"Old Man Tucker" song?
ida...@hotmail.com
One of them had words about "Old Man Tucker".
My Grandfather was born 1895 in West Virginia,worked in
coal mines and railroads. Just a little info to help trace this song.
I'm not sure if the name was "Old Man Tucker", but that was who the
song was about.
If it was a popular song way back I would like to locate the lyrics and
even a midi file.
Thanks
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Pete Peterson
Old Dan Tucker he's a good old man
He washed his hair in a frying pan
Combed his hair with a wagon wheel
Died with a toothache in his heel
Digital Tradition (www.mudcat.com) will have a lot more verses.
Pete Peterson
ida...@hotmail.com wrote in message <6qg42d$3o6$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
Joe
sung that. I remember the lyrics about a frying pan and a wagon wheel.
On Fri, 7 Aug 1998 21:23:24 -0400, "Pete Peterson" <lut...@itw.com>
wrote:
Frank Hamilton
popular mostly in New York. Other claim to fame was the song about
Dicks's farm on Long Island (a replica of an ante-bellum plantation)
named "Dixie." Dan Tucker never went South.
Frank
NewBobCity
Hamilton) writes:
> Other claim to fame was the song about
>Dicks's farm on Long Island (a replica of an ante-bellum plantation)
>named "Dixie." Dan Tucker never went South.
What's the story with "Dixie". Sounds interesting.
Guv Bob
Brittles
ham...@mindspring.com (Frank Hamilton) replied:
>Old Dan Tucker written by Dan Emmett, an early minstrel show performer
>popular mostly in New York. <
Yeah, OK.
>Other claim to fame was the song about Dicks's farm on Long Island (a replica
of an ante->bellum plantation) named "Dixie." <
Huh? Yeah, Emmett is credited with "Dixie" - but I've never heard the "bit"
about "Dicks's farm". Care to elaborate, Frank? (or are you just pulling our
leg?)
Ed Britt
Brit...@aol.com
Frank Hamilton
>Yeah, OK.
Ed, I am looking for the information on Dick's Farm. In the meantime,
"Dixies Land" was a Northern song starting on the New York Stage in
1859 prror to the Big War. It was a walk-around or finale for a
production by Bryant's Minstrels. ( Emmett had written the big hit.
Old Dan Tucker in 1843). A pirated version of "I Wish I Was In
Dixie" truned up in New Orleans by a J. C. Viereck. who offered to pay
five dollars to Emmett for the copyright. Actually, Dixie was used as
an anthem for the Union side of the War as well as did the South.
Daniel Decatur Emmett never did see the South. He was a New Yorker.
Confederate effort was made to disprove all of this of course..
I'll keep hunting down the part about Dick's Farm in Long Island New
York.
Frank
Wayne Erbsen
Wayne Erbsen
********************************************
Native Ground Music, Inc.
Your Source for Music of America's Past
http://www.circle.net/nativeground/
Email: ba...@circle.net
********************************************
Brittles
From: ham...@mindspring.com (Frank Hamilton)
Date: Thu, Aug 27, 1998 7:25 PM
Message-id: <6s486v$b63$1...@camel0.mindspring.com>
Re: "Old Man Tucker" song?
ham...@mindspring.com (Frank Hamilton) replied:
>>Other claim to fame was the song about Dicks's farm on Long Island (a replica
>>>of an ante->bellum plantation) named "Dixie." <<<
To which, I (brit...@aol.com (Brittles) queried:
>>Huh? Yeah, Emmett is credited with "Dixie" - but I've never heard the "bit"
>>about "Dicks's farm". Care to elaborate, Frank? (or are you just pulling our
>>leg?)<<
ham...@mindspring.com (Frank Hamilton) Answered:
>Ed, I am looking for the information on Dick's Farm. In the meantime,
>"Dixies Land" was a Northern song starting on the New York Stage in
>1859 prror to the Big War. It was a walk-around or finale for a
>production by Bryant's Minstrels. ( Emmett had written the big hit.
>Old Dan Tucker in 1843). A pirated version of "I Wish I Was In
>Dixie" truned up in New Orleans by a J. C. Viereck. who offered to pay
>five dollars to Emmett for the copyright. Actually, Dixie was used as
>an anthem for the Union side of the War as well as did the South.
>Daniel Decatur Emmett never did see the South. He was a New Yorker.
>Confederate effort was made to disprove all of this of course..<
Well... Emmett was with the FIRST blackface minstrel troupe, the Virginia
Minstrels (the Kingston Trio of their day!), who started the whole Minstrel
Boom in Feb, 1843.
Joel Sweeney and a few others were earlier "Ethiopian delineators" - but
played primarily solo - not as a band.
