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Buck-Eyed Jim
Traditional Old-time Breakdown and Song;
ARTIST: Variant of Mrs. Patty Newman’s version, from NC (Collected by Fletcher Collins) According to the Library of Congress, Fletcher Collins collected "Buckeye Jim" (aka "Limber Jim") from Mrs. J.U. (Patty) Newman in 1939, at Elon College, in North Carolina.
Listen: Burl Ives- Buckeye Jim
From Fletcher Collins himself, in his liner notes for THE TRUE LOVER'S FAREWELL: APPALACHIAN FOLK BALLADS, by Custer LaRue (Dorian Recordings Dor-90213):
"It is important not to overtypify our image of the ballad-singer. They don't run to stereotype. My best traditional singer, who in 1939 sang me eighty-one ballads, was far from being an illiterate old woman dipping snuff in her Appalachian cabin. Born in 1864, singing to me in a modern brick cottage on the edge of the campus of Elon College in North Carolina, she was the wife of a professor of Greek and Latin. She attended Antioch College in Ohio, taught school in her time, and was the niece of two Long brothers who were respectively presidents of Elon and Antioch Colleges in the 1880's. Her father, the eldest Long brother, farmed in North Carolina and Missouri; her mother was from an old Guilford, North Carolina, family. The Longs were a singing family, led by grandmother Long and Patty Newman's elder sisters, from whom she learned her bountiful repertory of songs. That she remembered them at seventy-six, when she gave them to me, she attributed to learning them when she was very young, some when she was only four, and to the fact that she married into an unmusical family and had to keep singing to herself, as well as to her own children, even though they were stone-deaf.
She was pleased that her songs were being recorded for the Library of Congress, for she was aware of old mortality and felt that the songs were too good to die with here. But it was not her singing that she valued; it was the songs. When I inquired politely about her family and early life, she stopped me and said, "Now look here, Fletcher, I'm just telling you all this because you wanted to know. I don't want any of this in the newspapers. If my life's been worth anything, it'll be found out without being stuck in the papers." - Fletcher Collins, 1995.
It is especially interesting to note that Mrs. Newman attended college in Ohio, and that her father farmed in Missouri. This might provide some connection to Hearn's "Limber Jim" tradition.
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes DATE: 1947. OTHER NAMES: “Limber Jim,” “Jim Along Josie,” “Seven Up,” ‘Shiloh”
SOURCES: (Fletcher Collins) Alamance Play-Party Songs And Singing Games (1940).
(Peggy Seeger )The Five String Banjo - American Folk Styles; 1960.
(Hearn) Children Of The Levee, published by the University of Kentucky Press in 1957. It is a reprint of the original articles written by Hearn in 1874-1877 for the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Cincinnati Commercial. Hearn: "But the most famous songs in vogue among the roustabouts is "Limber Jim," or "Shiloh." Very few know it all by heart, which is not wonderful when we consider that it requires something like twenty minutes to sing "Limber Jim" from beginning to end, and that the whole song, if printed in full, would fill two columns of the Commercial.(!) The only person in the city who can sing the song through, we believe, is a colored laborer living near Sixth and Culvert streets, who "run on the river" for years, and acquired so much of a reputation by singing "Limber Jim," that he has been nicknamed after the mythical individual aforesaid, and is now known by no other name.
He keeps a little resort in Bucktown, which is known as "Limber Jim's," and has a fair reputation for one dwelling in that locality. Jim very good-naturedly sang the song for us a few nights ago, and we took down some of the most striking verses for the benefit of our readers. The air is wonderfully quick and lively, and the chorus is quite exciting. The leading singer sings the whole song, excepting the chorus, "Shiloh," which dissyllable is generally chanted by twenty or thirty voices of abysmal depth at the same time with a sound like the roar of twenty Chinese gongs struck with a tremendous force and precision. A great part of "Limber Jim" is very profane, and some of it is not quite fit to print. We can give only about one-tenth part of it.(!) The chorus is frequently accompanied with that wonderfully rapid slapping of thighs and hips known as "patting Juba." Pages 70-71.
