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Nelly Bly
American, "Sand Jig" (4/4 or 2/4 time). USA, Michigan; Words and music by Stephen Foster, 1826-1864.
ARTIST: Source: pages 93-34 of "Biography, Songs and Musical Compositions of Stephen C. Foster" by Morrison Foster, (Pittsburg: 1896; AMS Press, New York: 1977)
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes; DATE: 1850;
RECORDING INFO: Hickory Wind. At the Wednesday Night Waltz, Adelphi AD 2002, LP (1974), cut# 10a . Keys, Will. Evergreen, Cloudlands CLC 006, Cas (1992), cut# 15. Waldron, Betty. 49th Annual Galax Old Fiddlers Convention, Heritage (Galax) 700, LP (1985), cut# 2;
OTHER NAMES: Similar melody to Pierce and King;
SOURCES: G Major (Kerr): C Major (Shaw): D Major (Johnson, Sweet).
NOTES: G Major (Kerr): C Major (Shaw): D Major (Johnson, Sweet). Standard. AAB (Kerr): AABB (Johnson, Shaw, Sweet). "Nelly Bly," a song by Stephen Foster, danced her way on stage with Christy's Minstrels in 1850 and remained a popular favorite for many years. One can imagine it as a song for two kitchen maids (the chorus is set for only two female voices) who sing and play the banjo as they attend their chores of sweeping, stoking the fire and preparing food. "Nelly Bly" is just as much a comic songs as it is loving tribute. Nelly may very well have represented someone in Foster's boyhood experience. The song was a big hit from the beginning. The publisher, Firth and Pond, wrote September 22, 1851, "Nelly Bly goes like hot cakes."
Stephen Collins Foster (born 4 Jul 1826; died 13 Jan 1864) was the son of William Barcley Foster (born: 7 Sep 1779; died 27 Jul 1855) and Elisa Clayland [Tomlinson] Foster (born: Jan 1788; died Jan 1855) who were married in 1807. He had three sisters (Charlotte Susanna, Ann Eliza, and Henrietta) and four brothers (James [who died in infancy], Dunning McNair, Morrison and William). In 1850, he married Jane Denny McDowell.
Among his most popular songs are: Oh! Susanna (1848), De Campton Races (1850), Old Folks at Home [aka Swanee River] (1851), My Old Kentucky Home, Good-Night! (1853), Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair (1854), Gentle Annie (1856), Beautiful Dreamer (1862), and The Voices That Are Gone (1865).
Elizabeth (Cochrane) Seaman, AKA “Nelly Bly” (who took her name from the Stephen Foster song) was a famous muck-raking reporter in the latter 19th century for the New York newspaper The World. In 1889 the paper sent her on a round-the-world trip where she journeyed for 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes by train, ship, rickshaw and burro. Born at Cochrao Mills, Pennsylvania, she was educated at home and at school in Indiana until her family moved to Pittsburgh in 1881. She got her first job in journalism after sending an impassioned letter to the Pittsburgh Dispatch in response to an article, 'What Girls are Good For', which restricted women to housework and family. She wrote a series on working girls, before becoming Society and Arts Editor. Her pseudonym was taken from a popular Stephen Foster song.
In 1887 she went to Mexico with her mother and sent back a series of articles on social conditions there, collected in Six Months in Mexico ( (1885)). On her return she moved to the New York World, and her exposé of the treatment of the insane (Ten Days in a Mad-House), was achieved by getting herself committed to the asylum at Blackwell's Island. She also wrote stories on slum life, sweat-shops, and minor crime using the same undercover techniques. She achieved world fame in 1890 when her editor sent her on a world tour, attempting to beat the fictional 80-day record of Jules Verne's Phineas Fogg. Nelly took only 72 days, travelling by boat, train and horse, stopping en route to interview Verne in France and describing her adventures in Nelly Bly's Book: Around the World in Seventy-two Days (1890).
In 1895 she married an elderly tycoon, Robert Seaman, 50 years her senior. He died in 1904 and she tried to run his business, but lengthy lawsuits with corrupt employees absorbed most of her fortune. She returned to journalism in 1919, but was less successful; at her death she was working for the New York Journal.
The Nelly Bly song entered minstrel tradition; Scott gives it as "one of the 'Negro' songs sung by the troupes which followed (in England) in the wake of the Ethiopian Serenaders."
Here are the original minstrel lyrics to Nelly Bly from Stephen Foster:
1.
Nelly Bly! Nelly Bly!
Bring de broom along,
We'll sweep de kitchen clean, my dear,
And hab a little song.
Poke de wood, my lady lub,
And make de fire burn,
And while I take de banjo down,
Just gib de mush a turn.
CHORUS
Heigh! Nelly, Ho! Nelly, listen lub, to me,
I'll sing for you, play for you, a dulcem melody.
Heigh! Nelly, Ho! Nelly, listen lub, to me,
I'll sing for you, play for you, a dulcem melody.
2.
Nelly Bly hab a voice
Like de turtle dove,
I hears it in de meadow,
And I hears it in de grove:
Nelly Bly hab a heart
Warm as cup ob tea,
And bigger dan de sweet potatoe
Down in Tennessee.
(CHORUS)
3.
Nelly Bly shuts her eye
When she goes to sleep,
When she wakens up again
Her eye-balls 'gin to peep:
De way she walks, she lifts her foot,
And den she brings it down,
And when it lights der's music dah
In dat part ob de town.
(CHORUS)
4.
Nelly Bly! Nelly Bly!
Neber, nebber sigh,
Nebber bring de tear-drop
To de corner ob your eye,
For de pie is made ob punkins
And de mush is made of corn,
And der's corn and punkins plenty, lub,
A lyin' in de barn.
(CHORUS)
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