Jimmy Crack Corn

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from The Blue Tail Fly)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Template:Short description Script error: No such module "For". Template:Multiple issues Template:Use mdy dates Script error: No such module "Infobox".Template:Template otherScript error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Template:Main other"Jimmy Crack Corn" or "Blue-Tail Fly" is an American song which first became popular during the rise of blackface minstrelsy in the 1840s through performances by the Virginia Minstrels. It regained currency as a folk song in the 1940s at the beginning of the American folk music revival and has since become a popular children's song. Over the years, several variants have appeared.

Most versions include some idiomatic African American English, although General American versions now predominate. The basic narrative remains intact. On the surface, the song is a black slave's lament over his white master's death in a horse-riding accident. The song, however, is also interpreted as having a subtext of celebration about that death and of the slave having contributed to it through deliberate negligence or even deniable action.[1][2][3][4]

Lyrics

Template:Too many examples

"Jim Crack Corn, or the Blue tail Fly" (1846)

Template:Poem quote

"De Blue Tail Fly, a Negro Song" (1846)

Template:Poem quote

"De Blue Tail Fly" was published by both Keith's Music HouseTemplate:Refn and Oliver Ditson[5] in Boston in 1846, but Eric Lott (citing Hans Nathan[6]) gives the version a date of 1844.[3] This probably refers to Christy's Minstrels' Ethiopian Glee Book, which has sometimes been mistakenly attributed to 1844; in fact, that series did not begin publishing until 1847 and did not include Christy's version of this song until its 1848 edition.[7][8]

"Jim Crack Corn" (1847)

Template:Poem quote

"Jim Crack Corn! I Don't Care." (1847)

Template:Poem quote

"Jim Crack Corn." (1848)

Template:Poem quote

Sometimes mistakenly attributed to 1844.Template:Refn With some minor change of punctuation, this is the version that was republished by Oliver Ditson in subsequent song books.[9]

"Blue Tailed Fly" (c. 1850)

Template:Poem quote

From Children of Destiny (1893)

Template:Poem quote

Melody

The melody is similar to "Miss Lucy Long" and was originally set for piano accompaniment,[1] although "De Blue Tail Fly" was marketed in Boston as one of "Emmett's Banjo Melodies".[10] The four-part chorus favors a single bass and three tenors: the first and third tenors harmonize in thirds with the second completes the triads or doubles the root, sometimes crossing the melody line.[1] The versions published in 1846 differed rather markedly: "De Blue Tail Fly" is modal (although Lhamar emends its B♭ notation to C minor) and hexatonic; "Jim Crack Corn", meanwhile, is in G major and more easily singable.[1] Its simplicity has made it a common beginner's tune for acoustic guitar.[11] The melody is a chain of thirds (G-B, F♯-A, G-B, [A]-C, B-D, C-E) harmonized a third above and below in the manner of the choruses in Italian opera.[1]

Meaning

The first verses usually establish that the singer was initially a house slave charged with protecting the master and his horse from "the blue-tailed fly."[12] This is possibly the blue bottle fly,Template:Refn but probably the mourning horsefly, a bloodsucking pest found throughout the American South.[13][14] He is unsuccessful, the horse begins to buck, and the master is thrown and killed. A coroner's jury is convened to investigate the master's death, or the singer is criminally charged with that deathScript error: No such module "Unsubst"., but the death is blamed on "the blue-tail fly" and the slave escapes culpability.

The chorus can be mystifying to modern listeners, but its straightforward meaning is that someone is roughly milling ("cracking") the old master's corn in preparation for turning it into hominyTemplate:Refn or liquor.[15] There has been much debate, however, over the subtext. In the 19th century, the singer was often considered mournful and despondent at his master's death; in the 20th, celebratory: "Jimmy Crack Corn" has been called "the baldest, most loving account of the master's demise" in American song.[3]

The debate has been further muddled by changes to the refrain over time. Throughout the 19th century, the lines referred to "Jim",[16] "Jim Crack",[17] or "Jim Crack Corn"Template:Refn and lacked any conjunction across the line's caesura; following the rise of highly-syncopated musical genres such as ragtime and jazz, anaptyxis converted the name to "Jimmy" or "Jimmie" and the "and" appeared, both putting more stress on their measures' backbeat. This has obscured some of the possible original meanings: some have argued that—as "Jim" was a generic name for slaves in minstrel songs—the song's "Jim" was the same person as its blackface narrator: Speaking about himself in the 3rd person or repeating his new masters' commands in apostrophe, he has no concern with his demotion to a field hand now that his old master is dead.

Another now-obscured possible meaning derives from jim crack being eye dialectTemplate:Refn for Template:Linktext ("worthless"[18][19]):Template:Refn The narrator is so overcome with emotion (be it pleasure or sorrow) that he has no concern at all about his gimcrack cracked corn, his substandard rations.[1] Since "corn" was also a common rural American ellipsis and euphemism for "corn whiskey",Template:Refn it could also refer to the slave being so overcome that he has no concern about his rotgut alcohol.[20] The 1811 Dictionary of Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose defines a jimcrack as a "spruce woman", so perhaps the lyric refers to the slave being so sad he doesn't have interest in an approaching beautiful woman.

