MINSTREL SONGS

Boxes 17-25

(1079 items)
This material consists of songs sung by actors in blackface beginning in the 1820s. Among the earliest are "Bonja Song" and "Ching-A-Ring-Chaw". In 1830 Thomas Dartmouth ("Daddy") Rice introduced "Jim Crow" which established him as an acclaimed entertainer of the day. Later in the 1830s two popular blackface performers, George Washington Dixon and Bob Farrell, featured "Zip Coon" (better known today as "Turkey in the Straw") and "Sich A Gitting Upstairs". By the 1840s the first blackface minstrel troupe was organized as the Virginia Minstrels, and "The Boatman's Dance", "Jim Crow Polka" and "Jumbo Jim" were much applauded. The foremost of this troupe was Daniel Decatur Emmett whose early piece "Ole Dan Tucker" was very popular. Nearly two decades later he composed "Dixie". Other rare items of the 1840s included are: "Ole Bull and Ole Dan Tucker", "De Ole Jaw Bone" and "Old Tare River". New minstrel troupes soon appeared: the Kentucky Minstrels, Congo Minstrels, Ethiopian Serenaders, the Sable Harmonists, the Campbell Minstrels, and the group whose name endured the longest, the Christy Minstrels, founded by Edwin P. Christy. Christy introduced many of Stephen Foster's songs. By the late 1850s, Bryant's Minstrels were immensely successful, particularly when they were joined by Dan Emmett. By the 1860s, Billy Emerson was the most popular performer of the day. The minstrel troupes with songs in Negro dialect continued through the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s.

Among the minstrel songs are a number of songs by American singing family groups popular in the 1840s and 1850s such as the Hutchinsons, the Baker, Rainer and Hauser families.

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