Author Archives: Quin Johnson

Casey Jones: Better Watch His Speed

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When we discussed the song “Casey Jones” in class, I had only known it as a Grateful Dead song about a railroad accident, one I assumed was fictional. However, I soon came to find that it was a very real event, and that Casey Jones was a real railroader who became a folk legend after his passing.

I found a recording of Casey Jones from the Library of Congress’s National Jukebox. It was recorded by Riley Puckett singing and playing guitar. Riley Puckett was a blind guitarist and singer who operated largely out of Atlanta, and was fairly popular. His rendition of Casey Jones, like most covers, stray from the original lyrics of the song. His cover tells less of the actual rail incident, choosing rather to focus more on the events after the crash than the events preceding the crash and the crash itself. Truthfully, I found it quite hard to actually make out the lyrics, but I could tell they were different than the published song lyrics by T. Lawrence Seibert, who is the accredited lyricist on the Library of Congress website.

The Ballad of Casey Jones became an extremely popular folk tune after the crash itself. Joe Hill, a famous union activist and martyr wrote a parody of Casey Jones, making him out to be a scabber who died scabbing, scabbed in heaven, and got thrown into hell by the angel unions. Funny stuff! However, the real Casey Jones was a member of two unions, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, according to the Water Valley Casey Jones Museum.

When looking at this song, one has to think about why a song becomes a folk song. In this case, it was at least copyrighted and offered for sale as a “Comedy Railroad Song”, which suggests that the intent of at least Seibert and Newton was to entertain for profit. The published version includes a verse suggesting Mrs. Jones’ lack of faithfulness to her husband, but I’ve rarely heard this verse performed, and it isn’t performed in Puckett’s recording. The original intent of the song was likely to respect and preserve Casey’s memory.

“057.048 – Casey Jones. The Brave Engineer. Greatest Comedy Hit in Years. The Only Comedy Railroad Song. | Levy Music Collection.” Jhu.edu, 2024, levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/collection/057/048. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024.

“Casey Jones.” The Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-673150/.

Lomax, John A. (John Avery), et al. American Ballads and Folk Songs. Dover, 1994.

“Mrs. Casey Jones.” Archive.org, 2024, web.archive.org/web/20131105011815/www.watervalley.net/users/caseyjones/mrs~cj.htm. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024.

St Olaf Choir Tour: Still Singing After All These Years

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When I was considering St Olaf for school, my father, a proud Concordia Grad, was overjoyed to tell me all about St Olaf’s choral history. Naturally, as a proud choral and history nerd, I was eager to listen.

In 1920, F. Melius Christiansen and the St Olaf Choir set off on tour. This was not the very first tour they had been on, as they’d toured in Norway in 1913. However, it was their first domestic tour across the United States. This tour would set a choral precedent for something that would echo through history all the way to today, when the St Olaf Choir still tours, sometimes multiple times per year, frequently filling the house full of people eager to hear the St Olaf Choir sing. The program of the original 1920 tour lays out a much more sacred quest than selling tickets, however.

The Cover of the St Olaf Lutheran Choir 1920 Eastern United States Tour

When reading through the program of the original 1920 St Olaf Lutheran Choir Tour, it immediately differs from the common program notes that are found in Choral concert programs today. Nowadays, when opening your average program, one will find a brief description of the conductor and maybe some notes about the students, but that is often all. However, in this program, it goes into great detail about the purpose of the choir, which is, to quote the program, to “have a far-reaching effect upon the services of the Lutheran churches of America, proving a powerful factor for unity in the services of these churches.” Farther down, after the introduction, there lie several letters, one from the President of the College, another from the President of the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America, another from the President of the United Lutheran Church of America, and a final letter from the President of the Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio. The Norwegian Lutheran Church of America and the United Lutheran Church of America synods would eventually be merged into what is now known as the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, which is the synod that St Olaf College is affiliated with. Upon looking at the actual pieces programmed, it makes sense, as most of the compositions listed are by Lutheran composers, promoting Lutheran ideals. Oh, and don’t worry, Beautiful Savior is still there.

