Sing Song Kitty: A Song History
"Sing Song Kitty" appears to take its name from a phrase in the nonsense refrain of the song folklorists index as "Kemo Kimo," a non-narrative piece built around that refrain.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index, which assigns it Roud number 16, observes that some of its texts resemble "Frog Went A-Courting" and that the two are sometimes grouped together.[1] The Traditional Tune Archive traces the refrain to an old English nonsense rhyme that also turns up in the frog-courting songs, and says the song seems to have come from England to America with settlers before being reworked there.[2]
Nathaniel Currier, The Favorite Cat, hand-colored lithograph, 1838–48. A cat, shown for the title; the lithograph has no connection to the song.
In the 1850s the song belonged to blackface minstrelsy.[2] Song sheets titled "Kitty Kimo" credit Charles White as composer and arranger and advertise it as sung nightly by Dan Emmett at White's Melodeon on the Bowery; one library dates its copy to 1853 to 1858.[3][4] Brown's North Carolina collection instead attributed the minstrel version to the singer Sam Cowell around 1850, so sources differ on who first shaped it.[1] Cowell popularized it in England, where it was in vogue from 1855 to 1860, and its tune appears in Briggs' Banjo Instructor of 1855.[2] Later collectors found it in oral tradition from the Appalachians and Ozarks to the Canadian Maritimes, and the Ballad Index groups Jean Ritchie's "Bandyrowe" with it.[1]
Doc Watson sang a song titled "Sing Song Kitty" on Doc Watson Sings Songs for Little Pickers (1990), compiled from concerts in Atlanta and at the Newport Folk Festival and from archival recordings.[5] Don Pedi's Mountain Dulcimer Mother Goose, 29 old-time songs and nursery rhymes arranged for solo mountain dulcimer and voice, also includes a "Sing Song Kitty," in DGD tuning, alongside "Frog Went A Courtin'."[6] Neither of these sources says whether its "Sing Song Kitty" follows the "Kemo Kimo" tune, so that identification rests on the shared refrain phrase.[5][6]
Sources
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "Kemo Kimo".
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Kemo Kimo".
- Library Company of Philadelphia: "Kitty Kimo".
- Hamilton College Library Digital Collections: "Kitty Kimo".
- Marmot Library Network: "Doc Watson Sings Songs for Little Pickers".
- Don Pedi: "Mountain Dulcimer Mother Goose - Old-Time Songs & Nursery Rhymes For All Ages".
- Image: Nathaniel Currier, The Favorite Cat, hand-colored lithograph, 1838–48. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.