Jimmy Crack Corn

"Jim Crack Corn, or the Blue tail Fly" (1846) "De Blue Tail Fly, a Negro Song" (1846) "De Blue Tail Fly" was published by both Keith's Music House and Oliver Ditson in Boston in 1846, but Eric Lott (citing Hans Nathan) gives the version a date of 1844. "Blue Tailed Fly" (c. 1850) From Children of Destiny (1893) == Melody ==

The melody is similar to "Miss Lucy Long" and was originally set for piano accompaniment, The four-part chorus favors a single bass and three tenors: the first and third tenors harmonize in thirds with the second completes the triads or doubles the root, sometimes crossing the melody line. The melody is a chain of thirds (G-B, F♯-A, G-B, [A]-C, B-D, C-E) harmonized a third above and below in the manner of the choruses in Italian opera. == Meaning ==

The first verses usually establish that the singer was initially a house slave charged with protecting the master and his horse from "the blue-tailed fly." This is possibly the blue bottle fly, but probably the mourning horsefly, a bloodsucking pest found throughout the American South. He is unsuccessful, the horse begins to buck, and the master is thrown and killed. A coroner's jury is convened to investigate the master's death, or the singer is criminally charged with that death, but the death is blamed on "the blue-tail fly" and the slave escapes culpability. The chorus can be mystifying to modern listeners, but its straightforward meaning is that someone is roughly milling ("cracking") the old master's corn in preparation for turning it into hominy or liquor. There has been much debate, however, over the subtext. In the 19th century, the singer was often considered mournful and despondent at his master's death; in the 20th, celebratory. "Jimmy Crack Corn" has been called "the baldest, most loving account of the master's demise" in American song.). In this interpretation, the narrator is so overcome with emotion (be it pleasure or sorrow) that he has no concern at all about his gimcrack cracked corn, his substandard rations. The 1811 Dictionary of Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose defines a jimcrack as a "spruce woman," so perhaps the lyric refers to the slave being so sad he doesn't have interest in an approaching beautiful woman. Other suppositions include that "cracking" or "cracking corn" referred to the now-obsolete English and Appalachian slang meaning "to gossip" or "to sit around chitchatting"; that the singer is resting from his oversight duties and allowing Jim to steal corn or corn liquor; that "Jim Crack" is simply a synonym for "Jim Crow" by means of the dialectical "crack" to reference the crake; or that it is all code for the old master "Jim" cracking his "corn" (skull) open during his fall. The 1847 version of the song published in London, singularly, has the lyric "Jim Crack com ("come") rather than "corn" — which could refer to the coming of a poor Southern cracker (presumably an overseer or new owner) or a minced oath for Jesus Christ (thus referencing indifference at the Judgment Day). The same version explicitly makes the fly's name a wordplay on the earlier minstrel hit "Long Tail Blue," about a horse. A number of racehorses have been named "Jim Crack" or "Blue Tail Fly" and, in at least one early-20th-century variant of the song, it's given as the name of the horse that killed the master: but that is not a common element of the song. (Another uncommon variant appeared in the 1847 Songs of Ireland published in New York: it has the slave being given away by the master. the same lines could also just be asking for the whiskey jug to be passed around. The idea that Jim or Jimmy is "cracking open" a jug of whiskey is similarly unsupported; that phrasal verb is attested at least as early as 1803 but initially applied to literal ruptures. Its application to opening the cap or cork of a bottle of alcohol was a later development. == History ==

The present song is generally credited to Dan Emmett's Virginia Minstrels, whose shows in New York City in the mid-1840s helped raise minstrelsy to national attention. Along with "Old Dan Tucker", the tune was one of the breakout hits of the genre and continued to headline Emmett's acts with Bryant's Minstrels into the 1860s. The song was first published (with two distinct sets of lyrics) in Baltimore and Boston in 1846, although it is sometimes mistakenly dated to 1844. The chorus of the song not uncommonly appeared in the middle of other African-American folk songs, one of which may have been its original source. The song differed from other minstrel tunes in long remaining popular among African Americans: it was recorded by both Big Bill Broonzy and Lead Belly after World War II. Abraham Lincoln was an admirer of the tune, calling it "that buzzing song". Throughout the 19th century, it was usually accompanied by the harmonica or by humming which mimicked the buzzing of the fly (which on at least one occasion was noted disrupting the parliament of Victoria, Australia.). Lincoln would ask his friend Ward Lamon to sing and play it on his banjo and likely played along on his harmonica. It is said that he asked for it to be played as the lead-in to his address at Gettysburg. Following World War II, the "Blue Tail Fly" was repopularized by the Andrews Sisters' 1947 recording with the folk singer Burl Ives. It then became part of the general Folk Revival through the '50s and early '60s before losing favor to more politically charged fare, as parodied by Tom Lehrer's "Folk Song Army". A 1963 Time article averred that "instead of ... chronicling the life cycle of the blue-tailed fly", the "most sought-after folk singers in the business"—including Pete Seeger, Theodore Bikel, and Bob Dylan—were "singing with hot-eyed fervor about police dogs and racial murder". All the same, Seeger claimed to have been present when Alan Lomax first taught the song to Burl Ives for a CBS radio show and their duet at the 92nd Street Y in New York City in 1993 was Ives' last public performance. The song has also occurred as instrumentals: • An instrumental rock & roll rendition, "Beatnik Fly", was recorded by Johnny and the Hurricanes in 1959, and released on Warwick Records, catalog number M-520. It charted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 15 in the US, and number 8 in the UK. • A surf version (inspired by "Beatnik Fly"), "Foam And Fiberglass", was recorded by Mike Adams and the Red Jackets on the album Surfers Beat by Crown Records in 1963. Seeger maintained that the song's subtext gave it a social justice element but began (with 1953's American Folksongs for Children) to perform and market the work as a children's sing-along. Usually under the name "Jimmy Crack Corn", it remains common at campfires and summer camps. It is also sampled in a number of rap songs—including Tuff Crew and Eminem's compositions (both titled "Jimmy Crack Corn")—playing on the present usage of "crack". == In popular culture ==

A commercial for Cingular Wireless in December 2006 raised some controversy when a character having a conversation with "Jim" begins referring to him by every nickname he can think of including Jimmy Crack Corn. Following "a half dozen complaints", Cingular edited out the sequence. The Bugs Bunny cartoon Lumber Jack-Rabbit featured Bugs singing several verses of the song. == See also ==