|
BLUE-TAILED FLY/Jim Crack Corn
Breakdown and song tune by Daniel Decatur Emmett;
ARTIST: Brown Collection of NC Folklore;
Listen: Leadbelly; Blue-Tail Fly
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes; DATE: 1844;
RECORDING INFO: Pete Seeger, "Jim Crack Corn" (on PeteSeeger03, PeteSeegerCD03); "The Blue Tail Fly" (on PeteSeeger17). Molsky, Bruce; and Big Hoedown. Bruce Molsky and Big Hoedown, Rounder 0421, CD (1997), cut#15; Cooney, Michael. Steamboat Coming, National Geographic Soc. 07787, LP (1976), cut# 13; Gellert, Dan. American Fogies. Vol. 1, Rounder 0379, CD (1996), cut#12; Ives, Burl. Burl Ives, Vol. 3, Decca DL 5093, LP (195?), cut#A.04; Ives, Burl. Burl Ives Sings for Fun, Decca DL 8248, LP (195?), cut#A.07; Kincaid, Bradley. Mountain Ballads and Old Time Solos. Album Number Three, Bluebonnet BL 109, LP (1963), cut#B.01; McCoy, Paul (B.). Allegheny Trails, Jewel LPS 504, LP (1975), cut#B.01; North Fork Ramblers. Gee Ain't It Grand, Fretless FR 140, LP (1979), cut#B.03; Okun, Milt. America's Best Loved Folk Songs, Baton BL 1293, LP (1957), B.08; Parker, Chet. Hammered Dulcimer, Folkways FA 2381, LP (1966), cut# 1c; Parker, Chet. Hammered Dulcimer, Folkways FA 2381, LP (1966), cut# 1d; Stracke, Win. Songs of Early Times, Early Times, LP (1961), cut#A.05
OTHER NAMES: Jim Crack Corn; Jimmie Crack Corn; Gimme Cracked Corn (Perhaps “Jimmie Crack Corn” is dervived from Give Me (Gimme) Cracked Corn (Whiskey).
SOURCES: Lomax-FSNA 267, "The Blue-Tail Fly" Native American Balladry, Amer. Folklore Society, Bk (1964), p256; Laws I19, "The Blue-Tail Fly"; Friedman, p. 453, "The Blue-Tail Fly"; RJackson-19CPop, pp. 91-92, "Jim Crack Corn or the Blue Tail Fly"; Arnett, p. 66, "Jim Crack Corn (Blue-Tail Fly)"; Botkin-SoFolklr, p. 709, "The Blue-Tail Fly"; PSeeger-AFB, p. 12, "The Blue-Tail Fly"; Silber-FSWB, p. 30, "The Blue-Tail Fly"; Fuld-WFM, p. 312, "Jim Crack Corn"
NOTES: Same chorus as "Shoo Fly". Credited to Daniel Emmett by Spaeth but it’s likely that if he wrote it from other sources. One of the earliest publications was in a series credited to him -- but the absence of his name on the earliest copies goes far toward discrediting his authorship. The subtext for this song is that the slave in fact killed the master himself, blaming it on the blue-tail fly. This is hinted at, to varying degrees, in some versions of the song.
CRACK CORN? The Civil War song, Jimmy Cracked Corn, was one of Abe Lincoln's favorite songs! However, in the song, Jimmy wasn't really cracking corn. He was sleeping, and "cracking corn" was another term for snoring.
"Jimmy Crack Corn" was slang for "gimme cracked corn" or corn liquor. "Jimcrack o' corn and I don't care" "Jimcrack" is a measure of whiskey.
"Cracking corn" for telling jokes or tall tales: "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless bunch of rascals on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode. G. Cochrane, 1766, in "Letters," 27 June. OED; The term comes from the Scottish-northern English word crack (crake), meaning boasting, which has been used in that sense from 1460 in print. See OED, 1971 and later eds. Georgia apparntly was first called the Cracker State in print in 1808, in "Balance," Verses by a Cracker Planter.