Emmett wrote "Dixie" in a New York hotel room, in 1859, while touring with
Bryant's Minstrels .
However, he was FROM Mount Vernon, OHIO (not NY - but still a Northerner),
where there is still a controversy about whether HE wrote "Dixie" - or
"borrowed" it, from a local family of black entertainers. Try reading "Way Up
North In Dixie" for more of the story. (Been on my reading list for several
years - but still haven't gotten around to reading it!)
There were MANY pirated versions of Dixie - I have one from Philadelphia,
called "Sanford's 'Original' Dixey's Land". Sanford ran a Phila.
theatre/concert hall.
(whenever you see "original" - you KNOW it's a rip-off! ;-)
Love to hear more about the "Dick's Farm" theory when you track it down!
Ed Britt
Brit...@aol.com
Oldtime1
of the rest of the USA and England and Ireland, as well, leaving the banjo and
hand drum and much influence from the Virginia Minstrels on ensemble string
music in Ireland. That stands the assumption that all cross influence flowed
from Ireland to here on its noggin, but don't tell the red-heads lest they weep
in their green beer. There's information about the possible origins of Dixie
among a family of black musicians who also lived in the Mt. Vernon area in Way
Up North In Dixie by Howard and Judy Sacks, Smithsonian Press. And may the Lord
pertect your soul from too many assumptions when she is not watching the
sparrows. Joe Wilson
pamela Longtine
>My Grandfather used to play a banjo and sing some songs to me.
>One of them had words about "Old Man Tucker".
>My Grandfather was born 1895 in West Virginia,worked in
>coal mines and railroads. Just a little info to help trace this song.
>I'm not sure if the name was "Old Man Tucker", but that was who the
>song was about.
>If it was a popular song way back I would like to locate the lyrics
ham...@mindspring.com (Frank Hamilton) replied:
>Old Dan Tucker written by Dan Emmett, an early minstrel show performer
I've been playing old banjo (started with old-time clawhammer and
retrogressed to 1850s banjo primer tunes and their antecedents) and
have been digging up Emmett's Minnesota roots, so I'll jump in here.
Daniel Decatur Emmett, b. Knox County, OH 1815, d. 1904. Hans Nathan,
"Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy" (1962, out of
print) is one of the better studies of the prewar sound (not that war,
the other one…) and of one of America's first professional folk
singers.
Emmett is generally credited with lyrics to Old Dan Tucker, published
1843. The music (attributed to someone else) was first published in
41 or 42, but could be older. In late life reminiscence Emmett
claimed to have come up with the song as a boy of fourteen or so. Real
or not, Emmett's recollection has the anecdotal truth of a good origin
myth (and there are some good ones in minstrelsy). "Old Dan" was the
name of his dog, and young Emmett was learning himself the fiddle about
the time he first sang the refrain "Get out de way, Old Dan Tucker,
you're too late to stay for supper." The song had legs: this thread
started with someone's grandfather singing it early this century; Laura
Ingalls Wilder's father fiddled and sang it; I learned it in elementary
school.
> Other claim to fame was the song about
>Dicks's farm on Long Island (a replica of an ante-bellum plantation)
>named "Dixie." Dan Tucker never went South.
and
>"Dixies Land" was a Northern song starting on the New York Stage in
>1859 prror to the Big War. It was a walk-around or finale for a
>production by Bryant's Minstrels. ( Emmett had written the big hit.
>Old Dan Tucker in 1843). A pirated version of "I Wish I Was In
>Dixie" truned up in New Orleans by a J. C. Viereck. who offered to pay
>five dollars to Emmett for the copyright. Actually, Dixie was used as
>an anthem for the Union side of the War as well as did the South.
Nathan traces numerous hypothetical sources for the word "Dixie" but I
don't recall the Dick's Farm version. It is intriguing, though. A
recent book "Raising Cain" (by a lit prof) delves deep into the
influential performance styles of New York Negro musicians in the 18th
and 19th centuries. There was some happening music (and dance) on Long
Island and the food markets at Catharine Slip. Emmett and Brower's
comic minstrel stage banter in 1843 assumes the audiences' familiarity
with market dance contests.
Emmett's Dixie debuted in April, 1859 with Bryant's minstrels. He
tarried in filing for copyright. Touring troupes appropriated the song
and spread it countrywide. Viereck and others pirated the tune for
piano sheet music sales, apparently a common practice among publishers
for much of the century. Emmett's authorship was vindicated at a music
publishers' forum. He assigned the copyright to publisher Firth & Pond
in 1861 for $300.
>Daniel Decatur Emmett never did see the South. He was a New Yorker.
