"Dixie", also known as "Dixie's Land", "I Wish I Was in Dixie", and by other titles, is a song first published in 1860 that is strongly associated with the Southern United States. It was not a folk song at its creation but has since entered the American folk vernacular. The song popularized the word Dixie in the American vocabulary as a nickname for the South.
Most sources credit Ohio-born Daniel Decatur Emmett with the song's composition, although other people have claimed credit, even during Emmett's lifetime. Compounding the problem are Emmett's own confused accounts of its writing and his tardiness in registering its copyright.
"Dixie" originated in the minstrel shows of the 1850s and quickly became popular throughout the country. During the American Civil War, it was adopted as a de facto national anthem of the Confederacy, along with "The Bonnie Blue Flag" and "God Save the South". New versions appeared at this time that more explicitly tied the song to the events of the Civil War.
Origins
Ohio-born minstrel show composer Daniel Decatur Emmett claimed the copyright on "Dixie" in 1860. Despite that, by 1908, four years after Emmett's death - alternatively, during his lifetime - no fewer than 37 people had claimed the song as theirs.
Emmett himself often recounted his story of its composition, and the details varied. At different times Emmett said he had written "Dixie" in a few minutes, in a single night, and over a few days. An 1872 edition of the New York Clipper provides one of the earliest accounts, relating that on a Saturday night shortly after Emmett had been taken on as a songwriter for the Bryant's Minstrels, Jerry Bryant told him they would need a new walkaround by the following Monday. By this account, Emmett shut himself inside his New York apartment and wrote the song that Sunday evening. The playbill for Jerry Bryant's Minstrel Show dated Monday, April 4, 1859, lists the first performance of "Dixie's Land" at Mechanics' Hall, New York.
Other details are given in later accounts. In one, Emmett said "Suddenly... I jumped up and sat down at the table to work. In less than an hour, I had the first verse and chorus. After that it was easy."Clipping titled "Author of Dixie", quoted in . In another version, Emmett stared out at the rainy evening and thought, "I wish I was in Dixie." Then, "Like a flash the thought suggested the first line of the walk-around, and a little later the minstrel, fiddle in hand, was working out the melody"Clipping from "The War Song of the South", quoted in . (a different story has it that Emmett's wife uttered the famous line). Yet another variant, dated to 1903, further changes the details: "I was standing by the window, gazing out at the drizzly, raw day, and the old circus feeling came over me. I hummed the old refrain, 'I wish I was in Dixie', and the inspiration struck me. I took my pen and in ten minutes had written the first verses with music. The remaining verses were easy."Mount Vernon Democratic Banner, quoted in . In his final years, Emmett even said he had written the song years before he had moved to New York. An article in The Washington Post supports this, giving a composition date of 1843.New York Clipper, quoted in n. 19. It is also suggested that 'Dixie's Land' refers to a Long Island named for owner John Dixie, who befriended slaves who worked on his farm until slavery was abolished in New York state.
Emmett published "Dixie" (under the title "I Wish I Was in Dixie's Land") on June 21, 1860, through Firth, Pond & Co. in New York. The original manuscript has been lost; extant copies were made during Emmett's retirement, starting in the 1890s. Emmett's tardiness registering the copyright for the song allowed it to proliferate among other minstrel groups and variety show performers. Rival editions and variations multiplied in song books, newspapers and broadsides. The earliest of these that is known today is a copyrighted edition for piano from the John Church Company of Cincinnati, published on June 26, 1860. Other publishers attributed the song to obviously made-up names, such as "Jerry Blossom" and "Dixie, Jr." among others. The most serious challenge to Emmett's claim to the song during his lifetime came from Southerner William Shakespeare Hays; Hays attempted to prove his allegations through a Southern historical society, but died before they could produce any conclusive evidence.
"Dixie" is the only song Emmett ever claimed was the result of a burst of inspiration, and analysis of Emmett's notes and writings shows "a meticulous copyist, [who] spent countless hours collecting and composing songs and sayings for the minstrel stage ... ; little evidence was left for the improvisational moment." The New York Clipper wrote in 1872 that "[Emmett's] claim to authorship of 'Dixie' was and is still disputed, both in and out of the minstrel profession."New York Clipper, quoted in . Emmett himself said, "Show people generally, if not always, have the chance to hear every local song as they pass through the different sections of [the] country, and particularly so with minstrel companies, who are always on the look out for songs and sayings that will answer their business." He claimed at one point to have based the first part of "Dixie" on "Come Philander Let's Be Marchin, Every One for His True Love Searchin", which he described as a "song of his childhood days". Musical analysis does show some similarities in the melodic outline, but the songs are not closely related. Emmett also credited "Dixie" to an old circus song. Despite the disputed authorship, Firth, Pond & Co. paid Emmett $300 for all rights to "Dixie" on February 11, 1861, perhaps fearing complications spurred by the impending Civil War.
On at least one occasion, Emmett attributed "Dixie" to an unnamed Southern black man, and some of his contemporaries said that the song was based on an old African American folk tune. At the time, minstrels often billed themselves as authentic delineators of slave material, and the names of the black songwriters they had chanced to meet were rarely given. A Mount Vernon, Ohio, tradition, which dates to the 1910s or 1920s at the latest, gives some support to this possibility: Many Mount Vernon residents claim that Emmett collaborated informally with a pair of black musicians named Ben and Lew Snowden of the Snowden Family Band. In original form this tradition is not credible: While Emmett likely did meet and play with Ben and Lew Snowden when he retired to Knox County, the Snowden brothers would have been only small children in 1860. Howard L. Sacks and Judith Sacks suggest that the Ohio legend may in fact be off by a generation, and that Emmett could have collaborated instead with the Snowden parents, Thomas and Ellen.Jean Irwin McMillan, quoted in . Advocates of the Snowden theory believe that the lyrics of "Dixie" are a protest through irony and parody against the institution of slavery. At his death in 1923, Lew Snowden owned a small box of newspaper clippings asserting Emmett's authorship of "Dixie" along with a framed photograph of Emmett with the text "Author of 'Dixie'!" written under the minstrel's name. Scholars such as Clint Johnson, Robert James Branham, and Stephen J. Hartnett accept the claims of black origin for the song or at least allow for the possibility. Nevertheless, many scholars, such as E. Lawrence Abel, dismiss the Snowden claims outright.
Analysis Melody
Structure
"Dixie" is structured into five two-measure groups of alternating verses and refrains, following an AABC pattern. As originally performed, a soloist or small group stepped forward and sang the verses, and the whole company answered at different times; the repeated line "look away" was probably one part sung in unison like this. As the song became popular, the audience likely joined the troupe in singing the chorus. Traditionally, another eight measures of unaccompanied fiddle playing followed, coming to a partial close in the middle; since 1936, this part has rarely been printed with the sheet music.
The song was traditionally played at a tempo slower than the one usually played today. Rhythmically, the music is "characterized by a heavy, nonchalant, inelegant strut," and is in duple meter, which makes it suitable for both dancing and marching. "Dixie" employs a single rhythmic motive (two sixteenth note pickups followed by a longer note), which is integrated into long, melodic phrases. The melodic content consists primarily of arpeggiations of the tonic triad, firmly establishing the major tonality. The melody of the chorus emulates natural inflections of the voice (particularly on the word "away"), and may account for some of the song's popularity.
According to musicologist Hans Nathan, "Dixie" resembles other material that Dan Emmett wrote for Bryant's Minstrels, and in writing it, the composer drew on a number of earlier works. The first part of the song is anticipated by other Emmett compositions, including "De Wild Goose-Nation" (1844), itself a derivative of "Gumbo Chaff" (1830s) and ultimately an 18th-century English song called "Bow Wow Wow". The second part is possibly related to other material, most likely Scottish folk songs. The chorus follows portions of "Johnny Roach," an Emmett piece from earlier in 1859.
As with other blackface material, performances of "Dixie" were accompanied by dancing. The song is a walkaround, which originally began with a few minstrels acting out the lyrics, only to be joined by the rest of the company (a dozen or so individuals for the Bryants). As shown by the original sheet music (see below), the dance tune used with "Dixie" by Bryant's Minstrels, who introduced the song on the New York stage, was "Albany Beef", an Irish-style reel later included by Dan Emmett in an instructional book he co-authored in 1862. Dancers probably performed between verses, and a single dancer used the fiddle solo at the end of the song to "strut, twirl his cane, or mustache, and perhaps slyly wink at a girl on the front row".Ada Bedell Wootton, quoted in .
Lyrics Countless lyrical variants of "Dixie" exist, but the version attributed to Dan Emmett and its variations are the most popular. Emmett's lyrics as they were originally intended reflect the hostile mood of many white Southerners in the late 1850s towards increasing abolitionist sentiments in the Northern United States. The song presented the point of view, common to minstrelsy at the time, that slavery in the United States was a positive good. The character of the pining slave had been used in minstrel tunes since the early 1850s, including Emmett's "I Ain't Got Time to Tarry" and "Johnny Roach". The fact that "Dixie" and its precursors were dance tunes only further made light of the subject. In short, "Dixie" made the case, more strongly than any previous minstrel tune had, that African Americans ought to be enslaved. This was accomplished through the song's protagonist, who, speaking in an exaggerated black dialect, implies that despite his freedom, he is homesick for the slave plantation he was born on.
The lyrics use many common phrases found in minstrel tunes of the day—"I wish I was in ..." dates to at least "Clare de Kitchen" (early 1830s), and "Away down south in ..." appears in many more songs, including Emmett's "I'm Gwine ober de Mountain" (1843). The second stanza clearly echoes "Gumbo Chaff" from the 1830s: "Den Missus she did marry Big Bill de weaver / Soon she found out he was a gay deceiver." The final stanza rewords portions of Emmett's own "De Wild Goose-Nation": "De tarapin he thot it was time for to trabble / He screw aron his tail and begin to scratch grabble." Even the phrase "Dixie's land" had been used in Emmett's "Johnny Roach", performed earlier in February 1859. However, his "Dixie" would immortalize the term.