Good Morning POU! This week we’ll talk about the history of “Coon Songs”. Its a horrible history, but history nonetheless.
Coon songs were a genre of music that presented a stereotype of black people. They were popular in the United States and Australia from around 1880 to 1920, though the earliest such songs date from minstrel shows as far back as 1848, when they were not yet identified with “coon” epithet. The genre became extremely popular, with white and black men giving performances in blackface and making recordings. Women known as coon shouters also gained popularity in the genre.
Although the word “coon” is now regarded as racist, according to Stuart Flexner, “coon” was short for “raccoon”, and it meant a frontier rustic (someone who may wear a coonskin cap) by 1832. By 1840 it also meant a Whig as the Whig Party was keen to be associated with rural white common people. At that time, “coon” was typically used to refer someone white, and a coon song referred to a Whig song. it was only in 1848 when the first clear case of using “coon” to refer to a black person in a derogative sense appeared. It is possible that the negative racial connotation of the word may have evolved from “Zip Coon”, a song that first became popular in the 1830s, and the common use of the word “coon” in blackface minstrel shows. The song “Zip Coon”, a variant of “Turkey in the Straw”, notably in performances by George Washington Dixon who performed in blackface, was published around 1834. The word “coon” meaning “black person”, was in use by 1837. An alternative suggestion of the word’s origin to mean a black person is that it was derived from barracoon, an enclosure for slaves, which became increasingly used in the years before the American Civil War as temporary enclosure for slaves escaping or traveling. It may also have been used earlier on the stage; a black man named Raccoon was one of the lead characters in a 1767 colonial comic opera “The Disappointment”.
Whatever the origin, by 1862, “coon” had come to mean a black person. The first explicitly coon-themed song, published in 1880, may have been “The Dandy Coon’s Parade” by J. P. Skelley. Other notable early coon songs included “The Coons Are on Parade”, “New Coon in Town” (by J. S. Putnam, 1883), “Coon Salvation Army” (by Sam Lucas, 1884), “Coon Schottische” (by William Dressler, 1884). The most popular coon songs of this early period, however, were written by whites, and only one, “New Coon in Town”, has enough syncopation “to foreshadow the true, shouting, ragtime school”. Black Americans had also entered the music business by this time, and their syncopated music then came to be identified with real coon songs. By the mid-1880s, coon songs were a national craze; over 600 such songs were published in the 1890s. The most successful songs sold millions of copies. To take advantage of the fad, composers “added words typical of coon songs to previously published songs and rags”. The first hit recorded song by a black man was “The Whistling Coon” by George W. Johnson recorded in 1890. After the turn of the century, coon songs began to receive criticism for their racist content. In 1905, Bob Cole, an African-American composer who had gained fame largely by writing coon songs, made somewhat unprecedented remarks about the genre. When asked in an interview about the name of his earlier comedy A Trip to Coontown, he replied: “That day has passed with the softly flowing tide of revelations.”
In 1908 the Broadway company Cinemaphone, created by J. A. Whitman, released a short film “Coon Song” which had an audible track featuring singers such as Blanche Ring, Anna Held, Eva Tanguay and Stella Mayhew. Following further criticism, the use of “coon” in song titles greatly decreased after 1910. On August 13, 1920, Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League created the red, black and green flag as a response to the song “Every Race Has a Flag but the Coon” by Heelan and Helf. That song along with “Coon, Coon, Coon” and “All Coons Look Alike to Me” were identified by H. L. Mencken as being the three songs which firmly established the derogatory term “coon” in the American vocabulary. Originally in the 1830s, the term had been associated with the Whig Party. The Whigs used a raccoon as its emblem, but the party also developed a more tolerant attitude towards blacks than the other political factions. The latter opinion is likely what transformed the term “coon” from mere political slang into a racial slur.
It is possible that the popularity of coon songs may be explained in part by their historical timing: coon songs arose precisely as the popular music business exploded in Tin Pan Alley. However, James Dormon, a former professor of history and American studies at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, has also suggested that coon songs can be seen as “a necessary sociopsychological mechanism for justifying segregation and subordination.” The songs portrayed blacks as posing a threat to the American social order and implied that they had to be controlled.
Lyrics:
Since the coon craze came in town, There is nothing has been found,
That would create a big sensation.
But if a colored gent was elected president,
He wouldn’t do a thing to this great nation.
Coons then would wear good clothes
Powder their face and straighten their nose ;
You could only tell a coon then by his hair!
Then he’d give to each coon and every one of his kin,
A razor, chicken and a quart of nigger gin !
When a coon sits in the presidential chair !
Oh, my ! what fun
In Washington !
You bet that ev’ry coon from Coontown will be there!
Won’t that be fine,
Simply divine?
When a coon sits in the presidential chair!
Now on his reception day,
Ev’ry thing will have full sway,
You must look like a coon to be a member.
The reception, furthermore,
Will not take place on the White House floor,
But they will all assemble in the cellar.
Politics won’t be a breeze,
But shooting craps and policy !
They’ll have to raid the White House then for fair!
Between the razors, the gin and the niggers there
They’ll do cake walks through windows and even in the air, —
When a coon sits in the presidential chair !
Oh, my ! what fun
In Washington !
You bet that ev’ry coon from Coontown will be there!
Won’t that be fine,
Simply divine?
When a coon sits in the presidential chair!