Dixie's Land
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"Dixie's Land", also known as "Dixie", "I Wish I Was in Dixie", and other titles, is a popular American song. Most sources credit Ohio-born Daniel Decatur Emmett with the song's composition; however many other people have claimed to have composed "Dixie", even during Emmett's lifetime. Compounding the problem of definitively establishing the song's authorship are Emmett's own confused accounts of its writing, and his tardiness in having "Dixie" copyrighted. During the American Civil War, "Dixie" was adopted as a de facto anthem of the Confederacy. New versions appeared at this time that more explicitly tied the song to the events of the Civil War.
Lyrics
As written by Daniel Decatur Emmett
I wish I was in the land ob cotton,
Old time dar am not forgotten;
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
In Dixie Land whar I was born in,
Early on one frosty mornin,
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
| Dixie's Land
Written by Daniel Decatur Emmett | |
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1916 rendition by the Metropolitan Mixed Chorus with Donald Chalmers, Ada Jones and Billy Murray. |
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(Chorus)
Den I wish I was in Dixie,
Hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie Land, I'll took my stand,
To lib and die in Dixie,
Away, away,
Away down south in Dixie,
Away, away,
Away down douth in Dixie.
Old Missus marry "Will-de-weaber,"
Willum was a gay deceaber;
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
But when he put his arm around 'er,
He smiled as fierce as a 'forty-pound'er,
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
(Chorus)
Den I wish I was in Dixie,
Hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie Land, I'll took my stand,
To lib and die in Dixie,
Away, away,
Away down south in Dixie,
Away, away,
Away down douth in Dixie.
His face was sharp as a butcher's cleaber,
But dat did not seem to greab 'er;
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
Old Missus acted de foolish part,
And died for a man dat broke her heart,
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
(Chorus)
Den I wish I was in Dixie,
Hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie Land, I'll took my stand,
To lib and die in Dixie,
Away, away,
Away down south in Dixie,
Away, away,
Away down douth in Dixie.
Now here's a health to the next old Missus,
An all de galls dat want to kiss us;
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
But if you want to drive 'way sorrow,
Come an hear did song to-morrow.
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
(Chorus)
Den I wish I was in Dixie,
Hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie Land, I'll took my stand,
To lib and die in Dixie,
Away, away,
Away down south in Dixie,
Away, away,
Away down douth in Dixie.
Dar's buck-wheat cakes and 'Ingen' batter,
Makes you fat or a little fatter;
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
Den hoe it down and scratch your grabble,
To Dixie Land I'm bound to trabble,
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
(Chorus)
Den I wish I was in Dixie,
Hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie Land, I'll took my stand,
To lib and die in Dixie,
Away, away,
Away down south in Dixie,
Away, away,
Away down douth in Dixie.
