Charleston Gals: A Song History

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The song “Charleston Gals” was printed in Slave Songs of the United States (New York, 1867), the collection compiled by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware and Lucy McKim Garrison.[1] It is No. 109, contributed by Mr. E. J. Snow from Pine Bluff, Arkansas.[1] Secular pieces were scarce in the collection, and the editors scattered them through the book under the states that supplied them instead of printing them as a separate group.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index gives 1867 as the song’s earliest date and describes it as a string of floating verses joined by its own chorus.[2] Dorothy Scarborough reprinted it in On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs (1925), suggesting that it was already old and without a known author by 1867 and that it was assembled from fragments of earlier songs.[3]

Photograph of a church steeple above a street in Charleston

George N. Barnard, St. Michael’s Church, Charleston, S.C., albumen silver print, ca. 1864. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for the song’s title; it has no connection to the song.

The title belongs to a family of “Gals” songs named for different places. The 1867 editors made the link themselves: in a note to the spiritual “Gwine Follow,” they observed that its second half used the tune called “Buffalo,” “Charleston” or “Baltimore Gals.”[1] The best-known member of the family, “Buffalo Gals,” has been traced to “Lubly Fan,” which the blackface minstrel Cool White (John Hodges) sang in the 1840s, though sources differ on whether he wrote it or adapted an existing tune.[4][5] The Traditional Tune Archive lists many place names attached to that tune, and reports the suggestion in Bronner’s Old Time Music Makers of New York State (1987) that “Buffalo” prevailed because the city was a usual end point of minstrel tours heading west from New York City.[5]

As a fiddle tune, “Charleston Gals” was played in West Virginia, where Melvin Wine (1909–2003) of Braxton County played an irregular, or “crooked,” version and sang a few words with it.[6][7] The Traditional Tune Archive notes its resemblance to Henry Reed’s “Texas” and to a tune called “Hi! Ho! Charleston Gals” in Phil Rice’s 1858 banjo method, and passes on John Heine’s report that it apparently belonged to the minstrel repertoire, appearing in sheet music by the mid-1840s.[6] Rice’s method presented songs performed by the Christy’s, Bryant’s and other minstrel companies, several of which he had belonged to.[8] Gerry Milnes recorded Wine playing it at Copen, West Virginia, in 1991.[9] A Wine performance was issued on the Augusta Heritage album Old Time Fiddling of Braxton County, vol. 2.[6]

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Sources

  1. Internet Archive (Smithsonian Libraries copy): Allen, Ware & Garrison, "Slave Songs of the United States" (New York: A. Simpson & Co., 1867).
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Charleston Gals".
  3. Internet Archive: Dorothy Scarborough, "On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs" (1925).
  4. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Buffalo Gals".
  5. Traditional Tune Archive: "Buffalo Gals (1)".
  6. Traditional Tune Archive: "Charleston Girls".
  7. e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia: "Melvin Wine".
  8. Internet Archive: Phil Rice, "Correct Method for the Banjo With or Without a Master" (New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1858).
  9. Augusta Heritage Center, Milnes Collection: "Melvin Wine fiddle tunes; Braxton County Fiddlers; 10/8/1991".