"Jimmy Crack Corn" or "Blue-Tail Fly" is an American song which first became popular during the rise of blackface minstrelsy in the 1840s through performances by the Virginia Minstrels. It regained currency as a folk song in the 1940s at the beginning of the American folk music revival and has since become a popular children's song. Over the years, several variants have appeared.
Most versions include some idiomatic African American English, although General American versions now predominate. The basic narrative remains intact. On the surface, the song is a black slave's lament over his white master's death in a horse-riding accident. The song, however, is also interpreted as having a subtext of celebration about that death and of the slave having contributed to it through deliberate negligence or even deniable action.
"De Blue Tail Fly" was published by both Keith's Music House and Oliver Ditson in Boston in 1846, but Eric Lott (citing Hans Nathan) gives the version a date of 1844. This probably refers to Christy's Minstrels' Ethiopian Glee Book, which has sometimes been mistakenly attributed to 1844; in fact, that series did not begin publishing until 1847 and did not include Christy's version of this song until its 1848 edition.
To download the easy alphanotes sheet music, look here. Enjoy!
Lyrics:
chorus:
Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care
Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care
Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care
Master’s gone away
verses:
When I was young I used to wait
On master, handing him his plate
I brought his bottle when he got dry
And brushed away the blue tail fly
He used to ride each afternoon
I'd follow with a hickory broom
The pony kicked his legs up high
When bitten by the blue tail fly
The pony run, he jump, he pitch
He threw my master in the ditch
My master died and who'll deny
The blame was on the blue tail fly
We layed him under a simmon tree
His epitaph is there to see
"Beneath this stone I'm forced to lie
A victim of the blue tail fly"
Old master's dead and gone to rest
They say all things is for the best
I won't forget until I die
My master and the blue tail fly
The skeeter bites right through your clothes
A hornet strikes you on the nose
The bees may get you passing by
But, oh, much worse, the blue tail fly
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