Blue Tail Fly

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"Jimmy Crack Corn" redirects here. For the song by Eminem, see Jimmy Crack Corn (Eminem song).
"Blue Tail Fly"
("Jimmy Crack Corn")
Written 1840's ?
Language English
Form strophic with chorus
Recorded by Burl Ives

"Blue Tail Fly", "De Blue Tail Fly", or "Jimmy Crack Corn" is a blackface minstrel song, first performed in the United States in the 1840s, which remains a popular children's song today.

Over the years, many variants of text have appeared, but the basic narrative remains intact. On the surface, the song is a black slave's lament over his master's death. The song, however, has a subtext of rejoicing over that death, and possibly having caused it by deliberate negligence.[1] Most versions at least nod to idiomatic African American English, though sanitized, grammatically "correct" versions predominate today.

The blue-tail fly of the song is probably a Southern variant of the horsefly, which feeds on the blood of animals such as horses and cattle, as well as humans, and thus constitutes a prevalent pest in agricultural regions. Some horseflies have a blue-black abdomen, hence the name.

Contents

[edit] Lyrics

One early version set the idyllic (yet ironic) scene thus:

When I was young A us'd to wait
On Massa and hand him de plate;
Pass down the bottle when he git dry,
And bresh away de blue tail fly.
refrain (repeated each verse):
Jim crack corn — I don't care,
Jim crack corn — I don't care,
Jim crack corn — I don't care,
Old Massa gone away.

Two further verses show the singer being told to protect his master's horse from the bite of the blue-tail fly:

An' when he ride in de arternoon,
I foiler wid a hickory broom;
De poney being berry shy,
When bitten by de blue tail fly.
One day he rode aroun' de farm,
De flies so numerous dey did swarm;
One chance to bite 'im on the thigh,
De debble take dat blu tail fly.

The horse bucks and the master is killed. The slave then escapes culpability:

De poney run, he jump an' pitch,
An' tumble massa in de ditch;
He died, an' de jury wonder'd why
De verdic was de blue tail fly.

The reference to a "jury" and a "verdic[t]" does not indicate that the slave was charged with any crime. It refers instead to a coroners inquest into the death.[citation needed]

They buried him neath the sycamore tree
His epitaph there for to see
"Beneath this stone I'm forced to lie
The victim of a blue-tailed Fly."

[edit] History and interpretation

Differing sources date it from 1844[2] or 1846[3] and differ as to who wrote it; one early printing attributed it to Dan Emmett.[4] At the time, though, it was commonplace for the recorder of a folk song to take credit. It has also been conjectured that it might not have been originally a blackface minstrel song, and might have genuine African American origins.[5] Unlike many minstrel songs, "Blue Tail Fly" was long popular among African Americans, and was recorded by, among others, Big Bill Broonzy. A celebrated live version was recorded by Burl Ives.[6] Another popularizer was the folk singer Pete Seeger. At the 92nd Street Y in New York City in 1993, Ives and Seeger performed the song together in what turned out to be Ives' last public performance.[7] The song was also repeated almost in its entirety by Bugs Bunny in the Warner Bros. cartoon short Lumber Jack-Rabbit, though it is done in Bugs' trademark Brooklyn/Bronx accent.

There has been much conjecture over the meaning of "Jimmy Crack Corn and I don't care." However, in the oldest version it is "jim crack corn", and "jim crack" has always meant something cheap or shoddily built,[8] and "corn" is an American euphemism for "corn whiskey".

From a petroleum engineer's perspective, this could simply refer to corn whiskey. "Cracking" is, in general, a process of reducing an input substance to a desired output substance ... so "cracked" corn might be corn whiskey. "Jim" could be a generic reference to the person owning the still; much as we refer to the generic "John Doe" these days.

One possibility is "gimcrack corn," cheap corn whiskey; another related theory is that it refers to "cracking" open a jug of corn whisky; another is that "crack-corn" is related to the (still-current) slang "cracker" for a rural Southern white.[9] Another interpretation is that "crack corn" came from the old English term "crack," meaning gossip, and that "cracking corn" was a traditional Shenandoah expression for "sitting around chitchatting."[10] Yet another, and possibly the most popular, is that the chorus refers to an overseer who, without the master, has only his bullwhip to keep the slaves in line. Most etymologists support the first interpretation, as the term "cracker" appears to predate "corncracking", and "whipcracker" has no historical backing.[11] This suggests that the chorus means the slaves are making whiskey and celebrating.

Pete Seeger himself was said to explain the true lyric was "Gimmie cracked corn--I don't care",[12] a reference to a form of punishment for something very bad, in which a slave's rations were reduced to cracked corn and nothing else. In this case, the author seems to have decided that even this punishment is worth it, since the master is now dead and gone.

