Annotation:Cotton Eyed Joe (1)
X:1 T:Cotton-Eyed Joe [1] M:4/4 L:1/8 S:Steve Hawkins, Rowan County, Ky. 1911 B:Thomas & Leeder - "Singin' Gathering" (1939) K:C G|c2 AA A<(G G)A|c2 AA A3A|c AA G2E2|G<F D2 C3C| C2 EE G<(G G)G|A2 AA G3G|AAAA GGEE|G<ED>C C3||
COTTON-EYED JOE [1]. AKA – "Dominicker Duck." See "Citaco." American, Reel. USA, widely known, but may have originally been a Texas tune. A Major (most versions): G Major (Ford, Kaufman): D Major (Zenith String Band). Standard or AEae, AEac#, ADae, GDad (Devil's Box, Thede, John Dykes) tunings (fiddle). AABB (Beisswenger & McCann, Perlman): AABBA: AA'BB' (Kaufman). Charles Wolfe has called this tune "a Texas dance-hall anthem" but it has had such widespread currency in the United States that the tune is really a pastiche of melodies using interchangeable phrases, the most recognizable of which usually is associated with the verses:
Where did you come from, where will you go?
Where did you come from Cotten-Eyed Joe.
Pope's Arkansas Mountaineers (1927) also sang:
Want to go to church and couldn't get to go,
I had to stay home with Cotton-Eyed Joe.
One "Cotten Eyed Joe" variant printed by Ira Ford in Traditional Music in America (1940) is cognate with the melodies "Sugar in my Coffee-O" (Frank Reed) and "Cornstalk Fiddle" (Cyde Davenport). However, there is a wide variety of melodies called "Cotten Eyed Joe" that have varying degrees of relatedness.
There have been several thoughts about what the title might refer to. Some think 'cotton-eyed' means to be drunk on moonshine, and a related suggestion is that it refers to an individual who has been blinded by drinking wood alcohol (as happened during the Prohibition, for example), turning the eyes milky white. Marion Thede believes 'cotton-eyed' may refer to a (black) person with very light blue eyes. Alan Lomax suggests it was used to describe a man whose eyes were milky white from Trachoma (a bacterial infection), while others have suggested cataracts, syphilis or glaucoma. Some recall the term referring to the contrast of dark skin tone around white eyeballs in African-Americans, and indeed, the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang references the 'prominent whites of the eyes' meaning to 1905. Charles Wolfe (1991) writes that African-American collector Thomas Talley (1870-1952), in his manuscript of stories, Negro Traditions[1], related a story entitled "Cotton-Eyed Joe, or the Origin of the Weeping Willow." The story includes a stanza from the song, "but more importantly details a bizarre tale of a well-known pre-Civil War plantation musician, Cotton Eyed Joe, who plays a fiddle made from the coffin of his dead son." "Cotton Eyed Joe" was the name of a heel-and-toe dance in Texas in the 1880's.
The tune was a favorite of John Dykes (Magic City Trio {Eastern Tenn.}), was recorded in the 1920's by Carter Brothers and Son and the Skillet Lickers, and it was in the repertoire of Arizona fiddler Kenner C. Kartchner (in the key of G Major) who said a fellow fiddler named Youngblood brought it to the territory from Mississippi around 1890. It was one of the tunes played at the turn of the century by Etowah County, Alabama, fiddler George Cole, according to Mattie Cole Stanfield in her book Sourwood Tonic and Sassafras Tea (1963), and was mentioned in accounts of the DelKalb County Annual (Fiddlers) Convention, 1926–31. It was recorded by North Carolina fiddler Marcus Martin, whom Alan Jabbour suspects learned the tune from Fiddlin' John Carson's recording. The title appears in a list of traditional Ozarks Mountains fiddle tunes compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph, published in 1954. Some versions are similar to North Georgia fiddler Lowe Stokes popular "Citaco," notably that played by John Dykes of the Dykes Magic City Trio and the rendition in Marion Thede's Fiddle Book (both in GDad). Alan Jabbour believes it may have ties to the Mississippi version of "Dusty Miller" (supported by Fiddlin' John Carson's 1927 recording of "Cotton Eyed Joe"), and "Cornbread Molasses Sassafras Tea" has also be pointed to as a related melody.
Ken Perlman (1996), who collected the tune on Prince Edward Island, believes Canadian versions probably derived from the playing of radio and TV Maritime fiddler Don Messer (the 'B' part is played with a strong Acadian flavor). See also Bayard's (1981) note to a related tune "Horse Called Rover (The)" (No. 10, pp. 20–21).
The reel is often played 'crosstuned' (i.e. scodatura) in AEae (e.g. Pope's Arkansas Mountaineers), a "Cotton-Eyed Joe" in AEac# tuning (as played by Scott Meyer on Yodel-Ay-Hee 024, "The Improbabillies") is a current 'revival' favorite.
These words were originally collected from the playing of Noah Beavers by Garry Harrison.
Where'd you come from, where'd you go?
Where'd you come from Cotten-Eyed Joe.
I'd-a been married a long time ago,
If it hadn't a-been for Cotten-Eyed Joe.
Cornstalk fiddle and shoestring bow,
Come down gals on Cotten Eyed Joe.
Wanna go to meeting and wouldn't let me go,
Had to stay home with Cotten Eyed Joe.
Come a little rain and come a little snow,
The house fell down on Cotten Eyed Joe. (Thede)
Hold my fiddle and hold my bow,
'Till I knock the devil out of cotton-eyed Joe. (Ford)
I'll make me a fiddle and make me a bow,
And I'll learn to play like Cotten-eyed Joe.
I tun'd up my fiddle, I went to a dance,
I tried to make some music, but I couldn't get a chance.
You hold my fiddle and you hold my bow,
Till I whip old Satan out of Cotten-eyed Joe.
I've make lot of fiddles and made lot of bows,
But I never learned to fiddle like Cotten-eyed Joe. (Thomas & Leeder).
Thomas Talley records the following in Negro Folk Rhymes:
Hol' my fiddle an' hol' my bow,
Whilst I knocks ole Cotton Eyed Joe.[2]
I'd a been dead some seben years ago,
If I hadn' a danced dat Cotton Eyed Joe.
Oh, it makes dem ladies love me so,
W'en I comes 'roun' pickin' ole Cotton Eyed Joe.
Yes, I'd a been married some forty years ago,
If I hadn' stay's home wid Cotton Eyed Joe.
I hain't seed ole Joe, sonce way las' Fall;
Dey say he's been sol' down to Guinea Gall.
"Cotton Eyed Joe" was commercially recorded several times in the 78 RPM era, first by the Dykes' Magic City Trio in 1927 (fiddler John Dykes and family) and, independently in 1927 by north Georgia's Fiddlin' John Carson. This was followed by recordings in 1928 by Pope's Arkansas Mountaineers (of Searcy, Arkansas, consisting of two fathers-and-sons, with John Chism on fiddle), and in the same year by Gid Tanner & His Skillet Lickers. Lowe Stokes and Clayton McMichen released it in 1930.
- ↑ The Negro Traditions, was an unpublished manuscript of collected stories that was finally published by Charles K. Wolfe and Laura C. Jarmon in 1993.
- ↑ The Kimble Family sang the line for collector Ray Alden (Marimac 9009) in 1975 as:"Ready up the fiddle, rosin up the bow, Pick a little tune called cotton eyed Joe."