Boatman: A Song History

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The old-time fiddle tune "Boatman" (also played as "Boatsman") comes from the minstrel stage. Its ancestor is "De Boatman Dance," a song credited to Daniel Decatur Emmett[1][2], the man later known for "Dixie."[3] The song celebrates the boatmen of the Ohio River and their all-night dancing.[2] Emmett was a founding member of the Virginia Minstrels, the blackface troupe that first presented a full minstrel concert, starting in New York in early 1843.[4] That same year the song was printed in Boston, by George P. Reed, in a piano collection called The Celebrated Negro Melodies, as Sung by the Virginia Minstrels.[5] It was advertised as "an original banjo melody."[1][3] As with much minstrel material, its lyrics were written in heavy stage dialect.[3]

George Caleb Bingham painting of boatmen on a flatboat, one dancing while others play fiddle and tambourine

George Caleb Bingham, The Jolly Flatboatmen, 1846. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Public domain (CC0).

Emmett may not have invented the melody, though. In 1839, four years before the minstrel publication, George P. Knauff's Virginia Reels (Baltimore) printed a fiddle tune called "Ohio River." That tune was linked to the river's boatmen and is closely related to "Boatman." Scholars have argued that the melody was already in folk circulation before the minstrels took it up, and that it went back into tradition after the stage made it popular.[1] Liner notes by the musician Mick Moloney suggest that Emmett may have adapted an older song sung by African American boatmen on the Ohio in the 1830s. That idea remains a suggestion, not established fact.[2]

The tune lasted in Appalachian fiddling. It was documented from fiddlers such as Melvin Wine of West Virginia, Ed Haley and Marcus Martin, each playing in a different tuning.[1] Byrd Moore & His Hot Shots recorded a "Boatman's Dance" for Gennett in 1930, though it was never issued.[2] Elizabeth Cotten also recorded it.[2] The song reached a different audience in 1950, when Aaron Copland opened his Old American Songs with "The Boatmen's Dance." He rewrote the dialect text and added call-and-echo effects to suggest the river.[3][6]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Boatsman (2)".
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "De Boatman Dance".
  3. Library of Congress, Performing Arts Encyclopedia: "The Boatmen's Dance and Simple Gifts".
  4. Wikipedia: "Virginia Minstrels".
  5. Washington State University Libraries, Butler Collection: "The Celebrated Negro Melodies, as Sung by the Virginia Minstrels".
  6. Song of America: "Daniel Decatur Emmett and the American Minstrel".