Jim crack-corn, or "Get cracked-corn", a subsistence food (corn) ration. The slave in the song is so happy his master is dead he does not care if he has to eat cracked corn either because he has no-one to now feed him or he fears he will be punished for letting the blue-tail fly get by him which causes his masters demise.

Another interpretation holds that "jimmy" was slang for a crow and the phrase refers to crows being allowed feed in the cornfields. Normally it would be a boy's responsibility to keep crows out of the corn. The phrase "jim crow" may come from the same usage - a jimmy could be a crow.[citation needed]

Reference the minstrel song from the same era (1840) "Jim Along, Josey" by Edward Harper. In this case "Jim Along" probably was the equivalent of the phrase "Get a-long", which he uses in the chorus of this song "Hey, get a-long, get a-long, Josey

Hey, get a-long, Jim a-long, Jo!

Hey, get a-long, get a-long Josey,

Hey, get a-long, Jim a-long Jo!

Abraham Lincoln was an admirer calling it "that buzzing song" and it was likely he played it on his harmonica[13]. When he was at Gettysburg he was said to have asked for it to be played.[14]

An instrumental version of the song entitled "Beatnik Fly" was released by Johnny and the Hurricanes in 1960.

Actress Vanessa Redgrave sings "Jimmy Cracked Corn"/"Blue Tail Fly" in one of the opening scenes to the Merchant/Ivory film of Edward Albee's adaptation of Carson McCullers' The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. It is used in direct juxtaposition to the spiritual "In the Garden" to emphasize Miss Amelia's non-religious concerns (as compared to the near-mysticism of the local preacher, played by Rod Steiger).

When performing their version of the song on their album The Two Sides of the Smothers Brothers, Tom Smothers continually sings, "I don't care, and I don't care...", and when Dick Smothers tells him those aren't the lyrics, Tom replies, "I don't care."

The song raised some controversy when a small part of it was used in a December, 2006 Cingular Wireless commercial, in which the visible half of a phone conversation was talking to someone named "Jim" and was calling him by any variant of "Jim" that he could think of ("Jimbo", "Jimmy boy", "Jimmy crack corn..."). It was subsequently edited out because of several complaints. Cingular stated that they received a "half dozen complaints", but did not want to offend anybody who thought the commercial was inappropriate. [15]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English Speaking World", edited by Albert B. Friedman, cited at "Jimmy Crack…" on mudcat.org
  2. ^ Lott, 1993, 177
  3. ^ Multiple citations on pdmusic.org, and at Mudcat.org. De Blue Tail Fly Jim Crack Corn… Lyr Add… Jimmy Crack…
  4. ^ "Lyr Add…", on Mudcat.org
  5. ^ "Jimmy Crack…" on Mudcat.org
  6. ^ Ron Sweetman, Big Bill Broonzy in France and England on Jazzhouse.org. Accessed 10 Sept 2005.
  7. ^ Stephen Holden, "The Cream of Folk, Reunited for a Cause," New York Times, May 19, 1993, p. C15.
  8. ^ "A Short Essay on the Modes Of Defence", pp. 53-54: "And, perhaps, some ages hence, when the memory of an undertaking so ridiculous shall be obliterated, their decayed jim-crack curiosities may furnish amusement and speculation to antiquaries."
  9. ^ "Lyr Add…", "Jimmy Crack…", both on Mudcat.org
  10. ^ Straight Dope: Who is Jimmy, and why does he crack corn?
  11. ^ Word Origins: Letter C
  12. ^ Pete Peterson, RE: Jimmy Crack Corn and I Don't Care on mudcat.org. Accessed 2 Jan 2006.
  13. ^ Wayne Erbsen (1993), Front Porch Songs, Jokes Stories: 48 Great Southern Sing-Along Favorites, Page 10.
  14. ^ James J. Fuld (2000), The Book of World-Famous Music: classical, popular, and folk, Page 312
  15. ^ cbs13.com - Cingular Pulls Ad After Racism Complaints

[edit] References

  • "A Short Essay on the Modes Of Defence" Article XV ofThe English Review, Or, An Abstract of English and Foreign Literature Vol VI, pp. 52-54. London: J. Murray (1785).
  • De Blue Tail Fly, a version attributed to C.H. Keith (on pdmusic.org). Accessed 10 Sept 2005.
  • Jim Crack Corn; or, The Blue Tail Fly, a version attributed to Dan Emmett (on pdmusic.org). Accessed 10 Sept 2005.
  • The Blue-Tail Fly a shortened, 20th century version. Accessed 10 Sept 2005.
  • Lott, Eric (1993). Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509641-X.
  • Lyr Add: (De) BLUE TAIL FLY discussion on Mudcat.org gives several variants of title and lyrics, early publication information; its links include numerous other discussions of the song. Accessed 10 Sept 2005.
  • Jimmy Crack Corn - Man or Myth discussion on Mudcat.org includes discussion of lyrics, cites further sources. Accessed 10 Sept 2005.
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