(White)"Jim Aong Josey," p. 286 of "Negro Singers Own Book," ca. 1846 (Ref. in White, p. 242);
(Lomax)-FSUSA 1, "Buckeye Jim," Silber-FSWB, p. 388, "Buckeye Jim"; Fireside Book Of Favorite American Songs p. 277, 1952 by Simon and Schuster "Buckeye Jim"(Collins Version) John and Alan Lomax were the first ones to print "Buckeye Jim" in Folk Song U.S.A., in 1947. They gave it pride of place by making it the first song in their book. They got it from Burl Ives who published "Buckeye Jim" in 1962 in his Song In America. He recorded it on his "Little White Duck" album.
In a "note for users" of the play-party booklet, Collins says: "Do not suppose that these songs exist here because of unusually fortunate environmental and historical conditions. These are not "Southern mountain" songs' they were picked up in and around a busy textile-mill town in the industrial Piedmont area (of North Carolina), and - of all places - within a stone's throw of a liberal arts college."
Folk Songs North America Sings: A Source Book For All Teachers by Richard Johnston (Toronto: E.C.Kerby, c 1984) p.122. He has the first two verses from the version listed above. His source is "Appalachian Folk Song" and he got this song from: JOHNSTON, Richard et al - Songs For Today! Vol. V - Waterloo Music Co. Ltd., Waterloo, Ontario, 1958.
RECORDING INFO: Burle Ives-"Little White Duck"; Anne Muir; Folk-Legacy album A Water Over Stone, with Gordon Bok and Ed Trickett. 1980. Collins did record this song and it can be heard at the Library of Congress in the Folklife Reading Room, and "copies can be made through the Library's Recording Laboratory, but that can be a rather expensive process." (reference specialist LOC).
NOTES: The “Buck Eye Jim” group of songs includes “Limber Jim” and “Shiloh”. There are connections with other fiddle tunes such as “Seven Up”. This fiddle tune has floater verses and many variants. There are two distinct versions: the “Way Up/Down Yonder” versions (see: Jim Along Josie), and the “Weave and Spin” (Limber Jim) versions. There are also versions that include “Shiloh” which appears to be a slang word for a type of dance or dance step in connection with the tune. Below is some info about “Limber”:
Fletcher Collins says that "Limber-holes are holes made in the floor timbers of a ship to allow bilge water to pass through [along with mud from boots etc.] for pumping." And a "limber-rope" is a "rope used to clean the limber-holes so the stuff can go through for pumping out." Perhaps there is a shanty connection for "Limber Jim"/"Buckeye Jim". Dr. Collins suggests the possibility that the song is about a roustabout on the Ohio/Mississippi rivers whose job it is to pump the bilges and that he has been ordered to do this instead of going ashore for "fun and games". So, "Go, limber, Jim. You can't go. Weave and spin, Buckeye Jim. You can't go." Contrary to the more normal dancing image of "weaving and spinning", Dr. Collins suggests the opposite, of "sitting rather motionless, like twiddling your thumbs."
If my memory is correct, dancing limber jacks can be seen in Alan Lomax's video Appalachian Journey. Description is in Dick Schnacke's American Folk Toys: How to Make Them (Penguin Books, 1973, pp. 42-43). "Limber Jim" was talking about Limberjacks. If a "Limber Jim" is a dancing wood puppet doing an Appalachian clog dance, then the phrase "be limber, Jim" may refer to a dance, since clogging seems to demand limberness. Once again, there must be some connection with African American dance music.
The early lyric connections from “Buckeye Jim” to other folk songs date back to mid-eighteen hundreds. There is a strong lyric connection with the “Keemo Kimo” songs which originate from the “Froggie Went A Courtin’” and “Martin Said to His Man.” Fiddle tunes often borrow short rhyming lines that make little sense as a narrative. Presumably some of the nonsense rhymes could have traveled from songs like “Froggy” and “Martin Said to His Man,” to “Kemo Kimo” and “Kitty Alone” then to other animal songs including “Buckeye Jim.” There is an interesting connection with the “weave and spin” in “Buck-Eye Jim” and the “spin” in the Froggy songs.
BUCKEYED JIM
Listen: Burl Ives- Buckeye Jim
'Way down yonder in a hollow log
A jaybird danced with an ol' bullfrog.
Chorus: Buck-eyed Jim, you can't go
Go weave and spin, you can't go
Buck-eyed Jim
Way up yonder above the moon
A jaybird lived in a silver spoon.
Way down yonder in a wooden trough
An old woman died of the whoopin' cough.
Way up yonder above the sky
A jaybird spit in a bluebird's eye.
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