According to "The Cassel Dictionary of Slang" "Crack-Corn" referred to White People and originally meant the White natives of Kentucky. It was apparently a variation of "corncracker" which meant a poor white farmer and was apparently applied to the natives of Florida, Georgia, Kentucky or Tennessee possibly because of their dependance on corn or maize. Corn in the British Isles refers to wheat, oats or barley as distinct from the American meaning. (From Mudcat Discussion Forum)
414 Jim Crack Corn- Brown Collection
This is one of the best-known of the minstrel songs of the last century, and has become more or less a traditional song. See Mrs. Steely 165 (1935). Miss Scarborough (TNFS 201-3) reports a text from Virginia almost identical with our A text. In this form it is also known as 'The Blue-Tail Fly.' But the tune and the chorus, very singable, have attracted fragments of other songs so that sometimes — as in texts C. D, E below — only the chorus of the original song is left. Alfred Williams in FSUT 178 gives a text which he says was "popular about the Thames Valley."
'Jim Crack Corn.' Contributed by K. P. Lewis of Durham in 1915. It lacks the opening stanza of the version mentioned in the headnote above, and adds an alien stanza — but one quite famihar in other connections — at the end.
1 Den arter dinner massa sleep.
He bid dis *feller vigil keep ;
And when he gwine to shut his eye
He tell me watch the blue-tailed fly.
Chorus:
Jim crack corn, I don't care,
Jim crack corn, I don't care,
Jim crack corn, I don't care,
Old massa's gone away.
2 When he rides in the afternoon
I follow him with a hickory broom.
The pony being very shy
When bitten by the blue-tailed fly.
'In the manuscript the chorus is indicated only by the first three words; doubtless as being too well known to need writing out in full.
One day he ride an inn' the farm,
The flies so numerous they did swarm.
One chanced to bite him on the thigh:
"The dickens take that blue-tailed fly!"
Tlie pony he reared and he jnmped and he pitch,
And he flung old master in the ditch.
The jury came and wondered why.
The verdict was: "The blue-tailed fly.'
They buried him under a 'simmon tree,
His epitaph is there to see:
'Here lies I, all forced to die
By the bite of a blue-tailed fly.'
Ole massar's dead and gone to rest.
They say all things is for the best.
I never shal forget till the day I die
Ole massa and the blue-tailed fly.
De hornet gets in eyes and nose,
De skeeter bites you through de clothes,
De gallinipper flies up high;
But wusser yet, the blue-tailed fly.
'Jim Crack Corn.' From Miss Amy Henderson of Worry, Burke County. The same as A except that it has the proper initial stanza :
When I was young I used to wait
On massa and hand him de plate,
Pass down de bottle when he get dry,
And brush away de blue-tail fly.
'I Wish I Had a Great Big House.' Contributed by Miss Monta Adams, Durham, in 1922. Here there is nothing but the chorus left of the original song. The "chicken pie" stanza appears in various connections. For the second stanza see the 'I Wouldn't Marry' songs,
No. 17.
1. I wish I had a great big house
Sixteen stories high
And every story in that house
Was filled with chicken pie.
Chorus: Jim crack corn, I don't care.
Jim crack corn, I don't care,
Mv master's gone away.
2 I wouldn't marry an old maid;
I'll tell you the reason why:
Her neck's so long and skinny
I'm scared she'd never die.
D. 'Jim Crack Corn.' Contributed by Lida Page, Durham county. Here again only the chorus is left of the original song; the other two stanzas occur frequently in Negro song. See No. 194, above.
1 Possum up a 'simmon tree
Looking cunningly at me.
Picked up a brick and hit him on the chin ;
Said he, 'Old fellow, don't you do that again.'
Chorus (as in C) :
2 Folks that live on fishing creek
Grow from ten to eleven feet.
Go to bed, it is no use;
Their feet stick out for the chickens' roost.
E. 'Jim Crack Corn." Reported by Mrs. Nilla Lancaster of Wayne county.
Only the familiar chorus and a single stanza :
I went to the hen house on my knees
Just to hear the gobbler sneeze.
It was only a rooster sayin' his prayers,
Singiu' a hymn to the hens upstairs.
|