Blue Tail Fly
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"Blue Tail Fly", "De Blue Tail Fly", or "Jimmy Crack Corn" is a blackface minstrel song, first performed in the United States in the 1840s, which remains a popular children's song today.
Over the years, many variants of text have appeared, but the basic narrative remains intact. On the surface, the song is a black slave's lament over his master's death. The song, however, has a subtext of rejoicing over that death, and possibly having caused it by deliberate negligence.[1] Most versions at least nod to idiomatic African American English, though sanitized, grammatically "correct" versions predominate today.
The blue-tail fly of the song is probably a Southern variant of the horsefly, which feeds on the blood of animals such as horses and cattle, as well as humans, and thus constitutes a prevalent pest in agricultural regions. Some horseflies have a blue-black abdomen, hence the name.
Contents [hide]
1 Lyrics
2 History and interpretation
3 Notes
4 References
[edit] Lyrics
One early version set the idyllic (yet ironic) scene thus:
When I was young A us'd to wait
On Massa and hand him de plate;
Pass down the bottle when he git dry,
And bresh away de blue tail fly.
refrain (repeated each verse):
Jim crack corn







