Old Black Joe

DESCRIPTION: "Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay, Gone are my friends from the cotton fields away, Gone from the earth to a better land I know, I hear their gentle voices calling 'Old Black Joe.'" The singer, having outlived so much, says "I'm coming"
AUTHOR: Stephen C. Foster
EARLIEST DATE: 1860 (sheet music by Firth, Pond & Co.)
KEYWORDS: age nonballad death
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (14 citations):
Jackson-PopularSongsOfNineteenthCenturyAmerica, pp. 156-159, "Old Black Joe" (1 text, 1 tune)
Saunders/Root-MusicOfStephenCFoster-Vol2, pp. 99-102+428, "Old Black Joe" (1 text, 1 tune)
Dean-FlyingCloud, pp. 126-127, "Old Black Joe" (1 text)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #1692, p. 114, "Old Black Joe" (1 reference)
Dime-Song-Book #8, p. 6, "Old Black Joe" (1 text)
Emerson-StephenFosterAndCo, pp. 20-21, "Old Black Joe" (1 text)
Messerli-ListenToTheMockingbird, pp. 102-103, "Old Black Joe" (1 text)
Jolly-Miller-Songster-5thEd, #122, "Old Black Joe" (1 text)
Fuld-BookOfWorldFamousMusic, p. 407, "Old Black Joe"
Harbin-Parodology #325, p. 325, "Old Black Joe" (1 text)
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 188, "Old Black Joe" (notes only)
Rodeheaver-SociabilitySongs, p. 15, "Old Black Joe" (1 text, 1 tune)
National-4HClubSongBook, p. 7, "Old Black Joe" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, OLDBLACK*
ST RJ19156 (Full)
Roud #9601
RECORDINGS:
Criterion Quartet, "Old Black Joe" (CYL: Edison [BA] 3092, n.d.)
Edison Quartette, "Old Black Joe" (Edison 8823, 1904)
Fisk University Jubilee Quartet, "Old Black Joe" (Victor 35097, 1909)
Ford Hanford, "My Old Kentucky Home and Old Black Joe [medley]" (Victor 18767, 1921)
Peerless Quartet, "Old Black Joe" (Victor 5562, 1908; Victor 16531. 1910)
Riley Puckett, "Old Black Joe" (Columbia 15005-D, 1924)
SAME TUNE:
Come Up, Dear Dinner, Come Up (Pankake/Pankake-PrairieHomeCompanionFolkSongBook, p. 121)
Grange Benediction ("Praise Nature's God who rules above") (by A. P. Knapp) (Albert P. Knapp, _Grange Songster_, 1915, p. 6)
Dear Old Flag ("Gone are the days when thy folds were rent in twain") (by A. P. Knapp) (Albert P. Knapp, _Grange Songster_, 1915, p. 24)
The Poor White Slave ("Down where the coal mine lifts its ugly shaft, There stands a hut, beside a narrow lane") (Foner, p. 252)
We're Going ("We're going! we're going! Our evening meal is o'er") (Harbin-Parodology, #278, p. 68)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Poor Old Joe
NOTES [249 words]: By the time Foster wrote this piece, his parents were dead, his marriage was troubled, and he was in bad financial shape. It has been theorized that this put him in a nostalgic mood. As always, he set it on the plantation -- but for once not in dialect.
TaylorEtAl p. 135, report that "Foster's granddaughter, Mrs. A. D. Rose claimed that 'Joe' was a real person, a servant in the home of [Foster's future wife] Jane McDowell in the days when Stephen was courting her. Up to the time of Dr. McDowell's death, Joe drove Jane's father on his rounds.... According to Mrs. Rose, Stephen promised Joe that he would put him into a song. The old man was gone when the day of inspiration came, but today an perhaps always, Old Black Joe live again."
The extended Foster family apparently believed this also. Morneweck, pp. 372-373, also quotes Jessie W. Rose, calling him "the McDowell family butler and handy man." Apparently the Foster family did not sing "Old Black Joe" because they knew the back story.
It is perhaps an indication of how far Foster had fallen by the time he wrote this that he actually produced a sort of parody, "Poor Old Joe." According to Waites/Hunter, p. 80, the latter is "virtually identical to Old Black Joe. Probably [Foster] altered a few words and notes so that more than one publisher could issue the same song."
It's sad that Foster's last great melody had to be handled in such a way, and now generally can't be sung at all because of its associations with slavery. - RBW
Bibliography

Morneweck: Evelyn Foster Morneweck (Stephen Foster's niece), Chronicles of Stephen Foster's Family, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1944
TaylorEtAl: Deems Taylor et al, A Treasury of Stephen Foster, Random House, 1946
Waites/Hunter: Aline Waites & Robin Hunter, The Illustrated Victorian Songbook, Michael Joseph Ltd., 1984

Last updated in version 6.6
File: RJ19156

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography