Knox County, Ohio,” American Music
62409-427 (Winter) 1988, 413.

{246} Nathan, 256.
{247} Nathan, 236.

{248} Nathan, 238. {[n] 72 [a]} Nathan apparently transposes “O’er the
Crossing” from Ab to B, which requires moving from four flats to five
sharps, but he places his example in E with four.

{249} George Pullen Jackson, White and Negro Spirituals 170-171.

{250} “What Ship Is This?” Samuel Hauser (?) c. 1800 Thomas W.
Carter, arr. 1844 American Hymns Old and New ed. Albert Christ-Janer,
Charles W. Hughes, Carleton Sprague Smith, (New York: Columbia
University press, 1980.), 300. Thomas E. Barton, Old Plantation Hymns 27.
(this version resembles the melody in question a little better than the one
arranged by Carter) The “North Carolina” version Jackson speaks of should
not be confused with the “variant” of “Old Ship of Zion” in Slave Songs,
which has no claim to this title except by thematic likeness. This last

song appears to be a perfect example of the “boring” Methodist hymn. The
“Old Ship of Zion” in Barton shares the first verse of “I’m Don’t Feel Weary”
(Allen, #90).

{251} Nathan,

{252} Nathan, 237 n. 54. Fife Instructor: Being &c. (New York: Firth,
Pond & Co., 1862). Nos. 72 & 73.

{253} Yates, 251. The South Carolina song resembles the song “Sold Off
to Georgy” James Hungerford included in Georgia Plantation and What I
Learned There & c.

{ 254} Nathan, 242.

185

{255} Nathan, 304. Not to be confused with “De Old Banjo” for which
most of the words are in manuscript under the title “Charleston Galls”
Seven of the stanzas also appear in a song of the same title (Boston, C.H.
Keith, 1844) without mention of the composer or author.

{256} Helen H. Flanders, Ancient Ballads Traditionally Sung in New
England (Philadelphia: Philadelphia University Press, 1965). Stephen
Foster, “Away Down Soul” (Louisville: W.C. Peters, 1848). J .H. Kwabena
Nketia Music of Africa (New York: W.W. Norton, 1974), “Anhemitonic
Pentatonic Form” 118.

{257} Y.S. Nathanson, “Negro Minstrelsy Ancient and Modern” Putnam’s
Monthly 5:72-79, 1855; in Jackson Negro etc. 39-41.

{258} “Dicky Dash” Freedom’s Journal Friday April 27, 1827, 26.

{259} Bryant’s 1857, 1860.

186

 

APPENDIX I

Diagnosis of the Structure of Songs including:
Slave Songs, Minstrel Songs, and Stephen Foster's
Plantation Ballads, by means of my own system using a
novel and infinitely practical procedure for measuring melodic motion

Slave Songs

Roll, Jordan, Roll
D major, 2/4 two parts, or phrases

be in end dominant motion
1. V I
2. HI I IH (33%)

Jehovah, Hellelujah
F major, 3/4 3 phrases

HI II V/III both (33%)
7 I
5 I

9’1"?“

I Hear From Heaven to-Day

F major 2/4 2 parts

1. III I I (43%)
2. I I

Blow Your Trumpet, Gabriel

G major 2/4 2 parts

1. I I III(33%)
2. HI I
Praise Member

G major 2/4 4 phrases

II

993?)?
I:t<<<

187

Wrestle on, Jacob
Bb major 2/4 2 phrases

1. IV I I(33%)
2. IV I

Lonesome Valley

F# minor 2/4 2 phrases

1. V I

2. HI I I(30%)

I Can’t Stay Behind
Bb 2/4 2 phrases

Poor Rosy
E minor 2/4 2 phrases

The Trouble of the World
G major 2/4 3 phrases, (verse and chorus)

1. V I
2. 5 IV I(47%)
3.111 I

There’s a Meeting Here To-Night
Eb major 2/4 2 phrases

1. V I
2.1 I III(44%)

188

Hold Your Light
D major 2/4 2 phrases

l. V H VIII(29%)
2. V I

Happy Morning
G major 4/4 2 phrases
1. III I

2.1111

No Man Can Hinder Me
C major 2/4 5 phrases

1. I I I(33%)
2. I l I(33%)
3.111 I
4.111 1
5. I 1
Lord Remember Me

F major 2/4 2 phrases

1. I I III(36%)
2. I I
Not Weary Yet

Eb major 2/4 2 phrases
1. V V V (48%)
2. II I

Religion So Sweet

C minor 2/4 4 phrases

l. I I I (66%)

2. I I I (84%)

3. I 5 I (78%)

189

 

Hunting for the Lord
Eb major 2/4 2 phrases

1.1 HI I(44%) 16 (5bars)
2. I 6 III(33%) 14 (5 bars)
Go In the Wilderness

G major 2/4 2 phrases

1. 111 1 28 (8 bars)
2. 6 I 31(9bars)
2. 6 1

Tell My Jesus “Morning”
G major 2/4 4 phrases

I H 43% 6 (2 bars)
H 6 (2 bars)
I II 41% 6 (2 bars)
I I 42% 5 (2 bars)

The Graveyard
F major (or A minor with a flat VII) 2/4 2 phrases

1. III I III (38%) 37 (8 bars)
2. III IV 111 (50%) 12 (2+ bars)

John, John of the Holy Order
Eb major 2/4 3 phrases

1. V I IV (52%) 44 (13 bars)
2. V I 38 (10 bars)
3. V I 21 (8 bars)

190

I Saw the beam in my Sister’s Eye
G major 2/4 1 phrase

1. V I V(44%) 31 (8bars)

Hunting for a City

Ab major 4 phrases

1. 5 5 I(57%) 11 (3 bars)
2. 7 I II (57%) 6 (2+ bars)
3. I H 111 (46%) 17 (2+ bars)
4. V I 9 (3 bars)

Gwine Follow
A major 2/4 2 phrases

1. I I 40 (9 bars)

2. 5 I 32 (8 bars)

Lay This Body Down

Ab major 2/4 2 phrases

1. I 4 20 (6 bars)

2. I 4 6 (1+ baIS)
Heaven Bell A-Ring

G major 2/4 2 phrases

1. V I I(44%) 17(

2. 5 I III (43%) 38 (

Jine ‘Em

G major 2/4 2 phrases

1. V V V (44%) 8 (2 bars)
2. V 5 V (38%) 16 (6 bars)

191

Stars Begin to Fall
F major 2/4 2 phrases

1. I I 25 (8 bars)

2. III I 22 (8 bars)
King Emanuel

G major 2/4 2 phrases

1. IV I 17 (9 bars)
2. III I 18 (9 bars)

Satan’s Camp A-Fire
A major 2/4 1 phrase

I. III I 39 (8 bars)
Give Up the World

F major 2/4 2 phrases

1. III I 26 (8 bars)
2. HI VI 52 (8 bars)

Jesus on the Waterside
Eb major 2/4 2 phrases

l. V I V (50%) 26 (7 bars)
2. III I 45 (8 bars)
I Wish I Been Dere

G major 2/4 2 phrases

l. 5 I 49 (8 bars)

2. 5 I 33 (8 bars)
Build a House in Paradise

G major 2/4 3 phrases

1. III H1 111 (32%) 19 (4 bars)

192

2. HI I 18 (4 bars)
3. I I I (50%) 4 (4 bars)

I Know When I’m Going Home
D major 2/4 1 phrase
I. VHI I V (48%) 41 (16 bars)
I’m A-Trouble in De Mind
Eb 2/4 2 phrases
I 26 (6 bars)

1. I
2. 5 VH 19 (7 bars)

Travel On
G minor 2/4 2 phrases

1. I 32 (7 bars)

2. H I 34 (9 bars)
Archangel Open the Door

F major 4/4 2 phrases

1. V I 44 (8 bars)

2. V I 32 (8 bars)
My Body Rock ‘Long Fever

G major 4/4 2 phrases

1. I 6 I (44%) 36 (8 bars)
2. I 6 I (38%) 32 (9 bars)
Bell Da Ring

G major 4/4 3 phrases

1. I 5 19 (4+ bars)

193

2.HII
3.VI

Pray All De Member
G major 4/4 3 phrases
1. V V V(60%)
2. V V V(41%)
3. H V

Turn Sinner, Turn 0!
G major 4/4 1 phrase

1. v I 111 (45%)

My Army Cross Over
G major 4/4 1 phrase
I. I I

(variation)
G major 4/4

1. I I I(40.5%)

Join the Angel Band
A major 2/4 1 phrase
1. I I

I An’ Satan Had a Race
F major 4/4 2 phrases

1.V H
2.VHI

Shall I Die?
C major 4/4 1 phrase

I. I 5 I (33%)

16 (4 bars)
14 (4+ bars)

19 (4 bars)
20 (4 bars)
23 (4 bars)

20 (4 bars)

25 (7 bars)

35 (12 bars)

35 (8 bars)

15 (4 bars)
14 (4 bars)

22 (8+ bars)
194

 

When We Do Meet Again
G major 4/4 2 phrases

1. I I
2. I I
The White Marble Stone
F major 4/4 2 phrases

1. I IV
2. I 7
I Can’t Stand the Fire

G minor 2/4 1 phrase

1.1 1

Meet, 0 Lord!
Bb major 2/4 3 phrases

.HI I
.V 6
.5 I

WNH

Wait Mr. Mackwright
A major 2/4 1 phrase

1.V I

Early in the Morning
F major 2/4 4 phrases

1. I I (50%)
2. 5
3. 5

<5”

V (50%)

26 (4+ bars)
32 (5 bars)

15 (2 bars)
17 (2+ bars)

31 (8+ bars)

18 (3+ bars)
14 (3+ bars)
33 (8 bars)

50 (13 bars)

10 (2+ bars)
10 (2 bars)
22 (4 bars)

195

4. V 5 28 (4 bars)

Hail Mary

A major 2 phrases 4/4

1. 5 I I (40%) 15 (8+ bars)
2. I I 16 (9 bars)

No More Rain Fall For Wet You

Eb major 2/4 4 phrases

1. I VIH 11 (2 bars)
2. HI VHI VIII (50%)

3. VIII H 12 (2 bars)
4. I V 6 (2+ bars)

I Want to Go Home

Bb major 4/4 1 phrase

1. HI I 10 (7 bars)
Goodbye Brother

G major 4/4 1 phrase

I. I I I(36%) 26 (8 bars)
Fare Ye Well

G major 2/4 4 phrases

1. 5 I I(33%) 21 (6 bars)
2. III I 12 (4 bars)

3. V HI V (43%) 18 (5 bars)
4. V I 14 (4 baIS)
Many Thousand Go

G major 4/4

196

1. V I 33 (7 bars)

Brother Moses Gone
Bb major, (F major with flat VII)

1. 5 5 18 (3 bars)

2. I 5 10 (3 bars)
Some Valiant Soldier

G major 2/4

1. V I 28 (9 bars)

2. I I III (33%) 18 (9 bars)

Hallelu, Hallelu
Ab major 2 phrases

1. V I 12 (5 bars)

2. IV 5 12 (4 bars)
Children do LInger

Ab (unusual modality) 2/4

1. 5 3 5 (47%) 19 (5 bars)
2. 5 7 15 (4 bars)
Good-bye

C major 2/4 2 phrases

l. VIH V 30 (7 bars)
2. H I 35 (9 bars)
Lord make Me More Patient

F major 6/8

1. V I V (40%) 41 (11 bars)

197

The Day of Judgement
F major 2/4

1. I I III (39%) 28 (14 bars)
The Resurrection Morning

Bb 2/4 F major (flat HI & VII)

1. I I

Nobody Know the Trouble I’ve Had
Bb 4/4 4 phrases

1 5 11 1(40%) 19 (6 bars)
2. v 1 II(40%) 3 (2 bars)
3. 11 I v (46%) 24 (9 bars)
4 v I v (45%) 16(4bars)

Who Is on the Lord’s Side

g major 4/4

1. I I I(50%) 40 (8 bars)
2. V I I (33%) 41 (8 bars)
Hold Out to the End

G major 2/4

1. I I I(50%) 24 (8 bars)
2. VIH I 24 (8 bars)
Come Go With Me

C major 2/4 three phrases

1. V I V (66%) 8 (4 bars)
198

2. I IV
3. VH1 IV
Every Hour in the Day
E minor

1.1 1

2. III 1 1H (60%)

In the Mansion Above
C major 4/4

1. VI V

2. VHI I

Shout On, Children
A major 2/4

1.11

18 (4 bars)
43 (8 bars)

39 (8 bars)
27 (8 bars)

39 (5 bars)
35 (4 bars)

32 (8 bars)

Jesus, Won’t You Come By-and-By?

D minor 2/4

1. V I
2. VH1 1

V(51%)

Heave Away
C major 4/4

1.11

Wake Up, Jacob

G major 2/4 two phrases

1. V I I(33%)
2. I I I(58%)

26 (8 bars)
15 (4 bars)

101(13 bars)

32 (8 bars)
36 (8 bars)

199

On to Glory
A major 3/4 2 phrases

l. 5 I
2. HI

Just Now
F major 3/4

1. 1H I

Shock Along John

Bb 2/4 4 phrases

5 I (45%)

I H
. IV 6
5

ewwr
<u—t

I

Round the Corn Sally

28 (4+ bars)
26 (4+ bars)

39 (11 bars)

7 (2 bars)
5 (2 bars)
7 (2 bars)

5 (2 bars)

F major (C major with a flat VH) 4/4 2 phrases

1.1 I I(47%)
2.11 I H (35%)

Jordan’s Mills
F major 3/4

1.VI 1H
2.HI HI

Nigger Will Be Nigger
Ab major 3 phrases

9°19?
HI—(I—I

5
5
HI V (50%)

10 (4 bars)
13 (4 bars)

11 (4 bars)
12 (4 bars)

Minstrel Songs

30 (4 bars)
35 (4 bars)
33 (8 bars)

200

I’se a Travlin’ to de GRave

F minor 4/4

1. 6 5 22 (8 bars)

2. H H H1 (71%) 41 (15 bars)
Old K.Y., Ky.

1. 5 VI 56(18 bars)
2. HI VI 88 (16 bars)
Dar’s a Darky in De Tent

F major 2/4

1. 5 5 101(15 bars)

2. I I 65 (15 bars)

We Are Coming from the Cotton Fields
E major 2/4

1. HI I 87 (17 bars)

2. HI I 85 (16 bars)
Happy Land of Canaan

F major 2/4 2 phrases

l. I I V (33%) 56 (8+ bars)
2. I I 58 (8 bars)

The Yaller Gal that Winked at Me
A major 4/4 2 phrases

1. HI I 92 (16 bars)
2. HI I 68 (15 bars)

201

 

Ephraim’ s Lament
Bb major 2/4

1. 5 H1 65 (16 bars)
2. V I 40 (12 bars)

What’s De Matter Uncle Sam?
C major 2/4 2 phrases

1. V I 80 (16 bars)

2. V I 65 (16 bars)
Happy Uncle Joe

G major 4/4 2 phrases

1. 5 1 I (34%) 62 (16 bars)
2. V I 32 (8 bars)

Make My Grave in the Lowlands Low
A major 4/4

1. 5 I 47 (8+ bars)
2. 6 I 32 (8 bars)

3. 5 I 50 (8 bars)
Roll, Jordan Roll

C major 4/4 4 phrases

1. V V 12 (4+ bars)
2. HI I 18 (4 bars)

3. I 1 H1 (33%) 26 (8 bars)
4. V I 31 (8 bars)

202

Tapioca
F major 4/4 3 phrases

1. I I I(47%) 81 (17 bars)
2. V I 48 (13 bars)
3. VHI VIH 21 (10 bars)
Jack on De Green

Bb major (F major with flat VH) 2/4 2 phrases divided into 5

1. 3 5 16 (4 bars)
2. 7 5 29 (4 bars)
3. 3 3 15 (4 bars)
4. 7 H1 37 (4 bars)
5. 5 I 91 (16 bars)

0 Lord, Remember Me: A Shout Song of the Freedmen of Port Royal
Eb major 2 phrases

1. I I H (43%) H1 (30%) 24 (8 bars)
2. I I 29 (8 bars)

Who Says De Darkies Won’t Fight?
C major 2/4 2 phrases

1. I VIH 80 (16 bars)
2. IX VIH 47 (8 bars)
High Daddy

C major 2/4

1. HI H 18 (2 bars)
2. 1H V 16 (2 bars)
3. HI H 19 (2 bars)
4. HI VI 19 (4 bars)
5. HI VI 39 (10 bars)
6. V I 78 (16 bars)

203

Pleasant Dreams of Long Ago
Bb major 3/4

1. 3 168 (23 bars) 7.3 av.
2. V I 45 (8 bars) 5.6 av.
0, Would I Were a Fly

F major 4/4 4 phrases

1. V V 32 (8 bars)

2. V VIH 31 (8 bars)

3. H V 25 (8 bars)

4. V VIH 30 (8 bars)

Ella Clay

Eb Major 4/4 2 phrases

l. I VIH 49 (16 bars)

2. I VIH 49 (8 bars)

The Mother’s Blessing

C major 2/4 2 phrases

1. 5 I 60 (20 bars)

2. 5 I 102 (20 bars)
Jennie Lives But For Thee

Bb major 3/4 2 phrases

1. HI I 61 (16 bars)

2. HI I 50 (16 bars)

204

My Beautfiul Lizzie, A Cushra Machree
Bb major 3/4

1: 5 134 (32+ bars)
a 5 I 57 ( 16 bars)
b. V I 77 ( 16 bars)
2. 5 I 73 (20 bars)

Hast Thou Forgotten Fanny Lee?
G major 4/4 2 phrases

1. V I 77 (16 bars)
2. H1 H1 V (39%) 28 (8 bars)
Twinkling Stars are Laughing Love

G major 4/4 2 phrases

1. V I 63 (16bars)
2. V I 34 (8 bars)

I’ll Wait at the Gate for Thee
Eb major 4/4 2 phrases

1. V IV 57 (12 bars)
2. III I 59 (8 bars)
Bonny Mabel

G major 3/4 4 phrases, no chorus

1. 1H H 20 (8 bars)

2. H1 H1 28 (8 bars)

3. HI I 53 (16 bars)
4. I I 30 (8 bars)

205

How Long the Hours Seem Love!
A major 4/4 3 phrases

l. I I 41 (8 bars)
2. H1 H1 49 (12 bars)
3. H1 1 31 (8 bars)

If Your Foot Is Pretty Show It
D major 3/8 3 phrases

1. V V V (50%) 41 (12 bars)
2. I VH1 58 (29 bars)

3. V I (40 bars)
Weep Not Comrades for Me

Bb major 12/8

1. I 5 46 (8 bars)

2. 5 I 25 (4+ bars)

Hold on Abraham-to Abe Lincoln

D major 2/4

1. I [H V (36%) 64 (16 bars)
2. VHI V VIH (53%) 16 (8 bars)
Pleasant Dreams of Long Ago

Bb major 3/4

1. 3 V 109(16 bars)
2. 5 I 49 (8 bars)

3. V I 44 (8 bars)
Myself and Polly Carter

G major 6/8 2 phrases

1. 5 5 38 (8 bars)

2. V I 59 (10 bars)

206

Loved One, Wake!
Ab major, 6/8 4 phrases

l. 5 H 42(12bars)
2. 6 7 45 (12bars)
3. 5 I 32 (8bars)
4. HI IV 30 (8 bars)

When Fenians Fight for Freedom

F major 6/8 2 phrases

1. V I 97 (16 bars)
2. V I 65 (16 bars)

Bonnie Belle
D major 2 phrases 3/4

1. HI IH V (27%) 50 (16 bars)
2. V IH VIH (27%) 36 (8 bars)
Pride of My Heart Farewell

Db major 2 phrases 4/4

1. V V V (27%) 14 (8 bars)
2. V VIH 54 (8 bars)
The Jersey Lovers

D minor 2/4 2 phrases

1. II I 48 (8 bars)

2. II I 49 (8 bars)
Mother Is the Battle Over?

C major 4/4

1. 3 I V (30%) 108 (16 bars)
2. 3 I 53 (8 bars)

207

Whack Row De Dow, or Hunky boy is Yankee Doodle
C major 2/4

5 5 72 (16 bars)
I

1.
2. I 38 (8 bars)

Darling Jeannie
G major 4/4 2 phrases

l. V V 56 (16 bars)
2. V I 16 (8 bars)
Up the Hudson

F major 4/4 2 phrases

1. I I 103 (16 bars)
2. VI V 12 (4 bars)
I’d Dream Forever More

Ab major 6/8

1. 5 I 121 (20 bars)
2. [H I 41 (8 bars)
Minnie May

G major 3/4

1. HI I 57 (16 bars)
2. 6 I 23 (8 bars)
3. HI I 57 (16 bars)

208

Katy Darling
Bb major 4/4 4 phrases

Memory Bells
A major 4/4

1.HII
2.61

Oh, Mary Jane!
A major 2/4

1.5 5
2.HI 6

The Other Side of Dixie
C major 2/4 3 phrases

1

PP?
Oat—Ur

1

Away Down Souf
G major 2/4 3 verses,

I V (39%)

1V

2.H

3.V1 V(46%)
4V1

60 (8 bars)
52 (8 bars)
6 (3 bars)
60 (8 bars)

83 (16 bars)
57 (8 bars)

88 (16 bars)
23 (8 bars)

46 (8 bars)
55 (8 bars)
38 (8 bars

Stephen Foster’s Plantation Ballads

1 chorus

18 (8 bars)
37 (8 bars)
18 (8 bars)
18 (8 bars)

209

Massa’s in de Cold Ground
D major 4/4 4 phrases 3 verses, 1 chorus

1. V I 66 + [28 of octaves] (16 bars)
2. VHI I 40 (8 bars)

3. V I 55 + [21 of octaves] (16 bars)
4. V I 74 + [28 of octaves)] (16 bars)

Oh! Boys Carry Me ‘Long
F major 6/8 3 phrases

1. V I 51 (16 bars)
2. VHI I 25 (8 bars)
3. V I 52 (16 bars)
Dolly Day

A major 2/4 2 phrases

1. 5 I 85 (16bars)
2. I I H1 (31%) 42 (8 bars)

Don’t Bet Your Money on de Shanghai
C major 2/4

1. I II 57 (8 bars)
2. V I 55 (8 bars)

Dolcy Jones
F major 4/4 2 phrases

1. 5 I 67 (8 bars)

2. VI 11 27 (4 bars)
Farewell My Lily Dear

C major 2/4

1. VI VIH 62 (16 bars)
2. V VIH 56 (16 bars)

210

The Glendy Burk
G major 2/4

1.51
2.VI

Gwine to Run All Night

D major 2/4

.V H1
.H1 H
V HI V(63%)
.H I

.V HI
see2
.V HI
see4
.I I

V (63%)

V (63%)

V (63%)

cpoqpxunhgpwa

The Abolition Show
Eb major 6/8

1.51

Oh! Lemuel
G major 2/4

I (28%)

9’1"?"
Uit-‘Ui

H
I
1

Nelly Was a Lady
A major 4/4

1. I 1 14/34
2. 5 I

97 (16 bars)
44 (8 bars)

8 (2 bars)
3 (2 bars)

8 (2 bars)
3 (2 bars)

* (2 bars)

8 (2 bars)

32 (8 bars)

53 (8 bars)

80 (16 bars)
37 (8 bars)
46 (8 bars)

36 (8 bars)
22 (4 bars)

211

Nelly Bly

C major 4/4
1. HI VH1 62 (8 bars)
2. X VIH 52 (8 bars)

My Old Kentucky Home Good-Night!
G major 4/4

1. V I 99 (16 bars)

2. VI IH IV & V 34 (8 bars)
My Brudder Gum

G major 2/4

1. 5 I VI (33%) 26 (8 bars)
2. V H1 26 (8 bars)
Angelina Baker

C major 2/4

1. HI I 80 (16 bars)

2. 5 I 26 (8 bars)

Oh Susanah

G major 2/4

1. I I 60 (16 bars)

2. IV I 23 (8 bars)
Old Folks at Home

D major 4/4

1. H1 1 52 (8 bars)

2. VH I 46 (8 bars)

Ring, Ring de Banjo!

F major 2/4
1. V I 63 (16 bars)
2. V I 23 (8 bars)

212

(more atavistic appendations)

APPENDIX 11

Index of citation for Negro Minstrelsy &c. in

George C- Odell's WW
Volumes 111 to VH

Index to George C. Odell Annals of the New York Stage

Volume HI:
Rice T.D. 354, 416 611, 623, 631, 634, 635, 637, 646, 666, 670, 680 ,685, 686,

Negro:

Extravaganza 468, 472, 635, 641, 647, 675, 685, 686

Songs in Character 37, 135, 353, 399, 413, 421, 446, 450, 468, 472, 518, 528, 588, 615,
631, 646, 673

Theatre 34, 70 70

Ethipian Rivals 647

Coal Black Rose (song) 399, 400, 413, 421, 447, 468, 528, 673

Volume IV:

Rice TD. 28, 73, 74, 77, 97, 128, 170, 215, 216, 218, 220, 224, 232, 328, 239, 244, 265,
268, 306, 310, 372, 375 390,420, 451, 469, 476,481, 48,486, 488, 492, 533, 561, 562,
567, 570, 571, 596, 636, 640

Negro:

Extravaganza 36, 157, 160, 220, 242, 478, 481, 482, 484, 486, 487, 492, 565, 638, 675,
Minstrelsy born 674-675

Negro songs, dances and specialties 242, 420-423, 430, 433, 434, 510, 557, 565, 588,
589, 613, 615, 638, 643, 665,

Ethiopian Serenaders 669

Emmett, Dan 615, 643,665, 674, 675, 676

Whitlock, W. 391, 392, 432, 474, 482, 510-11, 557, 565, 584, at the Circus, 615,
643,666, 675-676

Pelham, R.W. 383, 423, 510, 512, 584, 613, 615, 643, 665, 675-676

Henry, J. Negro songs 256

Brower, Frank at Park Theatre Circus 615, 643, 665, 67-676

African Minstrels 697

Columbian Minstrels 644, 646

Jim Crow-sung 30, 94, 170, 216, 233, 238, 239, 395, 396, 533

Jim along Josey 324, 420, 421, 638, 478,

Jim Crow in Foreign Service (1840) 372

Jim Crow in London 216, 220, 232, 244, 304, 372, 484, 486

Jim Crow on Horseback 675

Jim Crow’s Visit 422

Kentucky Minstrels 646

Virginia Minstrels 618, 643, 644, 646, 665, 675

Virginia Mummy 36, 216, 232, 244, 304, 306, 469

Diamond, Master John 312, 383, 384, 391, 392, 395, 386, 421-23, 434, 494, 525, 565,
584, 589, 666, 673

Dixon, G.W. 66, 675

Zip Coon 25

Jumbo Jum 305-306 454, 481, 484, 488, 492, 636

213

Volume V:

Rice T.D. 30-34, 39, 63, 64, 113, 116, 126, 157, 196, 200-201, 221, 273, 297, 344, 357-
359, 372, 458, 464, 466, 468, 511, 530, 545, 550-551, 553, 574, 577

Negro Minstrelsy 29, 37, 48, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60-62, 64,65, 73, 74, 78, 80, 96, 97, 112,
113, 114, 116, 130, 131, 13, 137, 138 223, 26, 228, 229, 233, 245, 281, 287, 296, 305,
306, 307, 308, 309, 318, 349, 358, 360, 376, 377, 378, 389, 392, 408, 09, 410, 411, 449,
474, 475, 478, 484, 485, 488, 496, 498, 507, 509, 51, 549, 556, 577, 580, 593, 54, 595,
597

Virginia Harmonists 395

Virginia Minstrels (different troupes) 29, 56, 358, 400, 491, 581, 582, 583,

Virginia Mummy the 32, 33, 157, 201, 212, 358, 372, 458, 464, 468, 511, 545, 553574,
577

Virginia Serendaders 33, 35, 62, 80, 140, 308, 389 393, 394, 400

Emmett, Dan 140 141 142 144 162, 581

Christy, E.P. 226, 392, 393, 488, 489, 581

Christy, Geroge N. 26, 376, 392, 393, 488, 489, 580-81

Christy’s Minstrels 26, 23, 306, 307, 308, 319, 320, 349, 377, 78, 392, 393, 410, 411,
488, 489, 490, 92, 493, 510, 554, 580, 581, 593, 594

White, Charles 160-161 163 349 400 491, 492, 556, 581

White, R. minstrel variety 138, 308

White’s Melodeon 308, 399, 491, 581

White’s Serenaders 399, 400, 468, 475, 486, 490, 491-493, 510, 556

Whitlock W. 29, 30, 59, 60, 61, 137, 138, 16-62, 227, 228, 229, 305, 309, 90, 577
Ehtipian Burlesque Company 160

Ehtiopian Harmonists 226

Ethiopian Melodists 398, 408, 489

Ethiopian Minstrels 114, 130, 142, 245, 305-06

Campbell’s Serenaders 318

Ethiopian Females Mountain Singers 494-95

Ethiopian Operatic Brothers and Sable Sisters 161, 287, 296

Ethiopian Serenaders 54, 56, 57, 74, 131, 135, 136, 142, 223, 24, 304, 377-79, 493
Ethiopian Serenaders 54, 56, 57, 74, 131, 135, 136, 142, 223, 224, 304, 377-79, 493

Volume VI:
Rice TD. 29, 41, 47, 73, 91, 101, 105, 139, 155, 181, 227, 245, 273, 306, 310, 316, 338,
49, 408, 450, 476, 547, 58

Negro Minstrelsy 75, 108, 170, 171, 191, 195, 24, 250, 255, 26, 308, 313, 34, 339, 398,
405, 418, 420, 422, 423, 427, 493, 508, 512, 583, 601, 602

Wood, G 398

Wood, H co partenr with Fellows 172

Wood’s Minstrel Hall 172 256, 257

Wood’s Minstrels programs 256, 257, 326, 327

White George minstrel 77, 172, 173, 511

White, Charles 77; parodies Fello’s challenge 78 172, 173, 244, 245, 246, 247, 257, 328,

214

398, 408, 586, 587

White’s (Charles) Serenaders 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 244, 245, 250, 257328, 340, 398,
407, 408, 493, 567, 586, 587, 588, 604

Christy, E.P. 75, 172, 256, 324, 325, 326, 405, 494

Christy, George 75, 77, 171, 255, 256, 324, 326, 327, 349, 405, 406, 407, 492, 583, 585
Christy’s Minstrels 406, 42, 495, 507, 508, 583, 588, 588-89, 601, 602

Christy, George N 406, 407, 493, 583, 84, nd Wood’s Minstrels 421, 422, 427, 493, 498,
583, 584, 583, 587

Buckley’s Minstrel Hall 578

Buckley’s Minstrels 257

Buckley’s Serenaders 327, 328, 35, 494, 583, 584, 585, 586, 588, 597

Bryant Dan 172, 173, 256, 257, 326, 327, 409, 496, 517, 584, 585

Bryant, Jerry 256, 325, 326, 327, 328

Bryant and Mallory’s Campbell’s Minstrels 496, 586, 587

Bryant’s Minstrels 567, 583 at Mechanics Hall 588-89, 602

Emmett, Dan 246-4, 257, and 259, 328

Ethiopian Serenaders 582, Opera House 328

Volume VH

Negro Minstrelsy 87, 103, 104, 153, 181, 264, 267, 281, 299, 34, 352, 357, 364,369, 374,
375, 376, 408, 414, 415, 430, 455, 503, 518, 534, 595, 621, 680, 682, 683, 705, 709
Wood’s Minstrels 56, 92, 130, 156, 181, 182, 183, at 585 Bowery 264, 279, 299, 370,
375, 376, 456, 457, 500, 512, 19, 520, 546, 681

Christy, E.P. 534

Christy George N. 88, 104, 182, opens “444” retrained by Wood 183, 262, 279, 281, 350,
373, joins Hooley’s 535, 541, takes 585 Broadway 597 joins 444 Broadway 597-599,
600, 621, 657

Christy, W. 290, W.A 286

Christy’s Minstrels 301, 373, 534, 621

Christy’s (Geoge) Minstrels 245, 281, 300, 301, 304, 351, 369, 374, 420, 455, 457, 461,
495, 511, 519, 536, 537, 539, 657

Christy’s (Geroge) Opera House 183, 184m 534

Bryant, Dan 45, 56, 89, 182, 232, 281, 349, 350, 427, 430, in Irish 481, 498 518 519 in
Irish Comedy 546, 547, 557 testimonial 583, 595 Irish Comedy 680, 682

Bryant, Jerry 45 90, 91, 182, 215, 232, 281, 349, 350

Bryant, Neil 90, 91 182, 232, 430, 518, 519, 680, 595

Bryant’s Minstrels 87, 89, 92, 182, 183, 281, 349, 350, 352, 429, 512, 518, 573, 595, 659,
677, 680, 681

Emmett, Dan 182, 281, 349, 350, 430, 518, 519, 595, 680

215

Biggest
BHHJOGRAPHY
East of San Salvador

BUS STOP!

Songsters
Bryant’s Songs From Dixie’s Land New York: Robert M. DeWitt, 1861.
Bryant’s Essence of Old Virginny New York: DeWitt, 1857.

Buckley’s Ethiopian Melodies No. 4 New York: Philip J. Cozans, 1857.
Buckley’s Song Book for the Parlor New York: Cozans, 1855.

Charley Fox’s Bijou Songster Philadelphia: A. Winch, 1958.
Christy’s Plantation Melodies Chatham St. New York: Fisher & Brother, 1854.

Negro’s Original Piano-Rama or Southern, Northern and Western Songs New York:
Fisher & Brother, 1850.

Tambo: His Jokes and Funny Sayings With Which Is Incorporated Hints to the Amateur
Minstrel New York: Wehman Bros. 1882.

Unsworth’s Burnt Cork Lyrics New York: DeWitt, 1859.

White’s New Ethiopian Song Book New York: H. Long & Brother, 1850.

Sheet Music

“Away Down Souf” w. and m. Stephen Foster (Louisville: W.C. Peters., 1848).

“Massa’s in de Cold Ground” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth, Pond & Co.,
1852).

“Oh! Boys Carry Me ‘Long” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth, Pond & Co.,
1861).

“Dolly Day” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1850).

“Don’t Bet Your Money on de Shanghai” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth,
Pond & Co., 1861).

“Dolcy Jones” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1849).

“Farewell My Lily Dear” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth, Pond & Co.,
1853).

216

“The Glendy Burk” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth, Pond & Co. 18600>
“Gwine to Run All Night” w. and 111. Stephen Foster (New York: F. D. Benteen., 1850).
“Oh! Lemuel” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: F.D. Benteen. 1850).

“Nelly Was Lady” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1849.
“Nelly Bly” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1850).

“My Old Kentucky Home Good-Night!” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth,
Pond & Co., 1853).

“My Brudder Gum” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1849).
“Angelina Baker” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: F.D. Benteen 1850).

“Oh Susannah” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1848).

“Old Folks at Home” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth, Pond & Co. 1851).
“Ring, Ring De Banjo!” w. and 111. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth, Pond & Co. 1851).
“Way Down in Cairo” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1850).
“A Soldier in De Colored Brigade” w. and m. Stephen Foster (New York: Firth, Pond &
Co., 1863).

“The Other Side of Jordan” as sung by Earl H. Peirce of Christy’s Minstrels (New York:
William Hall & Son, 1853).

“Uncle Gabriel the Negro General” sung by E.P. Christy

“High Daddy” w. and m. Dan D. Emmett (New York: Wm.A. Pond & Co. 1863)

“Jack on the Green: Plantation Song” inside “Jack on de Green, Walk Around” D.D.
Emmett (New York: Wm.A. Pond & Co. )

“Dar’s a Darkey in de Tent, or Wide Awake” w. and m. D.D. Emmett arr. C.S. Grafulla
(New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1860)

“Old K Y, Ky.” w and m. D.D. Emmett arr. W.L. Hobbs (New York: Firth, Pond &
Co., 1860)

217

“We Are Coming from the Cotton Fields” w./ J .C._N. m./ J .C. Wallace (Chicago:
Root & Cady, 1864)

“What’s De matter Uncle Sam?” w. and m. W. Dexter Smith (Boston: G.D. Russell &
Co., 1867).

“Dey Said We Wouldn’t Fight” w./ Mr.s M.A. Kidder m./ Mrs. Parkhurst (New York:
Horace Waters, 1864)

“The Yaller Gal That Winked at Me” w. and m. Harry Bloodgood of Sam Sharpley’s
Minstrels (Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1867).

“Nigger Will Be Nigger” w. and m. Will S. Hays (Louisville: Tripp & Cragg, 1864).
“Ephraim’s Lament” w. and m. L.V.H. Crosby, (Boston: Oliver Ditson, ????)

“Make My Grave in the Lowlands Low, or the Negro Slave’s Lament” w. and m. by
Walter Kittredge (Cleveland: S. Brainard’s Sons, 1867).

“Happy Uncle Joe” w. and m. J.G. Hunting (New York: S.T. Gordon, 1867).

“Happy Land of Canaan” composed and sung by William A. Wray of the Original
Campbell Minstrels (Cincinnati: John Church & Co., 1860)

“Tapioca” w. and m. E. Warden (Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co., 1863).

“Who Says the Darkies Wont Fight?” w. and 111. Frank Howard (Milwaukee: H.N.
Hempsted, 1863).

“O Lord, Remember Me, A Shout Song of the Freedmen of Port Royal” (Boston: Oliver
Ditson & Co., 1864).

“Roll, Jordan Roll” adapted and arr. by C. Everett (Philadelphia: Lee and Walker,
1 864).

“Ise a travlin’ to de Grave, a Southern Melody” accompaniment Gustave J. Stoeckel
(Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co., 1867).

“Pleasant Dreams of Long Ago” w./ Edward Taylor m.l Geo.W.H. Griffin (New York:
Wm.A.Pond & Co., 1865).
“Oh May Jane” w. and 111. Charles M. Currier (St. Louis: Balmer and Weber, 1857).

“Memory Bells: Darling How Can I Forget Thee?” w. and m. Henry Tucker, (New
York: Wm.a. Pond & Co., 1863).

218

“I’d Dream Forever More” w. and m. T. Brigham Bishop (New York: C.M. Tremaine,
1863).

“Pride of My heart Farewell” w./ Rolland H. Oakley m.l W.F. Wellman, Jr. (New
York: Wm.A. Pond, 1866).

“Hast Thou Forgotten Fanny Lee?” w./ Thomas H. Burr m./ Alfred Sedgwick (New
York: S.T. Gordon, ??).

“Loved One, Wake!” w. and m. William Skaats (Cincinnati: John Church & Co.,
1866).

“When Fenians Fight for Freedom” w./ Henry Wood m./ Henry Tucker (New York:
Wm.A. Pond & Co., 1866).

“Myself and Polly Carter” w. and m. Charles Jarvis (New York: Jas. Couenhoven,
1859).

“Bonny Mabel” w./ J .H. McNaughton m./ Francis H. Brown (New York: Wm. Hall &
Son, 1858).

“I’ll Wait at the Gate for Thee!” w./ E.B.B. m./ Elbridge G. B. Holder

“Twinkling Stars Are Laughing Love” w. and m. John P. Ordway (Boston: Oliver
Ditson, 1855).

“My Beautiful Lizzie a cushra machree” w. and m. by John Mahon (New York: Wm.A.
Pond & Co., 1864).

“Jennie Lives But for Thee!” w. and m. John Mahon (New York: Wm.A. Pond, 1864).

“The Mother’s Blessing, or Why am I so Happy” w./ Francis B. Murtha Esq. m./
Frederick Widdows (New York: Wm.A. Pond, 1864).

“Ella Clay” w./ Francis B. Murtha m./ C. Henry (New York: Firth, Son & Co., 1863).

“O Would I Were A Fly” w./ John F. Poole m./ C. F. Shattuck (New York: Wm.A. Pond
& Co., 1866).

“Up the Hudson” w./ Geo. P. Morris m./ J. Trigg (New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1860).
“Darling Jeannie” w. and 111. Charles Blamphin (New York: C.M. Tremaine, 1865).

“Whack Row De-Dow, or A Hunkey boy is Yankee Doodle” w./ Miss Fanny Herring
m./ W.L. Hobbs (New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1861)

219

 

“Mother is the Battle Over, or Will My Father Come Home Again?” 111. Henry Werner
(St. Louis: Balmer & Weber, 1863).

“The Jersey Lovers” w. and m. Eugene T. Johnston (New York: Grederick Blume,
1865).

“Weep Not Comrades for Me” w. and m. Father Reed (New York: Wm. A. Pond & Co.,
1862).

“Hold on Abraham” w. and m. William B. Bradbury (New York: Wm.A. Pond & Co.,
1862).

“If Your Foot is Pretty Show It” m./ T. Brigham Bishop w./[?] Matt Peel (Boston:
Oliver Ditson & Co., 1857).

“How Long the Hours Seem Love” w./ Henry Wood m./ P.B. Isaacs (New York:
Wm.A. Pond & Co., 1863).

“Katy Darling” w./ J .C. Creenham (New York: Wm.A. Pond & Co. 1853).
“Minnie may” w. and m. George S. Brown (Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co., 1855).

“The Other Side of Dixie” w./ Sol Sharpstick m./ Willie Willieson
(New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1861).

Articles
“The Ancestry of Brudder Bones” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 58(347)687-698
Anchor, Robert. “Bahktin’s Truths of Laughter” Clio 14:237-257 1985.

Berret, Anthony J. “Huckleberry Finn and The Minstrel Show” American Studies
27:37-49 Fall ’86

Bratton, J .S. “English Ethiopians: British Audiences and Black-Face Acts, 1835-1865,”
Yearbook of English Studies 11:127-142 1981.

Bristol, Michael D. “Carnivals and the Institutions of Theater in Elizabethan England”
50:637-54 (Winter) 1983.

Caldwell, Hansonia L. “Music in the Lives of Blacks in California: The Beginnings”
The Triangle of Mu Phi Epsilon 82(4): 10&18 1988.

Cantwell, Robert. “Minstrelsy and Tradition: A Review of Minstrelsy and Tunesmith
(JEMF LP 109)” John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly 20:(73) 39-41 (Spring-

220

Summer) 1984.

Danforth, Percy. “Don’t Just Rattle Dem Bones—Play Them!” (with attached technique
instruction” Flyers distributed by Percy Danforth 1939 Jackson Avenue, Ann Arbor MI
48103

DeMetz, Kaye. “Minstrel Dancing in New Orleans’ Nineteenth Century Theaters,” 28-40
in Holditch, W. Kenneth (ed. and pref.) In Old New Orleans Jackson: University Press
of Mississippi, 1983.

Ekwueme, Lazarus E. N. “African-Music Retentions in the New World” Black Perspec-
tive in Music 3:(2) 128-144, 1975.

Evans, David. “Black Fife and Drum Music in Mississippi” in Afro-American Folk Arts
and Crafts 163-171.

Flaherty, Peter. “Reading Carnival: Toward a Semiotics of History,” Clio 15:(4) 411-
428, 1986.

Goertzen, Chris and Alan J abbour. “George P. Knauff’s Virginia Reels and Fiddling in
the Antebellum South,” American Music 5: 121-144 (Summer) 1987.

Goertzen, Chris. “Mrs. Joe Person’s Popular Airs: Early Blackface Minstrel Tunes in
Oral Tradition,” Ethnomusicology 35:(l)31-53 (Winter) 1991.

Grimsted, David and William Stowe. “Review Essay: White-Black Humor” review of
Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth Century America by Robert Toll

Holmburg, Carl Bryan and Gilbert D. Schneider “Daniel Decatur Emmett’s Stump
Sermons: Genuine Afro-American Culture, Language and Rhetoric in the Negro Min-
strel Show” Journal of Popular Culture 19:27-38 (Spring) 1986.

Hutton, Lawrence. “The Negro on the Stage” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
79:(469)31-45 1887.

Keeler, Ralph “Three Years as a Negro Minstrel” Atlantic Monthly 24:71-85 1869.
Lott, Eric, “‘The Seeming Counterfeit’: Racial Politics and Early Blackface Minstrelsy”
American Quarterly 43:223-258 (June) 1991.

Lumer, Robert. “Good 01’ Slavery and the Minstrel Show” Zeitschrift fur Anglistik und
Amerikanistik 33(1):54-61 1985.

Mahar, William J. “Black English in Early Blackface Minstrelsy: A New Interpretation
of the Sources of Minstrel Show Dialect” American Quarterly 37:260-85

221

idem. “‘Backside Albany’ and Early Blackface Minstrelsy: Contextual Study of
America’s First Blackface Song” American Music 6: 1-25 (Spring) 1988.
McDowell, Robert E. “Bones and the Man: Toward a History of Bones Playing” Journal
of American Culture 5(1)38-43 Spring 1982.

Palmquist, Peter E. “Black & White” (Photograph of Billy Birch taken by San Francisco
photographer Silas Selleck) History of Photography 5:(4) frontispiece 1981.

Pandey, Gyanendra. “In Defense of the Fragment: Writing About Hindu-Muslim Riots
in India Today,” Representations 37 (Winter 1992): 27-55.

Ramshaw, Molly Niederlander, “Jump, Jim Crow! A Biographical Sketch of Thomas D.
Rice (1808-1860)” [substantially plagiarized from George Odell]

Reed-Maxfield, Kathryn. Review of The Early Minstrel Show New World Records,
NW338; Liner notes by Robert B. Winans. American Music 6:(1) 112-114 1988.

Ricordeau, Catherine. “Menestrels en noir et blanc” La Recherche en Danse No. 1/82
69-73.

Sacks, Howard L. and Judith R. Sacks. “Way Up North in Dixie: Black-White Musical
Interaction in Knox County, Ohio” American Music 6:409-427, (Winter) 1988.

Saxton, Alexander. “Blackface Minstrelsy and Jacksonian Ideology” Atlantic Quarterly
27(1975):3-28.

Suthem, Orrin Clayton, “Minstrelsy and Popular Culture” Journal of Popular Culture
4:(3)658-673, 1971.

Tallmadge, William H. “The Folk Banjo and Clawhammer Performers’ Practice in the
Upper South: A Study of Origins” The Appalachian Experience: The Proceedings of
the Sixth Annual Appalachian 168-179

idem. “Blue Notes and Blue Tonality” Black Perspective in Music 12:(2)155-165,
1984.

Toll, Robert C. “Folklore on the American Stage,” 247-256 in Dorson, Richard M.
Handbook of American Folklore Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.

Watkins, Floyd C. “James Kirke Paulding’s Early Ring-Tailed Roarer” Southern Folk-
lore Quarterly 15:(3)183-187 1951.
174.

Wilkinson, Winston. “Virginia Dance Tunes” Southern Folklore Quarterly 6:( l)1-10
1942.

222

 

Wilson, Eddie W. “The Gourd in Folk Music” Southern Folklore Quarterly

Wilson, Richard “‘Is this a holiday?’: Shakespeare’s Roman Carnival” 54:31-44
(Spring) 1987.

Winans, Robert “The Folk, the Stage, and the Five-String Banjo in the Nineteenth
Century” Journal of American Folklore 89:407-437 1976.

idem. “Black Instrumental Music Traditions in the Ex-Slave Narratives” Black Music
Research Newsletter 1:2-5 1982.

idem. “Early Minstrel Show Music 1843-1852” in Musical Theatre in America 71-97
Loney, Glenn ed. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1984.

Winter, Marian Hannah. “Juba and American Minstrelsy” in Chronicles of American
Dance ed. Paul Magriel. New York: Henry Holt, 1948

Woodward, Fredrick and Donnarae MacCann, “‘Huckleberry Finn’ and the Traditions of
Blackface Minstrelsy,” 91-103 in MacCann, Donnarae and Woodard, Gloria eds. The
Black American in Books for Children: Readings in Racism Metuchen: NJ. Scarecrow,
1985.

Yates, Norris. “Four Plantation Songs Noted by William Cullen Bryant” Southern
Folklore Quarterly

Books

Abrahams, Roger D. Singing the Master: The Emergence of African American Culture
in the Plantation South. New York: Pantheon, 1992.

Akpabot, Samuel Ekpe. Foundation of Nigerian Traditional Music. Ibadan: Spectrum
Books Ltd., 1986.

Allen, William Francis, Charles P. Ware, Lucy McKim Garrison. Slave Songs of the
United States New York: 1867.

Anderson, Hugh. Farewell to Old England: A Broadside History of Early Australia
Hatboro: Folklore Associates, 1964.

Arom, Simha. Polyphonies et Polyrythmies Intrumentales D’Afrique Centrale: Structure
et Methodologie. Paris: Societe D’Etudes Linguistiques et Antrhopologiques De France,
1985.

223

Barthemlemy, Anthony Gerard. Black Face, Maligned Race: The Representation of
Blacks in English Drama from Shakespeare to Southeme Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1987.

Barton, William E. Old Plantation Hymns Boston, 1899.

Beckwith, Martha Warren. J arnaica Folk-Lore New York: American Folk-Lore Society,
Volume XXI, 1928.

Behague, Gerard. “African Roots of Music in the Americas” International Musicologi-
cal Society Report, 1977 Berkeley California 53-113.

Blassingame, John. Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews
and Autobiographies Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977.

Bontemps, Arna and Langston Hughes. The Book of Negro Folklore
New York: Dodd, Mead, 1958.

Bracey, John H., August Meier, and Elliott Rudwick eds. Free Blacks in America 1800-
1860 Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing, 1971.

Branda-Lacerda, Marcos. Kultische Trommelmusik der Yoruba in der Volksrepublik
Benin Hamburg: Karl Deiter Wagner, 1988.

Brander, Michael. Scottish and Border Battles and Ballads New York: Clarkson N.
Potter, Inc. 1976.

Brody, David. The Fiddler’s Fakebook New York: Oak Publications, 1983.

Bronson, Bertrand Harris. The Ballad as Song Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1969.

Buckman, Susan Donna. “Dance in Denver’s Pioneer Theatre, 1859-1871.” Ph.D.
dissertation, 1984.

Bourgy, V. Le Bouffon Sur La Scene Anglaise Au XVI Siecle (c. 1495-1594) Paris:
1969.

Cames, Mark C. and Clyde Griffin eds. Meanings for Manhood: Construction of Mas-
culinity in Victorian America Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Cervantes, Miguel Saavedra. Commerce of Algiers in The Voyage to Parnassus,

Numantia (a tragedy); The Commerce of Algiers translated by Gordon Willoughby James
Gyll. London: Alex. Murray & Son, 1870.

224

Charters, Samuel. The Roots of the Blues: An African Search Boston: Marion Boyars,
1981.

Chemoff, John Miller. African Rhythm and African Sensibility; Aesthetics and Social
Action in African Musical Idioms Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.

Cobb, Buell. The Sacred Harp: A Tradition and Its Music Athens: University of Geor-
gia Press, 1978.

Coffin, Tristam. The British Traditional Ballad in North America
Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1950.

Cone, James H. The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpretation New York: Seabury
Press, 1972.

Courlander, Harold Negro Folk Music, USA. New York: Columbia University Press
1963.

Cowdery, James R. The Melodic Tradition of Ireland Kent: Kent Sate University press,
1990.

Cox, John H. Folk-Songs of the South: Collected Under the Auspices of the West Vir-
ginia Folk-Lore Society. Hatboro: Folklore Associates, 1963.

Curtis-Burlin, Natalie. Negro Folk Songs, Hampton Series New York: 1918-1919.
Dauncy, William. Ancient Scottish Melodies: “From a Manuscript of the Reign of King
James V1, with an Introductory Enquiry Illustrative of the History of the Music of Scot-
land.” Edinburgh: Maitland Club, no. 43, 1893.

Davis, Arthur Kyle. Traditional Ballads of Virginia: Collected Under the Auspices of the
Virginia Folk-lore Society. Charlottesville: University of Virginia press, 1929.

Davis, Ronald L. The History of Music in American Life Volume H: The Gilded Years,
1865-1920.

Davidson, Frank Costellow. “The Rise, Development, Decline and Influence of the
American Minstrel Show” Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1952.

Dennison, Sam. Scandalize My Name: Black Imagery in American Popular Music.
New York: Garland Publishing, 1982.

Densmore, Frances. Teton Sioux Music Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology,
Bulletin 61, 1918.

225

Denyer, Ralph, Alastair M. Crawford and Isaac Guillory. The Guitar Handbook New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.

Dewhurst, Kurt C. and Yvonne R. Lockwood, eds. Michigan Folklife Reader East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1987.

Dormon, James, H. Theater in the Ante Bellum South, 1815-1861. Chapel Hill: Univer-
sity of North Carolina Press, 1967.

Duarte, Maria Da Luz Teixeira. Catalogo de Insrumentos Musicais de Mocambique E.
Antiguidades: Na Tipografia, 1980.

Edwards, Charles L. Bahama Songs and Stories: A Contribution to Folk-Lore New
York: Memoirs of The American Folk-Lore Society, Volume HI, 1895.

Engle, Gary D. This Grotesque Essence: Plays from the American Minstrel Stage Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1978.

Eno Belinga, Martin Samuel. Decouverte Des Chatefables: Beti, Bulu, Fang Du
Cameroun Paris: Editions Klincksieck, 1970.

Epstein, Dena. Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War Chi-
cago: University of Illinois Press, 1977.

Fabry, Pamela, Robbin Henderson, Adam David Miller, and Janette Faulkner. Ethnic
Notions: Black Images in the White Mind: An Exhibition of Afro-American Stereotype
and Caricature from the Collection of Janette Faulkner Berkeley: Berkeley Art Center,
1982.

Fenner, Thomas P. Cabin and Plantation Songs. New York: 1874.

Foner, Philip S. American Labor Songs of the Nineteenth Century. Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1975.

Four Fugitive Slave Narratives Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1969.

Friedman, Daniel and Bruce A. McConachie. Theatre for Working-Class Audiences in
the United States. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985.

Genovese, Eugene. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made New York: Ran-
dom House, 1972.

Glen, John. Early Scottish Melodies Edinburgh: J. & R. Glen, North Bank Street, 1900.

226

Guntharp, Matthew G. Learning the Fiddler’s Ways University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1980.

Hallowell, Emily. Calhoun Plantation Songs Boston: 1907
Hamm, Charles. Yesterdays: Popular Song In America New York: W.W. Norton, 1979.

Harlow, Alvin F. Old Bowery Days: The Chronicles of a Famous Street. New York: D.
Appleton & Co., 1931.

Harris, Joel Chandler. Seven Tales of Uncle Remus ed. by Thomas H. English. Atlanta:
Emory University, 1948.

idem. Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings New York: Appleton-Century, 1880.

idem. Nights with Uncle Remus: Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation New York:
Houghton and Mifflin Co., 1881.

idem. Told by Uncle Remus: New Stories of the Old Plantation New York: McClure,
Phillips & Co., 1903.

Hodge, Francis. Yankee Theatre: The Image of America on the Stage, 1825-1850.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964.

Hunt, Lynn. The New Cultural History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

Jabbour, Alan. ed. and arm. American Fiddle Tunes from the Archives of Folk Song
Washington DC: Music Division, Library of Congress, 1971.

Jackson, Bruce. ed. The Negro and His Folklore in N ineteenth-Century Periodicals
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1867.

Jackson, George Pullen. White and Negro Spirituals: Their Life Span and Kinship New
York: J. J. Augustin, 1943.

Jackson, Irene ed. More Than Dancing: Essays on Afro-American Music and Musicians
Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985.

J aner—Christ, Albert, Charles W. Hughes and Carleton Sprague Smith. American Hymns
Old and New New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.

Jekyll, Walter. Jamaican Song and Story. London, 1907.

Jones, Louisa E. Sad Clowns and Pale Pierrots: Literature and the Popular Comic Arts
in 19th-Century France Lexington: French Forum, 1984.

227

Kebede Ashenafi Roots of Black Music: The Vocal, Instrumental and Dance Heritage of
Africa and Black America Englewood Cliffs: Prentice hall, 1982.

Keil, Charles. Tiv Song Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.

Kikiprowetzky, Tolia. La Musique Dans La Vie Office de Radio Television Francaise,
1969, 1967.

King, Anthony. Yoruba Sacred Music from Ekiti. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press,
1961.

Kingth, Roderic Copley. Mandinka J aliya: Professional Music of Gambia Volume H
Los Angeles: University of California, Ph.D. dissertation, 1973.

Kinser, Sam. Rabelais’s Carnival: Text, Context, Metatext. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1990.

Krehbiel, Henry. Afro-American Folksongs: A Study in Racial and National Music
New York: Frederick Ungar, 1914.

Lapp, Rudolph. Blacks in Goldrush California New York: Yale University Press, 1977.

Laws, G. Malcolm. Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographi-
cal Syllabus Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1964.

Levine, Lawrence. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk
thought From Slavery To Freedom New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Lovell, John Jr. Black Song: The Forge and the Flame: The Story of How the Afro-
American Spiritual Was Hammered Out. New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1972.

Marques, Belo Musica Negra: Estudos do Folclore Tonga Agencia Geral Das Colonias,
1943

Mason, Redfem. The Song Lore of Ireland: Erin’s Story in Music and Verse New
York: The Baker and Taylor Co., 1911.

McIllhenny, Edward Avery, Befo’ de War Spirituals. Boston: 1933.
Merriam, Alan P. African Music In Perspective New York: Garland, 1982.

Miller, Perry. The New England Mind: From Colony to Province Cambridge: Belknap
Press, 1951.

228

Murphy, Jeannette Robinson, Southern Thoughts for Northern Thinkers New York:
Bandanna Publishing Co., 1904.

Nathan, Hans. Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy Norman: Univer-
sity of Oklahoma Press, 1962.

Nketia, J. H. Kwabena. The Music of Africa New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
idem. Preparatory Exercise in African Rhythm Legon: Institute 0 African Studies, 0

Oakley, Giles. The Devil’s Music: A History of the Blues New York: Taplinger Co.,
1977.

O, Canainn, Tomas. Traditional Music in Ireland London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1978.

Odell, George C. Annals of the New York Stage New York: Columbia University
Press, 1927-49.

O’Farrell, Patrick. England and Ireland since 1800 Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1975.

Oliver, Paul. Savannah Syncopators: African Retentions in the Blues New York: Stein
& Day, 1970.

idem. Songsters and Saints: Vocal Traditions on Race Records Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984.

O’Neill, Francis. Irish Folk Music: A Fascinating Hobby Darby: Norwood Editions,
197 3.

Parrish, Lydia. Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands New York: Creative Age Press,
1942.

Parsons, Elsie Clews. Folk-Lore of the Sea Islands, South Carolina New York: Ameri-
can Folk-Lore Society, Volume, XVI, 1923.

idem. Folk-Tales of Andros Island, Bahamas New York: American Folk-Lore Society,
Volume XI, 1918.

idem. Folk-Lore of the Antilles, French and English Part 1 New York: American Folk-
Lore Society, Volume XXVI, 1933.

Phillips, Ekundayo. Yoruba Music (African) Fusion of Speech and Music
Johannesburg: African Music Society, 1953.

229

Piersen, William D. Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture
in Eighteenth-Century New England Amherst: University 0 Massachusetts Press, 1988.

Place, Jeff. comp. The Whole Folkways Catalogue Washington DC: Office of Folklife
Programs, Smithsonian Institution, 1991

Powne Michael, Ethiopian Music, an Introduction: A Survey of Ecclesiastical and
Secular Ethiopian Music and Instruments London: Oxford University Press, 1968.

Rabelais, Francois. The Complete Works of Rabelais: The Five Books of Gargantua and
Pantagruel translated by Jacques Le Clercq. New York: Random House, 1936.

Riggs, Marlon. Ethnic Notions (Video-recording) San Francisco: California Newsreel,
1986.

Roach, Hildred. Black American Music: Past and Present Boston: Crescendo, 1973.
Roberts, John Storm. Black Music of Two Worlds New York: Praeger, 1972.

Russell, William Howard. My Diary North and South New York: Harper & Brothers,
[1863].

Sablosky, Irving. What They Heard: Music in America, 1852-1881. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1986.

Sallee, Pierre. Deux Etudes Sur la Musiqque Du Gabon Paris, O.R.S.T.O.M., 1978.

Salvador-Daniel, Francisco. Musique et Instruments de Musique du Maghreb Paris: La
Boite a Documents, 1986.

Sanjek, Russell. American Popular Music and Its Business: The First Four Hundred
Years v. H, From 1790-1909. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Scarborough, Dorothy. On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1925.

Schwartz, Jerome. Irony and Ideology in Rabelais: Structures of Subversion Cambridge:
Cambridge University press, 1990.

Shakespeare, William. Othello ed. by M. R. Ridley. London; New York, Methuen,
1974.

Shaw, Margaret Ray. Folksongs and Folklore of South Uist London: Oxford University
Press, 1977.

230

Slobin, Mark. Old Jewish Folk Music: The Collections and Writings of Moshe
Beregovski Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.

Sobel, Mechal. The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eigh-
teenth-Century Virginia Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.

Southern Eileen. Readings in Black American Music New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
197 1 .

idem. The Music of Black Americans: A History. New York: W.W. Norton, 1971.

Stansell, Christine. City of Women: Sex and Class in New York 1789-1860. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1986.

Stephens, Walter. Giants in Those Days: Folklore, Ancient History and Nationalism.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.

Stockmann, Erich. Musikkulturen in Afrika Berlin: Verlag Neue Musik, 1987.

Talley, Thomas. Negro Folk Rhymes: Wise and Otherwise New York: MacMillan,
1922.

idem. Thomas Talley’s Negro Folk Rhymes: A New, Expanded Edition, with Music
ed. and arm. Charles K. Wolfe Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991.

Tawa, Nicholas. A Music for the Millions: Antebellum Democratic Attitudes and the
Birth of American Popular Music. New York: Pendragon Press, 1984.

Thomas, Jean. Ballad Makin’ in the Mountains of Kentucky New York: Henry Holt,
1939.

idem. Devil’s Ditties: Being Stories of the Kentucky Mountain People Chicago: W.
Wilbur Hatfield, 1931.

Thorp, Willard. Songs from the Restoration Theater New York: Da Capo Press, 1970.
Toll, Robert. Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Tracy, Hugh. “The Sound of Africa” Series of Long Playing Records Roodepoort:
International Library of African Music, 1963.

Tucker, A.N. Tribal Music and Dancing in the Southern Sudan (Africa), at Social and

Ceremonial Gatherings: A Descriptive Account of the Music, Rhythm etc, from Personal
Observation London: William Reeves, 1933.

231

Waterman, Richard Alan. African Patterns in Trinidad Negro Music Ph.D. Dissertation,
Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston Illinois, 1943.

Wheeler, Mary. Steamboatin’ Days: Folk Songs of the River packet Era. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1944.

Whisnant, David. All That is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American
Region, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983.

White, Newman 1. American Negro Folk-Songs Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1928.

Wilentz, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City & the Rise of the American Work-
ing Class, 1788-1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Wintermute, H. Ogden. Daniel Decatur Emmett Columbus: Heer Printing Company,
1904.

Work, John. American Negro Songs and Spirituals: A Comprehensive Collection of 230
Folk Songs, Religious and Secular, with a Foreword by John W. Work. New York:
Crown, 1940.

Wyeth, John. Wyeth’s Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second Harrisburg: John
Wyeth, 1820.

Bloomington Archives of Traditional Music
Courlander, Harold. 64-125-C ATL 5595
idem. Negro Folk Music of Alabama Folkways 4473 & 4474
Maultsby, Portia. 74-084-D ATL 6655-6663/ 6655, 6657, 6658.

idem. 75-180-C “African Demonstration Tape compiled by Portia Maultsby” EC
5663

Charters, Samuel. Roots of Black Music in America Folkways 2694
Side C

Band 1: Senegal, Wolof-Tara
Band 3: Kentucky, Banjo Instrumental

County Records “A Collection of Mountain Songs and Fiddle Music recorded 1927-
1930” ATL 6110

232

J abbour, Alan American Fiddle Tunes from the Archives of Folk Songs ATL 5058
Lomax, Alan. Afro-American Folk Music from Tate and Panola Counties, Mississippi
(Sound recording) ed. by David Evans.

Washington DC: Library of Congress, 1978. 88-010-C ATL 9800

Turner, Lorenzo. United States, Sea Islands, Gullah, 1932-1933 (Sound recording)
collected by Lorenzo D. Turner. 86-107-F ATL 9901-9913

233