Musings About Music

Growing up, I heard about Dixie. That was over to the east somewhere. I did not know how far north it went or how far south. All the way south, I supposed. I instinctively knew that it was from the Atlantic Ocean to the Sabine River at the Texas eastern border.

I was exposed to the gone-with-the-wind movie style Dixie and thought it rather quaint. To me, Texas was fried steak and Tex-Mex. Dixie was fried chicken and grits (whatever that was).

Then, by necessity, I moved to Mississippi. Everyone would agree that Mississippi is certainly "Away Down South in Dixie."

I learned the many distinctions that make the south "Dixie" and while traveling in England, I learned even more about Dixie. (In England? How, pray tell?)

We were staying at a bed & breakfast in a gray stone house in Cockfield, England... northeast corner. The lady only let two of her bedrooms and she put on a really good full-cooked English breakfast. At some point while serving, speaking above the noise of our eating and the snapping sounds of our arteries hardening, she said, "I saw from the guest book that you are from Mississippi...that is in the south, isn’t it?"

She then told us that Cockfield was where Jeremiah Dixon was from and he worked with a Charles Mason at the Greenwich Observatory and they were astronomers. It was they who measured and defined the Mason-Dixon line – "and that is where ‘Dixie’ comes from," she concluded.

This was not only interesting but very true. In 1760 there had been a dispute between the man who owned Pennsylvania and the gent who owned Maryland. The colonies that were the American ones were disagreeing with the ones that were the English ones about where the border between the two really was. These were basically disagreements between companies vying for trade dominance.

Mason and Dixon were sent over from England to here where they used lunar tables and astronomical observations to define the border between Maryland and Delaware, and the southern border of Pennsylvania. Everybody was pleased. They got through doing all this in 1767, but it was not until around 1820 that the term "Mason-Dixon Line" was used. The origin of the word "Dixie" to describe the area south of that line might be a little confusing. Supposedly, there was a farm owned by Johann Dixie (or Dixy), in Manhattan (it was different then) who sent some of his slaves to Charleston. They missed being back home in "Dixie." This is not that believable.

Another suggestion says that a bank in New Orleans issued a banknote called a "dix" – so the land of "Dixie" was in New Orleans. Someone had to be working really hard to come up with that silly one.

But it is accepted that south of the Mason-Dixon line is technically "Dixie." I believe that the further south you get from it, the more concentrated Dixie becomes. This makes Dixie a progression of increasing density. I have decided this and it appeals to me.

The word "Dixie" was best circulated through the popular media of the minstrel. A Dan D. Emmett (from above the Mason-Dixon line) was writing songs for the Bryant’s Minstrels in 1859 when the company needed another "walk-about" song. These were common and expected bits. While the band played, a few lead singers would be downstage singing and posturing to the audience, and the rest of the troop would be singing harmonies and rounds while doing a little "grand march" behind the soloists. This consisted of intertwining and merging lines of strutters. (Think about a big square dance...but in black face.)

Over the weekend, Emmett, who was from Ohio, came up with the song "Dixie" and it was first performed, April 4, 1859, on Broadway in New York City.

The song was an immediate hit and was played many different ways by many different people and at a variety of places. Unfortunately for Emmett’s retirement plans, he had pretty quickly sold the song rights to a NYC publisher for $300. This was really not that bad because there were already copies of the song being sold which gave no credit to anyone for the song.

This all took place just before the war between the North and South and the Confederacy adopted "Dixie" as a virtual national (Confederacy) anthem.

Though this northern song was adopted in the south, President Lincoln was very fond of the song, having heard it in 1860 at a minstrel in Chicago. At the close of the great war between the states, Lincoln requested the band to play "Dixie." Some thought this was a conciliatory gesture but in truth, he simply enjoyed the song and the emotions it instilled.

The oldest copy I have of the song is from this 1916 recording by vaudevillians Ada Jones, Billy Murray, and Frank Stanley.

It is a northern song and that is the point of this little history.

First, we need to accept that many of the sweet songs about the south were written by people in the north who never saw any real estate south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and by first and second generations of Jews from Eastern Europe, and that hundreds of performers adopted a southern accent as not only a stage persona but one to wear everywhere.

What does this mean exactly?

I will give a couple of examples of this persona business...Ramblin’ Jack Elliot was born Elliot Charles Adnopoz to Jewish parents in Brooklyn and he grew up there. That is not how people talked and acted in Brooklyn then. And one of the more bizarre examples is the Jewish kid, Robert Allen Zimmerman, from Duluth, MN. They do not talk like Bob Dylan there...or maybe anywhere.

I am not writing about singing with affectation...many do that...but they revert to their "real" voice when the song is over. Best examples of these would be the Beatles, Jim Nabors, and Liberace. There are jillions who sing with one voice but speak with another.

But from where does this desire for a southern affectation come?

