Jim Along Josie: A Song History
"Jim Along Josey" was published as sheet music by the New York firm of Firth & Hall in 1840, and the Library of Congress holds a copy in its bound volumes of songs registered for copyright.[1] It was a minstrel-show song, and Johns Hopkins University's Levy collection catalogs a Firth & Hall printing under subjects that include minstrel shows, caricatures and ethnic stereotypes.[2] Connecticut College's copy credits Edward Harper and John N. Smith and notes that it was sung by Mr. John Smith.[3] According to the Traditional Ballad Index, Spaeth also suggested Harper as the author and said Harper presented the song in a play in 1838, two years before the earliest printings found in the sources consulted here.[4] It was still being printed in 1852, when the Baltimore publisher F. D. Benteen issued it for piano together with "Old Rosin the Bow" and "The Log Hut."[5]
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Children Playing Ball, lithograph, 1900. Children at play, shown for the song's later life as a play-party game; it has no connection to the song.
The song also passed into oral tradition; the Ballad Index finds the same chorus in traditional versions but often shorter, two-line stanzas, and it lists texts in the Randolph and Warner collections.[4] It was also used as a play-party game: when John Quincy Wolf Jr. recorded Mr. and Mrs. F. E. Ash singing it at Evening Shade, Arkansas, on August 15, 1958, Mrs. Ash explained that players keep circling while they sing, then do an allemande left and change partners each time through.[6]
The Ballad Index lists an undated postwar recording by the Coon Creek Girls on Songs from Renfro Valley.[4] Pete Seeger included it on American Folk Songs for Children, an album now issued by Smithsonian Folkways.[7] Don Pedi arranges it in DGD tuning in Mountain Dulcimer Mother Goose, his own published collection of 29 children's songs for solo mountain dulcimer and voice.[8]
Sources
- Library of Congress: "Jim along Josey" (New York: Firth and Hall, 1840).
- Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection, Johns Hopkins University: "Jim Along Josey" (Box 020, Item 005).
- Connecticut College, Greer Music Library: "Jim Along Josey".
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "Jim Along Josie".
- Library of Congress: "Jim along Josey -- Old rosin the bow -- The log hut" (Baltimore: F. D. Benteen, 1852).
- Lyon College, John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection: "Hi Jim Along Josie (Play party)".
- Smithsonian Folkways: "American Folk Songs for Children (LP edition)".
- Don Pedi: "Mountain Dulcimer Mother Goose - Old-Time Songs & Nursery Rhymes For All Ages".
- Image: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Children Playing Ball, lithograph, 1900. The Cleveland Museum of Art.