Score
History
According to tradition, Ohio-born minstrel show composer Daniel Decatur Emmett wrote "Dixie" around 1859. Over his lifetime, Emmett often recounted the story of its composition, and details vary with each account. For example, in various versions of the story, Emmett claimed to have written "Dixie" in a few minutes, in a single night, and over a few days.[1] An 1872 edition of The New York Clipper provides one of the earliest accounts, claiming that on a Saturday night shortly after Emmett had been taken on as songwriter for the Bryant's Minstrels, Jerry Bryant told him they would need a new walkaround by the following Monday. By this account, Emmett shut himself inside his New York flat and wrote the song that Sunday evening.[2]
Other details emerge in later accounts. In one, Emmett claimed that "Suddenly, . . . I jumped up and sat down at the table to work. In less than an hour I had the first verse and chorus. After that it was easy."[3] In another version, Emmett stared out at the rainy evening and thought, "I wish I was in Dixie." Then, "Like a flash the thought suggested the first line of the walk-around, and a little later the minstrel, fiddle in hand, was working out the melody"[4] (a different story has it that Emmett's wife uttered the famous line).[5] Yet another variant, dated to 1903, further changes the details: "I was standing by the window, gazing out at the drizzly, raw day, and the old circus feeling came over me. I hummed the old refrain, 'I wish I was in Dixie,' and the inspiration struck me. I took my pen and in ten minutes had written the first verses with music. The remaining verses were easy."[6] In his final years, Emmett even claimed to have written the song years before he had moved to New York.[7] A Washington Post article supports this, giving a composition date of 1843.[8]
Emmett published "Dixie" (under the title "I Wish I Was in Dixie's Land") on 21 June 1860 through Firth, Pond & Co. in New York. The original manuscript has been lost; extant copies were made during Emmett's retirement, starting in the 1890s. Emmett's tardiness in copyrighting the song allowed it to proliferate among other minstrel groups and variety show performers. Rival editions and variations multiplied in songbooks, newspapers and broadsides. The earliest of these that is known today is a copyrighted edition for piano from the John Church Company of Cincinnati, published on 26 June 1860. Other publishers attributed completely made-up composers with the song: "Jerry Blossom" and "Dixie, Jr.", among others.[9] The most serious of these challenges during Emmett's lifetime came from Southerner William Shakespeare Hays; this claimant attempted to prove his allegations through a Southern historical society, but he died before they could produce any conclusive evidence..[10] By 1908, four years after Emmett's death, no fewer than 37 people had claimed the song as theirs.[11]
"Dixie" is the only song Emmett ever claimed to have written in a burst of inspiration, and analysis of Emmett's notes and writings shows "a meticulous copyist, who spent countless hours collecting and composing songs and sayings for the minstrel stage . . . ; little evidence was left for the improvisational moment."[12] The New York Clipper wrote in 1872 that "Emmett's claim to authorship of 'Dixie' was and is still disputed, both in and out of the minstrel profession."[13] Emmett himself said, "Show people generally, if not always, have the chance to hear every local song as they pass through the different sections of the country, and particularly so with minstrel companies, who are always on the look out for songs and sayings that will answer their business."[14] He claimed at one point to have based the first part of "Dixie" on "Come Philander Let's Be Marchin, Every One for His True Love Searchin", which he described as a "song of his childhood days". Musical analysis does show some similarities in the melodic outline, but the songs are not closely related.[15] Emmett also credited "Dixie" to an old circus song.[7] Despite the disputed authorship, Firth, Pond & Co. paid Emmett $300 for all rights to "Dixie" on 11 February 1861, perhaps fearing complications spurred by the impending Civil War.[16]
African American origin?
On at least one occasion, Emmett attributed "Dixie" to an unnamed Southern black man,[7] and some of his contemporaries said that the song was based on an old African American folk tune. Taken at face value, these claims are hardly surprising, as minstrels often billed themselves as authentic delineators of slave material. Names of these chance-met black songwriters were rarely given.[17]