One thing is sure, the southerner is more trusted. If this wasn’t true, not nearly so many hucksters would adopt the southern persona. I would think that some southern hucksters would go up north and adopt a northern presentation in the hopes of conning someone...but I doubt this would be likely. The ability to convince someone is there in the southern accent...the southern persona in the court room is real.

To answer this question in detail would generate a volume of classical psychology but we should recognize the fact this desire does exist. To name all the people who adopted a southern persona when they were never farther south than Newark, N.J. would fill page after page.

It is the desire that is interesting.

The northerner had crowded streets, foul air, and all the city blights that one can imagine. They had all the diseases that crowds could pass around...and there were new diseases arriving with each boatload of huddled masses at Ellis Island. They had whooping cough, diphtheria, typhoid, small-pox, German measles, scarlet fever, typhus, influenza, diarrhea and dysentery due to bad food, sexually transmitted diseases, bronchial pneumonia, scurvy, general tuberculosis, and any number of illnesses from sewage and industrial poisonings by air or contact.

In the northerner’s mind, the south was open skies, waving fields of corn (if corn waves), plenty of fresh food, and people there were living the good life. The northerners of song were envious, jealous, and naive...mostly, they were just naive.

In one northern song of the south there is the line about living in the south under palm trees and if you want another drink you just clap your hands and one of your wives would bring you one. I have not figured that one out yet.

My favorite singing vaudevillians, Blossom Sealey and Benny Fields, sing southern songs as good as anybody. She was known as a southern singer and both had smooth southern accents. She was from way down south in San Francisco and he was born a good southern boy, Benjamin Geisenfeld in Milwaukee.

"Hello Mr. Blue Bird" is the first of three songs on a 1927 Vitaphone short. They had done their own arranging on this song. Blossom’s shouting voice is heard some here.

Harry Warren, who wrote the beautiful "Way Down South In Heaven" was born Salvatore Antonio Guaragna in Brooklyn.

One of the nicest versions of this song was done by Van and Schenck, who were popular dialect singers in the 1910s and 1920s. The played several Ziegfeld Follies and were "top of the bill" features on many vaudeville circuits. Gus Van, the baritone, was born August Van Glahn and Joe Schenck was the tenor.

Though they did dialects so well, Gus did southern songs the best. His southern accent was soft and of the Bing Crosby (Tacoma, WA) type. He used this accent in movie shorts and in one feature film. The accent was most prevalent in all the song introductions and it carried well into private life. Gus and Joe were Brooklyn kids and sang together in high school there. When they became famous, they built similar houses in New York just a block apart. Perhaps Gus was born on the south side of the street and Joe on the north side.

This link is a good example of dialect singing. It is simply singing a song in the accent of the type of song that is being sung. We do this today but are more restricted when doing it. The first song is a comic song about a Chinese fellow.  (By Irving Berlin.)  Note that Gus is standing as if he had his hands in the sleeves of his long coat. This was a common position for the Mandarin gentleman.

The second song is "Way Down South In Heaven" ... beautiful. This is from a 1929 MGM Metro Movietone  short.

And another "Dixie" song from a 1929 MGM Metro Movietone short by Van and Schenck... "Stay Out Of The South".

A couple of the quintessential southern songs dealt with the river that separates the Florida panhandle from the rest of the state...the Swannee. Stephen C. Foster wrote the first one, "Way Down Upon The Swannee River" (one of many sweet songs he wrote about the south) while living in his home state, Pennsylvania.

Another song, "Swanee" was written in about ten minutes by Irving Caesar and George Gershwin while riding a bus in Manhattan in 1919. They finished it pretty quickly in Gershwin’s apartment. Gershwin was just 20; Caesar 24. They successfully promoted the song to Al Jolson. Jolson performed it in a New York revue almost immediately. Instantaneous smash hit!

Few singers could present a southern song like Al Jolson...in or out of black face.

Irving Caesar was born Isidor Keiser in New York to Romanian Jews, and George Gershwin was named Jacob Gershowitz at birth in Brooklyn. His parents were Russian Jews.

And most people know that Al Jolson was born Asa Yoelson in Lithuania.

This is a 1920 recording of Jolson doing "Swanee" – the introduction has an interesting and different tune to the rest of the song.

Years later, long after Irving Caesar and George Gershwin had written "Swanee," Caesar was on a train going south for the first time and the train porter told him that "in just a few minutes, we will be passing over that river that you wrote the song about." Caesar was watching intently and then there it was!

He wired George Gershwin, "It is a good thing we wrote that song before I saw it." (This is according to a rare video interview I have of Irving Caesar.)

And that is the basic story of the northerner’s experience with Dixie – "It is a good thing we wrote that song before I saw it."

Yes, America has a lot of music about Dixie but there is that prevalent desire to seem southern that remains a mystery. We know it happens. Why? We would each have our own idea.