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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.
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 lyrics to Nelly Bly from Stephen Foster:
Nelly Bly! Nelly Bly!
Bring the broom along,
We'll sweep the kitchen clean, my dear,
And have a little song.
Poke the wood, my lady love
And make the fire burn,
And while I take the banjo down,
Just give the mush a turn.
Chorus: Hey, Nelly! Ho Nelly!
Listen, love, to me,
I'll sing for you and play for you
A dulcem melody.
Nelly Bly has a voice
Like a turtle dove,
I hear it in the meadow
And I hear it in the grove.
Nelly Bly has a heart
Warm as a cup of tea,
And bigger than the sweet potatoes
Down in Tennessee.
Chorus: Hey, Nelly! Ho Nelly!
Listen, love, to me,
I'll sing for you and play for you
A dulcem melody.
Nelly Bly shuts her eye
When she goes to sleep.
When she wakens up again
Her eyeballs start to peep.
The way she walks, she lifts her foot,
And then she bumps it down;
And when it lights, there's music there
In that part of the town.
Chorus: Hey, Nelly! Ho Nelly!
Listen, love, to me,
I'll sing for you and play for you
A dulcem melody.
Nelly Bly! Nelly Bly!
Never, never sigh;
Never bring the tear drop
To the corner of your eye.
For the pie is made of pumpkins
And the mush is made of corn,
And there's corn and pumpkins plenty, love,
A-lyin' in the barn.
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