From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America, 1830–1910

Routines: Songs, Speeches, Dialogue, and Farce

Routines: Songs, Speeches, Dialogue, and Farce 71 Routines: Songs, Speeches, Dialogue, and Farce Billy Whitlock, one of the original Virginia Minstrels, composed the most popular minstrel song of the 1840s. Its combination of sentimentality, comic nonsense, and a simple, repetitive tune made it a success with amateur and professional performers. It was topical, with mention of the Cachucha, a fastpaced Spanish dance popularized by the European ballerina Fanny Ellsler during her American tour of 1840–42. The role of Miss Lucy may have been the first for a cross-dressed ‘‘wench.’’ The song celebrates male freedom; rebuffed in marriage, the would-be husband boasts of casting her off if she proves difficult. S. Damon Foster, Series of Old American Songs (Providence, R.I.: Brown University Library, 1936). Miss Lucy Long (1842) I’ve come to see you again, I’ll sing another song, Jist listen to my story, It isn’t very long. Chorus: Oh, take your time Miss Lucy, Take your time Miss Lucy Long, Oh, take your time Miss Lucy, Take your time Miss Lucy Long. Miss Lucy, she is handsome, And Miss Lucy, she is tall; To see her dance Cachucha, Is death to niggers all. Oh! Miss Lucy’s teeth is grinning, Just like an ear ob corn, And her eyes dey look so winning, Oh! I would I’d ne’er been born. I axed her for to marry Myself de toder day, She said she’d rather tarry, So I let her hab her way. If she makes a scolding wife, As sure as she was born, MINSTRELSY 72 I’ll tote her down to Georgia, And trade her off for corn. My Mamma’s got de tisic, And my daddy’s got de gout: Good morning, Mister Physick! Does your mother know you’re out. Dan Emmett claimed to have written ‘‘Dandy Jim.’’ Like the ‘‘Long-Tail’d Blue,’’ made famous by George Washington Dixon, it was another song satirizing the gaudy male peacock and charlatan, the confidence-man. It proved more enduringly popular in minstrel programs than ‘‘Zip Coon’’ (1833), perhaps because Zip the ‘‘larned scholar’’ commented extensively, but narrowly, on Jacksonian politics. ‘‘Dandy Jim’’ had broad reference beyond the slave South to the city streets where boastful ‘‘swells,’’ like Mose, the ‘‘Bowery B’hoy,’’ with his greased ringlocks and flashy red shirt, promenaded and displayed themselves. There are least ten different versions of ‘‘Dandy Jim.’’ S. Damon Foster, Series of Old American Songs (Providence, R.I.: Brown University Library, 1936). Dandy Jim from Caroline (1843) I’ve often heard it said ob late, Dat Souf Carolina was de state, Whar a handsome nigga’s bound to shine, Like Dandy Jim from Caroline. Chorus: For my ole missus tole me so, I was de best looking nigga in de country, O, I look in de glass and found ’twas so, Just what massa tole me, O. I drest myself from top to toe, And down to Dinah I did go, Wid pentaloons strapped down behind, Like Dandy Jim from Caroline. De bull dog cleared me out ob de yard, I tought I’d better leabe my card, I tied it fast to a piece ob twine, Signed ‘‘Dandy Jim from Caroline.’’ She got my card and wrote me a letter, And ebery word she spelt de better, Routines: Songs, Speeches, Dialogue, and Farce 73 For ebery word an ebery line, Was Dandy Jim from Caroline. Oh, beauty is but skin deep, But wid Miss Dinah none compete, She changed her name from lubly Dine, To Mrs. Dandy Jim from Caroline. And ebery little nig she had, Was the berry image ob de dad, Dar heels stick out three feet behind, Like Dandy Jim from Caroline. I took dem all to church one day, An hab dem christened widout delay, De preacher christened eight or nine, Young Dandy Jims from Caroline. When Emerson and other prominent ministers and moralists became popular lecturers on the lyceum circuit, minstrels mocked the wise. Emotional sermons and pompous Fourth of July orations were favorite subjects for burlesque, with inappropriate nonsense words ridiculing pretentious sentiments . Any newsworthy subject, from the revolutions of 1848 to Manifest Destiny to the California Gold Rush, became suitable material. De Negro’s Original Piano-Rama, of Southern, Northern and Western Songs, to airs of all quarters, embracing de operatic de serenade and de soul combustion ballad, all sighenti fically...