Other suppositions include that "cracking" or "cracking corn" referred to the now-obsolete English and Appalachian slang meaning "to gossip" or "to sit around chitchatting";[21] that the singer is resting from his oversight duties and allowing Jim to steal corn or corn liquor; that "Jim Crack" is simply a synonym for "Jim Crow" by means of the dialectical "crack" to reference the crake; or that it is all code for the old master "Jim" cracking his "corn" (skull) open during his fall. The 1847 version of the song published in London singularly has the lyrics "Jim Crack comTemplate:'", which could refer to a poor Southern crackerTemplate:Refn (presumably an overseer or new owner) or a minced oath for Jesus Christ (thus referencing indifference at the Judgment Day); the same version explicitly makes the fly's name a wordplay on the earlier minstrel hit "Long Tail Blue", about a horse. A number of racehorses have been named "Jim Crack" or "Blue Tail Fly" and, in at least one early-20th century variant of the song, it's given as the name of the horse that killed the master,Template:Refn but that is not a common element of the song. (Another uncommon variant appeared in the 1847 Songs of Ireland published in New York: it has the slave being given away by the master.[22])

Explanations of the song based upon "jimmy" or "jimmie" being slaves' slang for crows or mules (here being allowed into the old master's corn fields instead of being chased away) or deriving "jimmy" from "gimme" are unsupported by the existing records. Pete Seeger, for instance, is said to have maintained that the original lyrics were "gimme cracked corn" and referred to a punishment in which a slave's bacon rations were curtailed, leaving him chickenfeed;[23]Template:Refn the same lines could also just be asking for the whiskey jug to be passed around. The idea that Jim or Jimmy is "cracking open" a jug of whiskey is similarly unsupported: that phrasal verb is attested at least as early as 1803[24] but initially applied to literal ruptures; its application to opening the cap or cork of a bottle of alcohol was a later development.

History

The present song is generally credited to Dan Emmett's Virginia Minstrels,[7] whose shows in New York City in the mid-1840s helped raise minstrelsy to national attention.[25] Along with "Old Dan Tucker", the tune was one of the breakout hits of the genre[26] and continued to headline Emmett's acts with Bryant's Minstrels into the 1860s.[25] It was also a common song of Tom Rice.[27] The song was first published (with two distinct sets of lyrics) in Baltimore and Boston in 1846, although it is sometimes mistakenly dated to 1844.[28] However, as with later rockabilly hits, it is quite possible Emmett simply received credit for arranging and publishing an existing African-American song.[8] The song was certainly picked up by slaves and became widely popular among them.[29] The chorus of the song not uncommonly appeared in the middle of other African-American folk songs, one of which may have been its original source.Template:Refn

The song differed from other minstrel tunes in long remaining popular among African Americans: it was recorded by both Big Bill Broonzy and Lead Belly after World War II.

Abraham Lincoln was an admirer of the tune, calling it "that buzzing song". Throughout the 19th century, it was usually accompanied by the harmonica or by humming which mimicked the buzzing of the fly (which on at least one occasion was noted disrupting the parliament of Victoria, Australia.[30]). Lincoln would ask his friend Ward Lamon to sing and play it on his banjo[31] and likely played along on his harmonica.[32] It is said that he asked for it to be played as the lead-in to his address at Gettysburg.[7][8]

Following World War II, the "Blue Tail Fly" was repopularized by the Andrews Sisters' 1947 recording with the folk singer Burl Ives. It then became part of the general Folk Revival through the '50s and early '60s before losing favor to more politically charged fare, as parodied by Tom Lehrer's "Folk Song Army". A 1963 Time article averred that "instead of ... chronicling the life cycle of the blue-tailed fly", the "most sought-after folk singers in the business"—including Pete Seeger, Theodore Bikel, and Bob Dylan—were "singing with hot-eyed fervor about police dogs and racial murder".[33] All the same, Seeger claimed to have been present when Alan LomaxTemplate:Refn first taught the song to Burl Ives for a CBS radio show[34] and their duet at the 92nd Street Y in New York City in 1993 was Ives' last public performance.[35]

The song has also occurred as instrumentals:

Seeger maintained that the song's subtext gave it a social justice element[23] but began (with 1953's American Folksongs for Children) to perform and market the work as a children's sing-along. Usually under the name "Jimmy Crack Corn", it remains common at campfires and summer camps.[27] It is also sampled in a number of rap songs—including Tuff Crew and Eminem's compositions (both titled "Jimmy Crack Corn")—playing on the present usage of "crack".

