An Introduction to America’s Music

CHAPTER 6 | BLACK, WHITES, AND THE MINSTREL STAGE 137

Dan Emmett, the Virginia Minstrels’ fi ddler, took song writer credit for

“Old Dan Tucker” (1843), but like “Miss Lucy Long” it is probably of folk origin.

The song introduces a boastful character who seems like a blackface version of

the pioneer frontiersman, along the lines of the legendary, if not the factual,

Dav y Crockett:

Down de road foremost de stump,

Massa make me work de pump;

I pump so hard I broke de sucker,

Dar was work for Old Dan Tucker.

So get out de way! get out de way!

Get out de way, Old Dan Tucker!

You’re too late to come to supper.

The song’s disjointed sequence of verses, which seemingly could be sung in any

order with no effect on meaning, is characteristic of African American song and

will be encountered again later in the blues (see chapters 11 and 14). Because the

verses alternate between the fi rst person and the third person, it is unclear whether

the song’s persona is Dan Tucker himself or an observer telling stories about him—

not an unusual state of affairs in minstrel songs, which tend to embody the exhila-

ration of performance at the expense of narrative logic. The shifting point of view

also suggests how solo songs may have turned into ensemble numbers in perfor-

mance, with different members of the troupe singing different verses while others

might add dance, pantomime, or even an interruption for a joke or riddle.

The line “Massa make me work de pump” evokes the reality of hard work in the

lives of American slaves. “De Boatmen’s Dance” (LG 6.1) is another minstrel song

that draws on the working lives of African Americans, here the free men who

labored on boats that carried cargo and passengers on the Ohio River and other

waterways. Though greatly outnumbered by enslaved blacks—nearly 2.5 million

by 1840—nearly 400,000 free blacks lived in the United States in 1840, divided

about equally between the North and the South, most of them working the least

desirable menial jobs. “De Boatmen’s Dance” describes a life not only of labor

but also of camaraderie and emotional release, even if the latter comes at risk of

being thrown into the “calaboose,” or jail. The lyrics show traces of black vernac-

ular English and point to the song’s likely folk origins, despite the sheet music’s

attribution to Dan Emmett.

STEPHEN FOSTER AND THE “ETHIOPIAN BUSINESS”

At about the time Dan Emmett and the Virginia Minstrels were starting out

on the East Coast, a teenage youth in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, was getting

together with friends to stage amateur minstrel shows for fun. By the time he

turned twenty-four, with several hits already to his credit, Stephen C. Foster had

embarked on a songwriter’s career, one of the most signifi cant in this country’s

history.

“Gwine to Run All Night, or De Camptown Races” (1850; LG 6.2) was one

of Foster’s early minstrel show hits. Its verse-and-chorus form resembles “Old

Dan Tucker” and “De Boatmen’s Dance,” but whereas Emmett’s tunes are driven

and aggressive, Foster’s is jaunty and tuneful, with a memorable fi ve-note

LG 6.1

LG 6.2

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