Annotation:Jim Brown

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JIM BROWN. American, Minstrel Air (2/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB.

Jim Brown songsheet, c. 1836

The figure depicted in the cover the to the sheet music to the left is dressed in a band costume. It has been suggested that the cover caricatures African-American bandleader, composer, violinist and keyed-bugle player Francis Johnson (1792-1844), who led a very successful band of African-American musicians in Philadelphia, and who had an international reputation for his music (see Annotation:Philadelphia Fireman's Cotillion (The)). The cover also depicts the man as a variant of the black 'dandy' (albeit in uniform rather than evening-dress), a stereotypic figure in the minstrel era that started early with such songs as "Zip Coon" and "Long Tail Blue."

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Chaff (The Complete Preceptor for the Banjo), 1851; p. 14.

Recorded sources:

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