In popular culture

A commercial for Cingular Wireless in December 2006 raised some controversy when a character having a conversation with "Jim" begins referring to him by every nickname he can think of including Jimmy Crack Corn. Following "a half dozen complaints", Cingular edited out the sequence.[40]

See also

References

Template:Reflist

External links

Template:Slave narrative Template:Burl Ives Template:Authority control

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Mahar, William J. Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture, pp. 234 ff. University of Illinois Press (Champaign), 1999.
  2. ↑ Harris, Middleton & al. The Black Book, 35th ann. ed., p. 32. Random House (New York), 2009.
  3. ↑ a b c Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, pp. 199–200. Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1993. Template:ISBN.
  4. ↑ Friedman, Alfred B. (ed.). The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English Speaking World cited in "Jimmy Crack..." at Mudcat.org. Template:Webarchive
  5. ↑ "De Blue Tail Fly. A Negro Song." Oliver Ditson (Boston), 1846. Hosted in Pre-1852 Minstrel Songs at Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture at the University of Virginia. Accessed July 1, 2014.
  6. ↑ Nathan, Hans. Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy, pp. 429–431. University of Oklahoma Press (Norman), 1962.
  7. ↑ a b c Place, Jeff & al. "Blue Tail Fly" (liner notes). Template:Webarchive American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 1. Smithsonian Folkways, 2002.
  8. ↑ a b c Fuld, James J. The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk, 5th ed., p. 312. Dover Publications (New York), 2000.
  9. ↑ Minstrel Songs, Old and New, a Collection of World-Wide, Famous Minstrel and Plantation Songs, Including the Most Popular of the Celebrated Foster Melodies; Arranged with Piano-Forte Accompaniment, p. 211. Oliver Ditson (Boston), 1882.
  10. ↑ The Boston Musical Gazette, Vol. I: 1846, p. 62: "New Music by C.H. Keith". A.N. Johnson (Boston), 1846.
  11. ↑ John Pearse's 1963 Teach Yourself Folk Guitar, e.g., uses the tune as its first two lessons, on tuning the guitar and performing basic scratch.
  12. ↑ The Traditional Ballad Index: "[2] The Blue Tail Fly [Laws I19]]".
  13. ↑ Script error: No such module "Citation/CS1".
  14. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  15. ↑ See, e.g, Foote, Elmer. Elmer L. Foote Lantern Slide Collection. "Corn Cracking (Step in Moonshine) Template:Webarchive". c. 1915.
  16. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named virmin
  17. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named jcc1847
  18. ↑ Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "gimcrack, n. and adj." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1899.
  19. ↑ Farmer, John & al. Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present, Vol. III: Fla–Hyps. 1893.
  20. ↑ Kroes, John. Cracked. "5 Terrifying Origin Stories Behind Popular Children's Songs". 21 Sept 2012. Accessed 6 Jul 2014.
  21. ↑ Adams, Cecil. The Straight Dope. "Who is Jimmy, and why does he crack corn?" 30 Oct 1998. Accessed 6 Jul 2014.
  22. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named eire
  23. ↑ a b Peterson, Pete. "RE: Jimmy Crack Corn and I Don't Care" on Mudcat. Accessed January 2, 2006.
  24. ↑ Mitchill, Samuel & al. The Medical Repository, and Review of American Publications on Medicine, Surgery, and the Auxiliary Branches of Science, Vol. VI. T. & Y. Swords (New York), 1803.
  25. ↑ a b "Dan Emmett" in The Encyclopedia of New York City, 2nd ed.
  26. ↑ Hi Fi/Stereo Review, Vol. 18, p. 55. Ziff-Davis, 1967.
  27. ↑ a b Lhamon, W.T. Jr. Jump Jim Crow: Lost Plays, Lyrics, and Street Prose of the First Atlantic Popular Culture, p. 21. Harvard University Press (Cambridge), 2003.
  28. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named cite
  29. ↑ Adler, Mortimer J. The Negro in American History, Vol. III: "Slaves and Masters, 1567—1854", p. 52. Encyclopædia Britannica, 1969.
  30. ↑ Victoria. Parliamentary Debates, Vol. XXXII: Session 1879–80, p. .1961: "November 25, 1879". John Ferres (Melbourne), 1880.
  31. ↑ Wright, John. The Language of the Civil War, p. 35: "Blue Tail Fly". Greenwood Publishing.
  32. ↑ Erbsen, Wayne. Front Porch Songs, Jokes, & Stories: 48 Great Southern Sing-Along Favorites, p. 10. 1993.
  33. ↑ "They Hear America Singing Template:Webarchive" in Time. July 19, 1963. Accessed July 2, 2014.
  34. ↑ Seeger, Peter. American Favorite Ballads. Music Sales (New York), 1961.
  35. ↑ Holden, Stephen. "The Cream of Folk, Reunited for a Cause" in The New York Times, C 15. May 19, 1993.
  36. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  37. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  38. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  39. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  40. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
Retrieved from "http://debianws.lexgopc.com/wiki143/index.php?title=Jimmy_Crack_Corn&oldid=1863705"