Brown Collection- XII. Blackface Minstrel and Secular Negro Songs

Brown Collection- Blackface Minstrel and Negro Secular Songs

[In the sections that have many songs- this one has over 100- I've attached individual song pages to this page. The individual songs appear on the left hand column below this page- click to open.]

XII. BLACKFACE MINSTREL AND NEGRO SECULAR SONGS (Contents)

404. Cindy 482

405. Dearest Mae 485

406. Massa Had a Yaller Gal 487

407. Nelly Bly 488

408. Oh, Susanna! 488

409. Nancy Till 491

410. Miss Julie Ann Glover 492

411. Kitty Wells 492

412. Ella Rhee 494

413. Clare de Kitchen 494

414. Jim Crack Corn 496

415. Lynchburg Town 498

416. My Long Tail Blue 502

417. My Ole Mistus Promised Me 502

418. Old Zip Coon 503

419. Camptown Races 504

420. Uncle Ned 505

421. Way Down on the Old Peedee 506

422. Shinbone Alley 507

423. Some Folks Say that a Niggkk Won't Steal 508

424. The Happy Coon 510

425. The Preacher and the Bear 511

426. I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago 512

427. Have a Little Banjo Beating 514

428. The Traveling Coon 515

429. The Voodoo Man 516

430. Ain't Gonna Rain No More 517

431. Ain't Got to Cry No More 519

432. Boil Them Cabbage Down

433. Broder Eton Got de Coon

434. Chicken

435. The Dummy Line

436. Eliza Jane (1)

437. Eliza Jane (II)

438. Everybody's Gal Is My Gal

439. Go 'Way from My Window

440. Here Lies de Body uv To' Little Ben

441. I'm Going Down the Road Feeling Bad

442. Could'n Live Bedoit de Flowers

443. I'd Rather Be Dead

444. If You Want to Go to Heaven

445. Had a Banjo Made of Gold

446. If You Meet a Woman in the Morning

447. If You Don't Believe I'm Sinking

448. Got a Girl

449. I'm Gwine Away to Georgia

450. Yaller Gal

451. Went Down to My Gul's House Las' Night

452. Mama Don't Allow No Low Down Hanging
Around

453. Negro Yodel Song

454. Oh, Dat Watermilion

455. One More River to Cross

456. Po' Liza Jane

457. Run, Nigger, Run

458. Sally Went to Preachin'

459. Saturday Night and Sunday Too

460. She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain

461. Short'nin' Bread

462. Sing Polly Wolly Doodle

463. Stick My Head in a Paper Sack

464. That's Where My Money Goes

465. There Was a Watermelon

466. Train . . . Run So Fast

467. Two Little Niggers Black as Tar

468. Watermelon Hanging on the Vine

469. Way Down Yonder on Cedar Street

470. What You Gwina Do When the World's on Fire?

471. Jigger, Rigger, Bumbo

472. Guinea Negro Song

473. White Folks Go To College 

474. Cold Frosty Morning

475. Hung My Bucket on de White I'oi.ks' Fence

476. White Folks in the Parlor

477. White Gal, Yaller Gal, Black Gal 544

478. You Shall Be Free 547

479. Old Bee Makes de Honey Comb 548

480. Hard Times 549

481. Don't Like a Rich White Man Nohow 549

482. Sugar Babe 550

483. Rich Man Rides on a Pullman Car 551

484. I Don't Like a Nigger 551

485. Shady Grove 552

486. Fair Brown 553

487. Old Aunt Dinah 554

488. Apple Sauce and Butter 554

489. When I Die Don't Wear No Black 554

490. Rain Come Wet Me 555

491. We'll Have a Little Dance Tonight. Boys 555

492. Way Down Below 555

493. Railroad Dinah Gal 556

494. If I Had It You Could Get It 556

495. If I Die in Tennessee 557

496. Jinger Blue 557

497. Mammy in the Kitchen 558

498. I've Bin to the 'Bama and I Just Got Back 558

499. Raise a Ruckus Tonight 558

500. Georgia Buck 560

501. You've Got Your Big Gun, and I've Got Mine 562

502. Went Down Town 562

503. Standing on de Street Doin' No Harm 562

504. A Thirty-Two Special on a Forty-Four Frame 562

505. The California Blues 563

506. Oh! When a Man Get the Blues 563

507. I Got de Hezotation Stockings and de Hezotation Shoes 564

508. It's Raining Here 564

509. Nigger in the Woodpile 565

510. Share 'Em 565

511. The Preacher Song 565

512. Johnson's Mule 566

513. The Kicking Mule 567

514. The Billy Goat 568
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XII. BLACKFACE MINSTREL AND NEGRO SECULAR SONGS


THE GREAT MAJORITY of the contributors to the Frank C.  Brown Collection are white people. The number of direct communications from Negroes is small. Most of the songs designated  as from Negroes have passed through a medium of transmission at one remove or more from actual singing. Many songs, it is true,  were taken down directly from Negro informants; but many, also, were obtained from white people who had learned them from other  white people who regarded them as Negro songs. In this process  there was doubtless a good deal of unconscious "editing." In many  instances there has been no certain indication whetlier a piece that  sounds like a Negro song was certainly of Negro origin or tradition. Dialect is no sure criterion, for the speech of illiterate Southern whites is often indistinguishable from that of illiterate Southern Negroes; and educated or half-educated Southerners when they report the songs or sayings of a Negro informant usually try to do  so in a language that they imagine to be that of the Negro. Moreover, though there are, between the races, some differences in taste  for certain types of songs — the whites liking the older ballads better,  the Negroes showing a preference for the spirituals — yet folk song  in the South is shared on fairly equal terms between the two races.  For these reasons, if for no other, the editors of this book have  never thought of the Jim Crow law as applying to their labors.

