MOUNT VERNON — There is “no smoking gun” concerning the absolutely definitive origin of the song “Dixie,” John Chidester told audience members gathered Wednesday evening in the A/V room of the Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County.
However, strong “circumstantial” evidence exists to suggest that songwriter and blackface minstrel performer Dan Emmett, who was born in Mount Vernon, was strongly influenced by an African-American family living in Mount Vernon when he wrote the controversial song in 1859, he said. Chidester, the library’s director, led a question-and-answer discussion about the song’s origin and place in history. The discussion followed a viewing of the 80-minute documentary-style film “Dixie, The True Story of America’s Most Dangerous Song.”
Like Sacks’ book, the film builds a case that the Snowden family — a former slave family from Maryland that became a family of musicians once freed and living in Mount Vernon — was just as responsible for at least a substantial portion of the song as Emmett was. Emmett, an accomplished fiddler and blackface performer credited with the song “Old Dan Tucker” in 1843, was living in his hometown during the 1850s at about the time the Snowdens were well known in the area.
Two Snowden brothers, Ben and Lou, are the two who many think taught Emmett the song, and in fact their headstone at a local cemetery reads “They taught Dixie to Dan Emmett.” But Sacks’ research found that as the last Snowdens living in Mount Vernon before their deaths in the 1920s, Ben and Lou would have been too young to teach Emmett the song.
The family lived on what was then Clinton Road in Morris Township. They formed The Snowden Family Band, an old-time string band that typically included a fiddler, guitar player, banjo player, and hand-held wood pieces, called “bones,” that made a “clacking” sound.
In fact it was the family matriarch, Ellen Cooper Snowden, who may have been the most influential toward shaping the song, Chidester offered. She moved to Knox County at age 9, freed from slavery in Nanjemoy, Maryland, which held America’s largest concentration of slaves at the time. Her father, however, was never freed from slavery, Chidester said. Ellen Cooper and Thomas Snowden produced seven children, making their family band strong.
The song “Dixie” is written in the dialect of the plantation South, Chidester noted. It contains numerous verses indicating that female slaves, who were often consigned to kitchen and cleaning duties, provided the song’s visual language. Original verses were more attuned to the colloquial dialect of plantation slaves, and changed for song purposes.
One of the song’s most famous lines begins, “I wish I were in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten ...” However, Chidester said the original words were, “I wish I were in the land of cotton, ‘simmon seeds and sandy bottom.”
“Simmon” referred to persimmon trees and their fruit that grew near the sandy bottom shores of eastern Maryland. It is the region where the Snowdens had been rooted before a family known as the Greer family moved Ellen Cooper Snowden and others to Mount Vernon. The Greer family resided east of Danville. The origin of the word “Dixie,” Chidester noted, likely came from the owner of a plantation in — of all places — the island of Manhattan.
“Do you feel enlightened?” Chidester asked more than 30 audience members as the post-film discussion began. As the film and Chidester noted, “Dixie” was not just controversial because of its authorship. It is well chronicled, Chidester said, that Emmett was more concerned with performing than he was claiming a song was his. True enough, “He was always out to find a good tune,” Chidester said, and carried around tune lyrics in a book. But he was writing songs in an era when African-Americans and others, such as Appalachian musicians, were passing down their music through the ways of oral tradition, just as they did their family histories.
A copyright for the song was not initially on Emmett’s mind, which is why more than 30 people claimed the origin of the song “Dixie” as their own. He did copyright the song later.
Chidester said he would agree that “Dixie” is a beautifully written song, lyrically and in melody, about the idyllic notions of the pre-Civil War plantation South — but a song later stuck in Civil War-torn politics. To some the song stands as a symbol of white rule during the Confederacy, while representing slavery, lynching and overall southern oppression to African-Americans. It is therefore also linked by many to the Confederate flag.
Interestingly, President Abraham Lincoln enjoyed the song, and thought it was a fitting tribute to the best mannerisms of the South, while the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, also enjoyed its joyful view of southern ways. Confederate war veterans adopted it as their song of tribute to the South and the men who gave their lives to defend it.
The song “Dixie” has been sung throughout the past 150 years in many different forms, by both white and black performers, the film emphasized. Many have commented that the words and melody by themselves are beautiful and can bring people together to celebrate musicianship. So it is ironic that, when used politically, the song becomes dangerously divisive.
One of its most poignant versions was offered by acoustic guitar-playing musician Mickey Newbury during the early 1970s. Newbury created “An American Trilogy,” combining “Dixie,” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and the slave-focused song, “All My Trials.” They were played together seamlessly and whether the song was before the American Legion or Hell’s Angels, the reaction was always the same — moments of silence, and then the audience bursting into thunderous applause and shouts of approbation.
Chidester noted this week’s Dan Emmett Music & Arts Festival is going through a re-brand and will likely come back next year with a new name.
Audience member Ann Robeson Hudson said Dan Emmett needs to be remembered as a great musician whose roots lie in Mount Vernon.
“We need to keep him alive as part of the community,” she said.
“And keep the Snowdens alive as well,” Chidester offered.