This tour is a direct contrast from another tour I analyzed, which was the Fisk Jubilee Singers Tour, almost 50 years earlier. While their tour came out of necessity, to raise money for their program, the St Olaf Lutheran Choir Tour was for a missionary-like purpose. Both are excellent examples of successful and impactful Choir Tours, especially as the St Olaf Choir program continues to sell out concerts, including their annual ChristmasFest, and the Jubilee Singers having won a Grammy in 2021 for Best Roots Gospel Album.

The Original Fisk University Jubilee Singers Program

Staff. “College Archives.” Stolaf.edu, 2024, digital.stolaf.edu/archives/asset/viewAsset/5f90972829b2667625499ea1. Accessed 3 Nov. 2024.

 

The Romantic South Joins the War Effort!

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In the spring of 1917, America officially went to war. “The Great War”, “The War to End All Wars”, Americans at the time called it. For some, it brought back some not-so-happy memories from the American Civil War. Naturally, the Ziegfeld Follies decided to do a song about it.

The Cover of “The Dixie Volunteers” by Edgar Leslie and Harry Ruby

“The Dixie Volunteers” is a song composed by Edgar Leslie and Harry Ruby for the Ziegfeld Follies, a theatrical production consisting of many musical and sketch acts, and a pioneer of the popular theater forms of the day. The Follies would often attract sought-after stars, notably, Bert Williams, as touring was not necessary due to the Follies being produced on Broadway. “The Dixie Volunteers” was sung by Eddie Cantor, the year of his debut on the Follies. He would stick around for another ten years, performing in blackface with Bert Williams and in other acts.

The written chorus of “The Dixie Volunteers”,

The song itself is an ode to the southern men who volunteered to go serve in the first World War. It begins like many standard war songs of the day, describing the men all lined up, marching, getting ready to set sail, and how badly they are going to beat the enemy. Upon the chorus, however, the song arrives at a point that is a common feature of many popular songs of the day, which is romanticizing the “old south”, before reconstruction. The lyrics tell us about how they’re coming from “the land of Old Black Joe”, a minstrel song about a dying slave, and about how they’ve gone from “peaceful sons” to “fighting men like Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee”.

This song reflects the common trend of the day of romanticizing the old south, a famous example of which is Louis Armstrong’s “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South”. This song could be offering an appeal to a broader audience as opposed to just the people in New York City who happen to see Broadway Shows. Apparently it worked, as according to Karen Cox, author of Dreaming of Dixie: How the South was created in American popular culture it became incredibly popular. The idea she suggests in her book of music and film and theatrics contributing to the romantic Southern image corresponds strongly with the common ideas of how the Southern image was formed.

Cox, K. L. (2011). Dreaming of Dixie : how the South was created in American popular culture (1st ed.). University of North Carolina Press.

League, The Broadway. “IBDB.Com.” IBDB, www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/eddie-cantor-5198. Accessed 22 Oct. 2024.

Leslie, Edgar. Composer. “Ziegfeld follies (1917) Dixie volunteers.” Digital Gallery. BGSU University Libraries, 23 May 2022, digitalgallery.bgsu.edu/items/show/33991. Accessed 22 Oct. 2024.

 

Blackface: The New Big Trend in Entertainment Strikes Gold

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The Plaindealer, a newspaper of Topeka, Kansas, built to serve its African-American population, no longer exists. It died some thirty years after its owner, Nick Chiles, passed away. It was, as the Kansas Historical society states, “among the strongest Black newspapers in the nation, and the longest running.” It ran for over 50 years, from 1899 to 1958.

Newspapers in general are an excellent example of something that existed for an incredibly long time and almost immediately died with the rise of the digital age. The Plaindealer wrote about their predictions for the future of entertainment in their 1931 article about Blackface in entertainment.

