Dixie – Fiddle Tune a Day – Day 260

Today, my brother Aaron married Kristen, and I am blessed to have been a part of the ceremony. Since the wedding was in Alabama, I thought that a southern song would be appropriate, so I played Dixie.

A little digression: There is a legend that when Scott Joplin would play piano in the north he would play Yankee Doodle, and when he played in the south he would play Dixie. One day he found himself playing a show near the Mason/Dixon Line, so he played Yankee Doodle in his left hand, and Dixie in his right.

I couldn’t find a video of it being played on piano, but I did find a recording of Chet Atkins doing it. I hope it will suffice.

Dixie according to Wikipedia

“Dixie“, also known as “I Wish I Was in Dixie“, “Dixie’s Land“, and other titles, is a popular American song. It is one of the most distinctively American musical products of the 19th century,^[1] and probably the best-known song to have come out of blackface minstrelsy.^[2] Although not a folk song at its creation, “Dixie” has since entered the American folk vernacular. The song likely cemented the word “Dixie” in the American vocabulary as a synonym for the Southern United States.

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 registering the song’s copyright. The latest challenge has come on behalf of the Snowden Family of Knox County, Ohio, who may have collaborated with Emmett to write “Dixie”.

The song originated in the blackface minstrel shows of the 1850s and quickly grew famous across the United States. Its lyrics, written in a comic, exaggerated version of African American Vernacular English, tell the story of a freed black slave pining for the plantation of his birth. 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. Since the advent of the North American Civil Rights Movement, many have identified the lyrics of the song with the iconography and ideology of the Old South. Today, “Dixie” is sometimes considered offensive, and its critics link the act of singing it to sympathy for the concept of slavery in the American South. Its supporters, on the other hand, view it as a legitimate aspect of Southern culture and heritage and the campaigns against it as political correctness. In fact, the song was a favorite of President Abraham Lincoln; he had it played at some of his political rallies and at the announcement of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender.

Structure

“Dixie” is structured into 32 measure groups of alternating verses and refrains, following an AABC pattern.^[3] As originally performed, a soloist or small group stepped forward and sang the verses, and the whole company answered at different times; the repeated line “look away” was probably one part sung in unison like this. As the song became widely popular, the audience likely joined the troupe in singing the chorus.^[4] Traditionally, another eight measures of unaccompanied fiddle playing followed, coming to a partial close in the middle; since 1936, this part has rarely been printed with the sheet music.^[5]

The song was traditionally played at a tempo slower than the one usually played today. Rhythmically, the music is “characterized by a heavy, nonchalant, inelegant strut”,^[6] and is in duple meter, which makes it suitable for both dancing and marching. “Dixie” employs a single rhythmic motive (two sixteenth note pickups followed by a longer note), which is integrated into long, melodic phrases. The melodic content consists primarily of arpeggiations of the tonictriad, firmly establishing the major tonality. The melody of the chorus emulates natural inflections of the voice (particularly on the word “away”), and may account for some of the song’s popularity.^[7]

According to musicologist Hans Nathan, “Dixie” resembles other material that Dan Emmett wrote for Bryant’s Minstrels, and, in writing it, the composer drew on a number of earlier works. The first part of the song is anticipated by other Emmett compositions, including “De Wild Goose-Nation” (1844), itself a derivative of “Gumbo Chaff” (1830s) and ultimately an 18th-century Englishsong called “Bow Wow Wow”. The second part is probably related to even older material, most likely Scottish folk songs.^[8] The chorus follows portions of “Johnny Roach”, an Emmett piece from earlier in 1859.^[9]

As with other blackface material, performances of “Dixie” were accompanied by dancing. The song is a walkaround, which originally began with a few minstrels acting out the lyrics, only to be joined by the rest of the company (a dozen or so individuals for the Bryants).^[10] According to a musician named Oscar Coon, Bryant’s Minstrels performed a jig to “Dixie” called Beans of Albany. This is probably Albany Beef, the Scots-Irish dance that Emmett refers to in a book on fife instruction.^[10] Dancers probably performed between verses,^[4] and a single dancer used the fiddle solo at the end of the song to “strut, twirl his cane, or mustache, and perhaps slyly wink at a girl on the front row.”^[11]

Dixie Lyrics

Countless lyrical variants of “Dixie” exist, but the version attributed to Dan Emmett and its variations are the most popular.^[4] Emmett’s lyrics as they were originally intended reflect the mood of the United States in the late 1850s toward growing abolitionist sentiment. The song presented the point of view, common to minstrelsy at the time, that slavery was overall a positive institution. The pining slave had been used in minstrel tunes since the early 1850s, including Emmett’s “I Ain’t Got Time to Tarry” and “Johnny Roach”. The fact that “Dixie” and its precursors are dance tunes only further made light of the subject.^[12] In short, “Dixie” made the case, more strongly than any previous minstrel tune had, that slaves belonged in bondage.^[13] This was accomplished through the song’s protagonist, who, in comic black dialect, implies that despite his freedom, he is homesick for the plantation of his birth:

I wish I was in the land of cotton,

Old times they are not forgotten;

Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

In Dixie Land where I was born,

Early on one frosty mornin,

Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

The remaining verses drift into the common minstrel idiom of a comical plantation scenario, “supposedly [depicting] the gayer side of life for slaves on Southern plantations”:^[14]

Old Missus marry “Will-de-weaber,”

Willium 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.

