936. Old Dan Tucker (Traditional American) video

The origins of this popular song are largely unknown, though one version is attributed to songwriter and performer Dan Emmett, who claimed he wrote it in 1830 or 1831 when he was fifteen or sixteen years old. Other songwriters it has been credited to include JR Jenkins and Henry Russell. Regardless of who wrote the first version, it has become part of oral tradition, with hundreds of verses of varying quality added and replaced at different times. The blackface minstrel troupe, The Virginia Minstrels, popularized the song in 1843, and it quickly became part of the minstrel repertoire during the antebellum period. These days it is still a bluegrass and country music standard. The first sheet music edition (1843) used exaggerated Black Vernacular English to chronicle Dan Tucker's visit to town, where he breaks various social taboos including fighting, getting drunk and overeating. Its intense, occasionally syncopated rhythm and simple melody has led some scholars to see it as a transitional piece between early minstrel music and the later more European-style songs. With its raw energy, racism and gleeful political incorrectness, the song is typical of the masculine boasting songs common in the early minstrel days. Dan Tucker is portrayed as animalistic and violent, primitive, ugly, and not too bright. His flouting of convention allows some verses to make fun of respectable middle class American society, which appealed to the working class audiences, whereas others are just ...