>Confederate effort was made to disprove all of this of course..
Dixie was a favorite of Lincoln's. On receiving word of Lee's
surrender, the President asked a military band to strike up Dixie,
noting that he had secured the attorney general's opinion that 'we had
fairly recaptured it.'
What is the signficance of Emmett's supposed knowledge of the south, or
lack of it? Emmett did see the "South". He also lived "West", a
geographicically significant source in the development of an American
popular culture and music. In the 1830s, he worked as a printer and
circus musician in Cincinnatti, surely one of the age's best places to
catch an American tune. In 1834-35, in the army Emmett learned
drumming and fifing at Newport Barracks, KY and Jefferson Barracks, MO.
He learned banjo from a man named Ferguson from western Virginia,
while on tour in 1840-41. In 1841-42, Emmett's banjo playing and
singing was a hit, along with fellow clown Frank Brower's bones playing
and dancing. Emmett's "Boatman, Dance" (1843), familiar in various
guises to old-time musicians, was performed on the minstrel stage "in
imitation of the Negro boatmen" of the Ohio River.
Re: "Old Man Tucker" song?
Brit...@aol.com (Ed Britt) wrote:
>Well... Emmett was with the FIRST blackface minstrel troupe, the
Virginia
>Minstrels (the Kingston Trio of their day!), who started the whole
Minstrel
>Boom in Feb, 1843.
Yes, Emmett was one of the first professional American folk singers.
Emmett's music contributed greatly to the Virginia Minstrels' success.
He was credited with words and music to many of early minstrelsy's
hits. He was an accomplished fiddler, banjo player and vocalist. He
had folk roots, a good ear, and musical training. He worked as a
professional musician for some sixty years. Emmett worked in New York
mostly, from 1843 to 1855; thence to Chicago, where he managed that
town's first resident minstrel troupe. He announced his retirement
from the minstrel profession in 1856. In 1857 he moved his family to
St. Paul, MN where in 1858 he was back in the business as co-proprietor
of Emmett & Lumbard's Melodeon Troupe. At the time his brother
LaFayette was serving as the first Chief Justice of the the state's
supreme court. Dan Emmett made his last public tour in 1895 at the age
of eighty.
>Joel Sweeney and a few others were earlier "Ethiopian delineators" -
but
>played primarily solo - not as a band.
Sweeney, Emmett, Brower and other prominent early minstrels worked in
the circus, one of the several performance traditions strongly
influencing minstrel music. Sweeney learned the banjo as a young man
in Virginia. He was the first white man to make a living playing the
banjo -- a folk music hero if there ever was one.
>Emmett wrote "Dixie" in a New York hotel room, in 1859, while touring
with
>Bryant's Minstrels .
>However, he was FROM Mount Vernon, OHIO (not NY - but still a
Northerner),
>where there is still a controversy about whether HE wrote "Dixie" - or
>"borrowed" it, from a local family of black entertainers. Try reading
"Way Up
>North In Dixie" for more of the story. (Been on my reading list for
several
>years - but still haven't gotten around to reading it!)
"Way up North in Dixie" by Sacks and Sacks is a good read, esp as it
traces the music of Emmett's hometown neighbors, the Snowden family.
Emmett's late recollections give the New York story. Nathan claimed
there was no evidence for the rumor of the song's origin in St. Paul.
>There were MANY pirated versions of Dixie - I have one from
Philadelphia,
>called "Sanford's 'Original' Dixey's Land". Sanford ran a Phila.
>theatre/concert hall.
What's the date of Sanford's Dixey? Perhaps his claim to originality
lies in the distinction between Dixie and "Dixey". Was it James
Sanford?
>(whenever you see "original" - you KNOW it's a rip-off! ;-)
But in minstrelsy it could be an ironic, knowing, wink-at-the-audience,
'that's show biz' rip-off. The Virginia Minstrels' "original" and
musical "entertainment" featured songs in "imitation" of "genuine"
Negro fun. The meaning of the word "original" is ambiguous --
especially if the performer is wearing a mask. Which is the
original, the old and authentic stuff or the new work of genius?
>Love to hear more about the "Dick's Farm" theory when you track it
down!
Me too
--John Heine
"Oh, didn't he ramble…."
Brittles
>I've been playing old banjo (started with old-time clawhammer and
>retrogressed to 1850s banjo primer tunes and their antecedents) and
>have been digging up Emmett's Minnesota roots, so I'll jump in here.
>Daniel Decatur Emmett, b. Knox County, OH 1815, d. 1904. Hans Nathan,
>"Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy" (1962, out of
>print) is one of the better studies <
Very nice summary of our knowledge of Emmett, John!
