Old Dan Tucker
“Old Dan Tucker” is a popular song from the antebellum period. It is one of only two songs in the United States to have been recorded in blackface. The song has been recorded by many artists, including Bob Dylan, Hank Williams, George Jones, and John Mellencamp.
About Old Dan Tucker in brief
“Old Dan Tucker”, also known as “Ole Dan Tucker” and other variants, is an American popular song. Its origins remain obscure; the tune may have come from oral tradition, and the words may have been written by songwriter and performer Dan Emmett. The blackface troupe the Virginia Minstrels popularized the song in 1843, and it quickly became a minstrel hit. Today it is a bluegrass and country music standard, and is no. 390 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The song falls into the idiom of previous min strel music, relying on rhythm and text declamation as its primary motivation. In exaggerated Black Vernacular English, the lyrics tell of Dan Tucker’s exploits in a strange town, where he fights, gets drunk, overeats, and breaks other social taboos. Other verses appear that do not go along with the main narrative, due to the unfamiliar slang and products of the time. At least four different versions of the song were published with different lyrics during the 19th century. A parody appears in some playbills and some play-bills of some of the versions of Old Dan Tucker appear in some plays and some songs of the same name, such as “The Old Man and the Big Red Barn” and “The Big Red House” The song has been recorded by many artists, including Bob Dylan, Hank Williams, George Jones, and John Mellencamp.
It has been covered by many bands, including the Blue Öysterians, the Kansas City Pops, and The Dixie Chicks, among others. It was recorded in the U.S. during the antebellum period, and became a folk standard around the same time. It is one of only two songs in the United States to have been recorded in blackface, the other being “Miss Lucy Long” (1843) and “Mary Blane” (1905). The song was written in the first person, in the style of Jim Crow and Gumbo Chaff, and portrays Dan Tucker as a rough-and-ready black man in the mold of the Jim Crow stereotype. The first sheet music edition of “OldDan Tucker”, published in 18 43, is a song of boasts and nonsense in the vein of previousminstrel hits such as “Jump Jim Crow” and “Gumbo Chaff”. Modern analysts emphasize the song’s rawness, racism, and disdain for social Taboos. The third verse is one example: Here’s my razor in good orderMagnum bonum—jis hab bought ‘er;Sheep shell oats, Tucker shell de corn,I’ll shabe you soon as de water get warm. Perhaps it was written to extend the rhyme scheme. The final verse: Tucker was a hardened sinner,He nebber said his grace at dinner;De ole sow squeel, de pigs did squallHe ‘hole hog wid de tail and all.
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This page is based on the article Old Dan Tucker published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