Thus, we have already included in previous sections — notably  among the American ballads, the lullaby and nursery songs, the  bird, beast, and fish jingles, and the work songs — numerous songs  from, by, and about Negroes. In the last section, "Religious Songs,"  perhaps half of the pieces have the same provenience. Without thought of racial differentiation, we have so placed them, on the  principles of formal, thematic, and functional classification, as the  songs of the people of North Carolina.

The reason for the following separate section grows out of the  nature of the contents. It is a historic fact that "Negro song" has  a definitive significance. Apart from the classes of songs mentioned  above, there is a large body of songs popularly supposed to be about  Negroes as Negroes or to interpret Negro life as such. They are regarded as rertictim;- specific racial traits, tastes, habits, preoccupations, prejudices, and attitudes, tliat are traditionally attributed to Negroes, whether they are genuinely Negro or only aspects of the white man's notions about Negroes.

Certainly the first cluster of the songs below are the white man's  interpretation of the Negro. These are the old blackface minstrel favorites. Most of them are directly traceable to the minstrel show, which first discovered the Negro as a subject for popular art in the 1840s and continued to be a universal purveyor of entertainment all over the United States and even to the cities of the British Isles, until the movie drove it out of business about the time of World War I. The earliest burnt-cork hits often developed out of a kernel of genuine folk song, as, for instance, the Jim Crow songs. But the new song genre soon became stylized. Two of Stephen C. Foster's compositions, 'Oh, Susannah' and 'Nelly Ely,' have firmly established themselves in North Carolina folk tradition, and so have two others in nmch the same mode, though by different authors, 'Dearest Mae' and 'Kitty Wells.' 'Cindy,' 'Nancy Till,' 'Ella Rhee,' 'Miss Julie Ann Glover,' and 'Massa Had a Yaller Gal' are further examples of songs about or to girls. These dusky darlings with the pretty names and the sad or comic airs and words, sung around the cottage organ or by the parlor fireside or on the moonlit "front gallery," are a part of the sentimental heritage of most "Southern-raised" people. There is a corresponding group of songs about the "old" men — 'Jim Crack Corn.' 'Old Zip Coon,' and 'Uncle Ned.' 'Clare de Kitchen,' 'Run Nigger Run,' and 'Some Folks Say That a Nigger Won't Steal' also come down from the old minstrel repertories. 'Ain't Got to Cry No More,' 'The Happy Coon.' 'The Traveling Coon,' and 'The Voodoo Man' smack of later provenience.

The rest of the songs in this section are of mixed origins and treat a variety of themes. Many sound like genuine Negro utterances ; some show the minstrel or vaudeville touch. All of them. perhaps, belong to the class designated by Professor White as social songs. There are snatches about a variety of comestibles supposed to be specially favored by Negroes, though many white men would put in their claim for these delicacies and would certainly join in lyrical praise of them — cabbage, chicken, cornbread and molasses, hambone, short'nin' bread, and watermelons. The "mixed disturbance and delight" of woman is the burden of 'Eliza Jane' (two songs), 'Po' 'Liza Jane,' 'Everybody's Gal Is My Gal,' 'I'd Rather Be Dead,' and a dozen more. 'Shady Grove' and some versions of 'Raise a Ruckus Tonight' are keyed to a holiday mood. Brushes with the law or plans likely to involve collisions with it occasion such pieces as Standin' on de Street Doin' No Harm, "Shoot Your Dice and Have Your Fun,' and a puzzling version of 'Raise a Ruckus 'Tonight.' Race feeling is clearly implied or directly expressed in more than a dozen pieces. 'Guinea Negro Song' and 'Jigger Rigger Bumbo' tersely but vigorously protest the injustices of slavery. A much larger number, like 'White Folks Go to College' and its variants, the white gal — yaller gal — black gal complex, 'Old Bee Make the Honey Comb,' and 'You Shall Be Free,' the last named beginning with —

A nigger and a wiiite man playing seven up;
The nigger won the money and he's 'fraid to pick it up —

briefly but pungently illustrate racial discrimination. Special types are exemplified by 'Negro Yodel Song,' 'Old Aunt Dinah,' a "shout" or "hollow," and 'California Blues.' One of the blues snatches is epigrammatic:

Oh! when a man gets the blues,
He boards a train and rides.
Oh ! when a woman get the blues,
She ducks her head and cries.