The Cover of the January 31st, 1931 edition of the Topeka Plaindealer. The headline reads “Does Black Face Acting Expert a Magic Spell over American Audiences?”
by George Santa

In this edition of the Plaindealer, Santa writes about the popularity of Blackface acting in films of the time. He writes that “It seems peculiarly significant that blackface acting has had such tremendous acceptance in the United States. There appears to be some degree of actual “luck” attendant upon all those who have adopted it.” Throughout the article, he lists and highlights different actors who have achieved great success from making use of blackface, including Al Jolson, Correll and Gosden, the creators of incredibly popular Radio Sitcom “Amos n’ Andy”, Ethel Barrymore, and Eddie Cantor. Bert Williams was highlighted several times throughout, often as a “predecessor” and a model for other blackface actors.

At the very end of the article, Santa considers the success that blackface and minstrelsy has granted its actors. He calls to attention how frankly odd the practice is. He writes that “The whole condition is one which would lend itself undoubtedly to the analysis of psychological experts. It has no counterpart either here or abroad.” He never explains why blackface might be so popular among audiences, but he does make very clear that the audience demands what the actors are putting out, not the other way around. Actors were putting on blackface in reaction to what people demanded. He offers one possible reasoning at the very end. “The tragic condition of the American Negro in the popularity of the blackface artist paradoxically gives rise to a much more hilariously funny form of entertainment than any situation in the United States. Nor does the acceptability show any signs of abating,” Santa writes.

Santa’s article on the film industry provokes quite some thought. Why did audiences find blackface so entertaining? At what point did actors like Ethel Barrymore decide to cave and blacken their faces in order to find success? Did they realize what they were doing was morally dubious, to say the least? The article serves an interesting purpose, which is to let the reader wonder about these questions themselves, as it offers little explanation, and focuses primarily on exposing these popular actors for donning blackface. After all, the title asks “Does Blackface”, rather than “Why does Blackface”. I can only assume the answer that Santa offers is yes.

The Grand Tour: The Fisk Jubilee Singers Hit New York

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In 1870, Fisk University was going through some big changes. They were growing at such a rate they had to make plans to move locations(admittedly, a good problem to have). However, Fisk didn’t have the money for this ambitious plan. So, Professor and Treasurer George L. White came up with a gamble. Fisk would start a choir that would tour and raise funds for the school. White hadn’t been a singer himself, but had directed choirs in the past, and had already gathered $400 with a choir at Fisk for the benefit of their education. So, the Jubilee singers began, with a young Ella Sheppard serving as accompanist and director.

Ella Sheppard, Director and Accompanist of the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

After their profound success in their famous 1871 tour, they set off again in the fall of 1872. They stopped by Steinway Hall in New York, the premier music hall in New York City at the time. This attracted much attention, and earned itself a review in “The Aldine, A Typographical Art Journal”. In its March edition, the author wrote in great detail of their experience hearing the Jubilee singers.

The 1871 Tour Fisk University Jubilee Singers From Left to Right: Minnie Tate, Greene Evans, Isaac Dickerson, Jennie Jackson, Maggie Porter, Ella Sheppard, Thomas Rutling, Benjamin Holmes, and Eliza Walker.

After giving a brief introduction to the Fisk Jubilee Singers, not unlike the one I’ve given you above, the critic started right into, to give them the benefit of the doubt, what surely they thought was a very earnest and not racist review of their performance. However, as I read through the publication, I was perplexed. The reviewer was giving the Jubilee singers these halfhearted, backhanded comments and compliments, saying things like “The personal history of these singers would be enough to make their concerts deeply interesting, even if their music was not very good. But, indeed, their music itself is admirable.” This is immediately followed by “They have, of course, no great cultivation”. There are various comments like this, a kind comment followed by a step back to recognize a flaw. This is, quite frankly, rude. Additionally, the critic refers to the singers as “impressionable minstrels”, their enthusiasm and expression as “grotesque, sometimes, but always genuine”, and the music itself as “clearly not the product of civilization” and lacking in “traces of the more scholarly music of the dominant race”.