However, a Mount Vernon, Ohio, tradition, which dates to the 1910s or 1920s at the latest,[18] lends some credence to this notion. Many Mount Vernon residents claim that Emmett collaborated informally with a pair of black musicians named Ben and Lew Snowden. Those who remember the Snowden brothers describe them as "informal", "spontaneous", "creative", and "relatively free of concern over ownership" of their songs.[19] The Snowden brothers were part of the Snowden Family Band, which was well known for traveling about the region. That Emmett might have met and played with these local celebrities is hardly surprising. The story is well enough known that the grave marker for Ben and Lew Snowden, set in 1976 by the black American Legion post, reads, "They taught 'Dixie' to Dan Emmett".[20]
The Snowden theory has, however, one serious flaw. While Emmett likely did meet and play with Ben and Lew Snowden when he retired to Knox County, the Snowden brothers would have been only small children at the time Emmett composed "Dixie". Howard L. Sacks and Judith Sacks suggest that the Ohio legend may in fact be off by a generation, and that Emmett could have collaborated instead with the Snowden parents, Thomas and Ellen. This idea dates to at least 1978, in a genealogical history of the Robert Greer family of Knox County.[21]
Circumstantial evidence suggests that this is possible. Emmett's grandparents owned the farm adjacent to the Snowden homestead, and Emmett's father was one of a few blacksmiths to whom Thomas Snowden could have brought his horses for shoeing. Furthermore, an unpublished biography of Emmett, written in 1935 by a friend of the Emmett family, Mary McClane, says that Emmett visited Mt. Vernon several times from 1835 until the 1860s and toured the surrounding area giving fiddle performances.[22] Emmett certainly refers to Knox County in other songs, including "Seely Simpkins Jig", which refers to a fiddler there, and "Owl Creek Quickstep", which is named for an early settlement in the area.[23]
Advocates of the Snowden theory believe that the lyrics of "Dixie" are a protest through irony and parody against the institution of slavery. The references to "Cimmon seed an' sandy bottom" in one version of the song may refer to Nanjemoy, Maryland, Ellen Snowden's birthplace, and located in an area that was known for its persimmons and sandy, wet lowlands.[24] Slaves rarely knew their exact birth date, instead recalling broad details that someone was born, for example, "Early on one frosty mornin'". A domestic slave, as Ellen Snowden had been, would have been well placed to witness a love affair between "Old Missus" and "Will-de-weaber". Food imagery, such as "buck-wheat cake" and "'Ingen' batter", further points to a writer who had some experience as a cook.[25]
A 1950 article by Ada Bedell Wootton claims that Ben and Lew Snowden sometimes played with Dan Emmett during the minstrel's retirement.[26] At his death in 1923, Lew Snowden owned a small box of newspaper clippings asserting Emmett's authorship of "Dixie". He also had a small framed photograph of Emmett, a fixture on the Snowden house's wall for years, with the text "Author of 'Dixie'!" written under the minstrel's name.[27] Scholars such as Clint Johnson, Robert James Branham, and Stephen J. Hartnett accept the claims of black origin for the song or at least allow for the possibility.[28][29] Nevertheless, many scholars, such as E. Lawrence Abel, dismiss the Snowden claims outright.[30]
Notes
- ↑ Sacks and Sacks 160.
- ↑ Sacks and Sacks 244.
- ↑ Clipping titled "Author of Dixie". Quoted in Sacks and Sacks 160.
- ↑ Clipping from "The War Song of the South". Quoted in Sacks and Sacks 160.
- ↑ Levin.
- ↑ 1 July 1904. "The Author of 'Dixie' Passes to Great Beyond". Mount Vernon Democratic Banner. Quoted in Sacks and Sacks 160.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Sacks and Sacks 161.
- ↑ Quoted in "The Author of Dixie", The New York Clipper. Quoted in Sacks and Sacks 244 note 19.
- ↑ Nathan 266.
- ↑ Abel 47.
- ↑ Abel 46. Sacks and Sacks give the same number of claimants but say "By the time of Emmett's death in 1904 . . . ."
- ↑ Sacks and Sacks 164.
- ↑ 7 September 1872, "Cat and Dog Fight". The New York Clipper. Quoted in Nathan 256.
- ↑ Quoted in Toll 42.
- ↑ Quoted in Nathan 257.
- ↑ Sacks and Sacks, p. 212 note 4, call $300 "a sum even then considered small"; Abel, p. 31, says that it was "a sizable amount of money in those days, especially for a song." Nathan, p. 269, does not comment on the fairness of the deal.
- ↑ Sacks and Sacks 170-1.
- ↑ Sacks and Sacks 17.
- ↑ Sacks and Sacks 162.
- ↑ Quoted in Sacks and Sacks 3.
- ↑ McMillan, Jean Irwin (1978). The Greer Family Genealogy: Descendants of Robert and Ann Emerson Greer. Columbus: J. I. McMillan, p. 1. Quoted in Sacks and Sacks.
- ↑ Sacks and Sacks 168.