The final verse mixes nonsense and dance steps with the freed-slave scenario:

Dar’s buck-wheat cakes an ‘Ingen’ batter,

Makes you fat or a little fatter;

Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

Den hoe it down an scratch your grabble,

To Dixie land I’m bound to trabble.

Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.^[15]

The lyrics use many common phrases found in minstrel tunes of the day—”I wish I was in . . .” dates to at least “Clare de Kitchen” (early 1830s), and “Away down south in . . .” appears in many more songs, including Emmett’s “I’m Gwine ober de Mountain” (1843). The second stanza clearly echoes “Gumbo Chaff” from the 1830s: “Den Missus she did marry Big Bill de weaver / Soon she found out he was a gay deceiver”.^[16] The final stanza rewords portions of Emmett’s own “De Wild Goose-Nation”: “De tarapin he thot it was time for to trabble / He screw aron his tail and begin to scratch grabble.”^[17] Even the phrase “Dixie’s land” had been used in Emmett’s “Johnny Roach” and “I Ain’t Got Time to Tarry”, both first performed earlier in 1859.

As with other minstrel material, “Dixie” entered common circulation among blackface performers, and many of them added their own verses or altered the song in other ways. Emmett himself adopted the tune for a pseudo-African American spiritual in the 1870s or 1880s. The chorus changed to:

I wish I was in Canaan

Oaber dar—Oaber dar,

In Canaan’s lann de color’d man

Can lib an die in cloaber

Oaber dar—Oaber dar,

Oaber dar in de lann ob Canaan.^[18]

Both Union and Confederate composers produced war versions of the song during the American Civil War. These variants standardized the spelling and made the song more militant, replacing the slave scenario with specific references to the conflict or to Northern or Southern pride. This Confederate verse by Albert Pike is representative:

Southrons! hear your country call you!

Up! lest worse than death befall you! . . .

Hear the Northern thunders mutter! . . .

Northern flags in South wind flutter; . . .

Send them back your fierce defiance!

Stamp upon the cursed alliance!^[19]

Compare Frances J. Crosby’s Union lyrics:

On! ye patriots to the battle,

Hear Fort Moultrie’s cannon rattle!

Then away, then away, then away to the fight!

Go meet those Southern traitors,

With iron will.

And should your courage falter, boys,

Remember Bunker Hill.

Hurrah! Hurrah! The Stars and Stripes forever!

Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever!^[20]

The Confederate States of America War Song Goes Like This:

Southern men the thunders mutter!

Northern flags in South winds flutter!

To arms! To arms! To arms, in Dixie!

Send them back your fierce defiance!

Stamp upon the cursed alliance!

To arms! To arms! To arms, in Dixie!

Advance the flag of Dixie! Hurrah! Hurrah!

In Dixie’s land we take our stand, and live or die for Dixie!

To arms! To arms! And conquer peace for Dixie!

To arms! To arms! And conquer peace for Dixie

Fear no danger! Shun no labor!

Lift up rifle, pike, and saber!

To arms! To arms! To arms, in Dixie!

Shoulder pressing close to shoulder,

Let the odds make each heart bolder!

To arms! To arms! To arms, in Dixie!

Advance the flag of Dixie! Hurrah! Hurrah!

In Dixie’s land we take our stand, and live or die for Dixie!

To arms! To arms! And conquer peace for Dixie!

To arms! To arms! And conquer peace for Dixie!

Swear upon your country’s altar

Never to submit or falter–

To arms! To arms! To arms, in Dixie!

Till the spoilers are defeated,

Till the Lord’s work is completed!

To arms! To arms! To arms, in Dixie!

“The New Dixie!: The True ‘Dixie’ for Northern Singers” takes a different approach, turning the original song on its head:

Den I’m glad I’m not in Dixie

Hooray! Hooray!

In Yankee land I’ll took my stand,

Nor lib no die in Dixie^[21]

Soldiers on both sides wrote endless parody versions of the song. Often these discussed the banalities of camp life: “Pork and cabbage in the pot, / It goes in cold and comes out hot,” or, “Vinegar put right on red beet, / It makes them always fit to eat”. Others were more nonsensical: “Way down South in the fields of cotton, / Vinegar shoes and paper stockings”.^[22]

Aside from its being rendered in standard English, the chorus was the only section not regularly altered, even for parodies.^[23] The first verse and chorus, in non-dialect form, are the best-known portions of the song today:^[24]

I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten,

Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land.

In Dixie Land where I was born in, early on a frosty mornin’,

Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land.

Then I wish I was in Dixie, hooray! hooray!

In Dixie Land I’ll take my stand to live and die in Dixie,

Away, away, away down South in Dixie,

Away, away, away down South in Dixie.^[25]