We all "focus" on info particular to our own interests - I hadn't paid much
attention to Emmetts "Wild West" (Minn) period. Thanks!
>Sweeney, Emmett, Brower and other prominent early minstrels worked in
>the circus, one of the several performance traditions strongly influencing
minstrel >music.<
I've been pushing the circus connection for several years now - and Bob Carlin
is doing some serious research on it.
Particularly interesting if you look into America clown history - which was
also just coming into it's own during the early 1800's. There developed a
hierarchy of clown-types, ranging from the "whiteface" at the top, to the
"hobo" at the bottom.
My theory is, that the Minstrel troupes were doing basically the same "shtick"
- only reversing the color scheme (blackface). There was also the hierarchy -
with (Broadway) "Dandy Jim" and "Lovely Lucy Long" (dressed to hilt) at the
top; and the lowly "Rufus/Ruben/Jim Crow" plantation character at the bottom.
(And, the whole female- impersonator thing, is a whole 'nother related subject)
PT Barnum hired Sweeney a few times. The Virgina Minstrels started their act
in the back room of a circus-people bar, in NYC.
Ed Britt
Brit...@aol.com
Steve Goldfield
I thought that the origin of Dixie was the Mason Dixon
line which separates Pennsylvania from Maryland and WV.
That makes more sense to me than a farm in NY.
Steve
(8<})>(8<})>(8<})>(8<})>(8<})>(8<})>(8<})>(8<})>(8<})>(8<})>
-------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Goldfield <stev...@best.com> * El Cerrito, California
* Home Page--<http://www.best.com/~stevesag/stevesag.html> *
Brittles
stev...@best.com (Steve Goldfield) wrote:
>I thought that the origin of Dixie was the Mason Dixon
>line which separates Pennsylvania from Maryland and WV.
>That makes more sense to me than a farm in NY.<
Many things are possible - many fewer are probable.
The original statement was primarily about the possible origins of the SONG -
not necessarily about the origin of the word (which I believe was used much
earlier).
One other theory about the origin of the word - is that it comes from the
French word "dix" - for "ten" - used on money in New Orleans, and Louisianna,
in the early 1800's.
And just what IS "injun batter" anyway? Anything like "indian pudding"? (As
though I know what THAT is either!)
ED Britt
Brit...@aol.com
Oldtime1
been endless. Howard Sacks and me went tramping around Maryland where both
sides of the Snowden Family originated when he and Judy Sacks were working on
their book, Way Up North In Dixie, for the Smithsonian Press. (The Snowdens are
the black musical family that Emmett knew in Ohio after they were set free.)
When in Maryland one side of the Snowden family lived a few miles south of the
Mason and Dixon line, historic dividing point between slave and free states.
Few borders on earth have had as much symbolism as that one did for black folk.
So my speculation is that "Dixie's land" is a term that derives from it and a
folk tendancy to slur endings, and to project and attribute meaning from parts
of titles . Other place and feature names in the original lyrics ('simmon seed
and sandy bottom, for example) seem more fitted to Maryland than central Ohio.
You are welcome to engage in your own speculation, but if you diss mine, a guru
who agrees with me has arranged to have the elastic in your underpants break
next time you go on stage and leave you in a helluva fix. Bye. Joe Wilson
Al Christians
>
>
> >Old Dan Tucker written by Dan Emmett, an early minstrel show performer
>
> 1843. The music (attributed to someone else) was first published in
> 41 or 42, but could be older. In late life reminiscence Emmett
> claimed to have come up with the song as a boy of fourteen or so. Real
> or not, Emmett's recollection has the anecdotal truth of a good origin
> myth (and there are some good ones in minstrelsy). "Old Dan" was the
> name of his dog, and young Emmett was learning himself the fiddle about
The story that I picked up on a visit to North Carolina some years ago
was that Dan Tucker was a renowned settler there in the early 1700's who
actually "died of a toothache in his heel": stepped on a rusty nail
and succumbed of tetanus.
Al
pamela Longtine
Al Christians <ach...@easystreet.com> wrote in article
<35E903...@easystreet.com>...
>
> The story that I picked up on a visit to North Carolina some years
ago
> was that Dan Tucker was a renowned settler there in the early 1700's
who
> actually "died of a toothache in his heel": stepped on a rusty nail
> and succumbed of tetanus.
>
A good story. Sure, there could have been an "original" Dan Tucker, a
real-life character who was memorialized in music by some singing banjo
player. Part of the "truth" evident in this creation story is the
sensible reading it gives to lyrics that might otherwise be dismissed
as nonsensical. There's plenty of nonsense, but its not all imaginary.
John Heine