The Fisk Jubilee singers redefined the spiritual for a wider audience, and used that audience to fund the education of hundreds of thousands of African Americans over the next 150+ years. The author of this article reflects how the Fisk jubilee singers were viewed by some at the time of their initial tours, not as artistic equals and scholars seeking to fund their program to further their educational endeavors, but as a lesser choir showing the songs of their people, trying to mimic the popular choral sound of the day. The review is by and for the people who were simply not ready for the Jubilee Singers.

Here is a 1909 Recording of the Fisk Jubilee Singers performing Swing Low Sweet Chariot.

Below is a 2020 recording of Fisk’s Jubilee Singers performing Walk Together, Children (Arr. Moses Hogan).

Black, James Wallace. Jubilee Singers, Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. 1870-1880, Library of Congress, https://lccn.loc.gov/2010647805

“George Leonard White.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/singers-white/. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.

“MUSIC.: THE JUBILEE SINGERS.” The Aldine, A Typographic Art Journal (1871-1873), vol. 6, no. 3, 03, 1873, pp. 67. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/music/docview/124830318/se-2.

Thomas McKenney: Another Complicated Character.

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The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was a law passed by President Andrew Jackson in order to, as the name of the law suggests, remove Native Americans from the areas east of the Mississippi River, and relocate them elsewhere. Notable images this invokes include the Trail of Tears and the Pottawatomie Trail of Death.

Thomas McKenney was the Superintendent of Indian Affairs at the time, helped to draft the Indian Removal Act, and a believer in the Native American “Civilization” program. He ran an experiment, hosting two young Native American men and allowing them to attend a white school. He reflected on his efforts in an 1872 publication of his book “History of the Indian Tribes of North America: With Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of the Principal Chiefs”: “[…] in the attempt to civilise the Indian, a little learning is a dangerous thing, and that a half-educated savage seldom becomes an useful man. […] Unless he has the strength of mind to attach himself decidedly to one side or the other, he is apt to vacillate between employments of the white man and the Indian, inferior to both, and respected by neither.” (McKenney, 302). For this experiment, and general lack of harmony on the issue of Native American intelligence, he was dismissed by the Jackson Administration later that year.

He was a profound believer in the “Myth of the Disappearing Indian”, the myth that Native Americans are mysteriously disappearing, so he collaborated with writer James Hall and painter Charles Bird King to create a collection of biographies, stories, and portraits from Native Americans. The myth resulted in many white Americans with some degree of power and no ethnological experience rushing out to record any amount of native culture they stumble upon. This sounds like a well-meaning effort, but neither one of the three were ethnographers, thus much of the text, especially involving the music and art that the Native Americans would create is not quite neutral.

“The music”, they write, “is a monotonous beating upon a rude drum, without melody or tune; the movements exhibit neither grace nor agility, and the dancers pass around a circle with their bodies uncouthly bent forward, as they appear in the print, uttering low, dismal, syllabic sounds, which they repeat with but little perceptible variation throughout the exhibition.” (Mckenney 4). This hearkens back about three hundred years to when Sir Francis Drake described, upon meeting some of the first indigenous Americans, their music as “miserable” and “shreeking”, (Tick 6).

It’s possible that they created this collection not for the sake of preserving Native American culture, but rather to preserve their own senses of morality. While McKenney did preserve some stories and portraits of people at the time, he still perpetuated the idea that white people have to save this “endangered species”, while not condemning his own actions while in office or the actions of the government.

McKenney, Thomas, et al. History of the Indian Tribes of North America with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of the Principal Chiefs. 1830. vol. 1, Philadelphia, PA, E.C. Biddle, 1838. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024.

‌Music in the USA : A Documentary Companion, edited by Judith Tick, and Paul Beaudoin, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/stolaf-ebooks/detail.action?docID=415567.