- ↑ Sacks and Sacks 170.
- ↑ This variant of "Dixie" appears in September 1895, Confederate Veteran, 3: 268–9; the first verse was also printed in Werlein's "I Wish I Was in Dixies [sic] Land", published in New Orleans in 1860. Abel 32 and Silber 51 call it a Northern parody. Nathan 359 and Sacks and Sacks 247 note 54, on the other hand, claim it is the closest representation of the original lyrics.
- ↑ Sacks and Sacks 171–9.
- ↑ Sacks and Sacks 197.
- ↑ Sacks and Sacks 183.
- ↑ Johnson 50.
- ↑ Branham and Hartnett 130.
- ↑ Abel 49.
References
- Abel, E. Lawrence (2000). Singing the New Nation: How Music Shaped the Confederacy, 1861–1865. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books. ISBN 0811702286.
- Cornelius, Steven H. (2004). Music of the Civil War Era. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313320810.
- Branham, Robert James, and Stephen J. Hartnett (2002). Sweet Freedom's Song: "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and Democracy in America. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195137418.
- Coski, John M. (2005). The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674019830.
- Crawford, Richard (2001). America's Musical Life: A History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. ISBN 0393327264.
- Johnson, Clint (2007). The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South (and Why It Will Rise Again). Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing Inc. ISBN 1596985003.
- Johnston, Cynthia (11 November 2002). "'Dixie'". Present at the Creation series on NPR. Accessed 1 December 2005.
- Kane, Dr. G. A. (19 March 1893). "'Dixie': Dan Emmett its Author and New York the Place of Its Production". Richmond Dispatch. Accessed 1 December 2005.
- Knowles, Mark (2002). Tap Roots: The Early History of Tap Dancing. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. ISBN 0786412674.
- Levin, Steve (4 September 1998). "'Dixie' now too symbolic of old South, not of origins". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Accessed 1 December 2005.
- Matthews, Brander (1888; reprinted 2007). Pen and Ink: Papers on Subjects of More or Less Importance. Kessinger Publishing, LLC. ISBN 1430470089.
- McLaurin, Melton A. (1992). "Songs of the South: The Changing Image of the South in Country Music", You Wrote My Life: Lyrical Themes in Country Music. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 2881244548X.
- McPherson, Tara (2003). Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender, and Nostalgia in the Imagined South. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. ISBN 0822330407.
- Nathan, Hans (1962). Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.
- Poole, W. Scott (2005). "Lincoln in Hell: Class and Confederate Symbols in the American South", National Symbols, Fractured Identities: Contesting the National Narrative. Middlebury, Vermont: Middlebury College Press. ISBN 1584654376.
- Prince, K. Michael (2004). Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!: South Carolina and the Confederate Flag. The University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 157003527X.
- Roland, Charles P. (2004). An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War, 2nd ed. The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813123003.
- Sacks, Howard L., and Sacks, Judith (1993). Way up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. ISBN 0252071603.
- Silber, Irwin (1960; reprinted 1995). Songs of the Civil War. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 0486284387.
- Spitzer, John, and Walters, Ronald G. "Making Sense of an American Popular Song". History Matters: The U.S. Survey on the Web. Accessed 18 December 2005.
- Timberg, Craig (22 July 1999). "Rehnquist's Inclusion of 'Dixie' Strikes a Sour Note". Washington Post. Accessed 1 December 2005.
- Toll, Robert C. (1974). Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-century America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019502172X.
- Warburton, Thomas (2002). "Dixie", The Companion to Southern Literature: Themes, Genres, Places, People, Movements, and Motifs. Baton Route: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0807126926.
- Watkins, Mel (1994). On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying—The Underground Tradition of African-American Humor that Transformed American Culture, from Slavery to Richard Pryor. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 1-55652-351-3.
- Yoste, Elizabeth (30 January 2002). "'Dixie' sees less play at Tad Pad". The Daily Mississippian. Accessed 16 October 2007.
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