Annotation:I'm Off to Charlestown

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I'M OFF TO CHARLESTOWN. AKA and see "Off to Charleston." American; Air and dance tune (2/4 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. The first several bars of melody are shared with the American old-time song "Old Plank Road." The tune is included in Kerr's along with a hodgepodge of tunes, including several from America. "I'm Off to Charlestown" [1] was popularized by Christy's Minstrels, a blackface minstrel troupe, and was written by William B. Donaldson and dedicated to Charles White Esq. It was published in 1850.

My massa and my missus have both gone away,
Gone to the sulpher springs, the summer months to stay;
And while they're off togedder, on a little kind of spree,
I'll go down to Charlestown, the pretty gals to see.

William Donaldson was a left-handed banjo-player who hailed from Poughkeepsie, New York, whose career alternated between clowning for the circues and performing as a theatre minstrel. He made his debut in 1836 at the age of thirteen, as “Young Jim Crow,” and ten years later was known mainly as a clown. The individual he dedicated the song to, Charles White, owned a minstrel company, White’s Melodeon on the Bowery in New York. William Donaldson, Dan Bryant, Lilly Coleman, and Dan Emmitt performed together for Charlie White in the mid-1850s. See also the march variant "Off to Charleston" in Hopkin's American Veteran Fifer (1905).

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Kerr (Merry Melodies, vol. 3), c. 1880's; No. 395, p. 43.

Recorded sources:

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