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
----------------------------------
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.