Dan Emmett

Photograph of Dan Emmett in his later years, taken from the belongings of Ben and Lew Snowden of Clinton, Knox County, Ohio.

Daniel Decatur "Dan" Emmett (October 29, 1815 – June 28, 1904) was an American songwriter and entertainer, founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition.^[1]

Of Irish ancestry, he was born at Mount Vernon, Ohio, then a frontier region.

After working as a printer's devil and serving in the United States Army, Emmett joined a circus troupe in 1835. In association with Billy Whitlock, Dick Pelham, and Frank Brower, he organized the Virginia Minstrels, which made their first appearance before a paying audience at the Chatham Theatre in New York City in 1843.^[2]

Photograph of Dan Emmett in blackface, probably early 1860s.

Although blackface performance, in which white men painted their hands and faces black and impersonated caricatures of black men and women, was already an established performance mode at that time—Thomas D. Rice had created the character of Jim Crow nearly a decade earlier, and blackface had been widely popular ever since—Emmett's group are said to be the first to "black up" an entire band rather than one or two performers. The group's full-length blackface performance is generally considered to have performed the first true minstrel show: previous blackface acts were usually either an entr'acte for a play or one of many acts in a comic variety show.

Compositions

Notable songs written by Dan Emmett include:

• "Polly Wolly Doodle"
• "Old Dan Tucker"
• "The Boatman's Dance"
• "The Road to Richmond"
• "Walk Along, John"
• "Early in the Mornin'"

He is also sometimes credited with the composition of "Turkey in the Straw"^[3][4], but the authorship of this song is still contested by music historians.

Dan Emmett is traditionally credited with writing the famous song "Dixie". The story that he related about its composition varied each time he told it, but the main points were that he composed the song in New York City while a member of Bryant's Minstrels. The song was first performed by Emmett and the Bryants at Mechanics' Hall in New York City on April 4, 1859. The song became a runaway hit, especially in the South, and the piece for which Emmett was most well known. Emmett himself reportedly told a fellow minstrel that "If I had known to what use they [Southerners] were going to put my song, I will be damned if I'd have written it."^[5] After the South began using his song as a rally, Emmett wrote the fife and drum manual for the Union Army. Emmett's song was a favorite of President Abraham Lincoln, who said after the war ended in 1865: "I have always though that 'Dixie' was one of the best tunes I ever heard. I had heard our adversaries had attempted to appropriate it. I insisted yesterday that we had fairly captured it."^[6]

Another writer named William Shakespeare Hays (1837-1907) (pen name: Will S. Hays), claimed to be its true author. Members of the Snowden Family of Knox County, Ohio, have also been named as writers of the song.

	"Dixie" 1916 rendition of "Dixie" by the Metropolitan Mixed Chorus with Ada Jones and Billy Murray
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Death and posthumous recognition

Emmett retired to his hometown of Mount Vernon in 1878 where he died on June 28, 1904, aged 88 years. Emmett was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. In 1943, Paramount Pictures released a film about his life entitled Dixie. It starred Bing Crosby as Emmett. Numerous schools, businesses, and other institutions in Mount Vernon, Ohio, are named after Emmett. The official memorial to him is a large boulder with a placard attached located in front of the Knox County Historical Museum.^[7]

Notes

External links

• Dan Emmett at the Songwriters Hall of Fame
• Dan Emmett at the Internet Movie Database
• Free scores by Dan Emmett in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)

See also

• Minstrel show

References

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Daniel Decatur Emmett

• Crawford, Richard. An Introduction to America's Music. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.
• Hall, Roger Lee. Lincoln and Liberty: Music from Abraham Lincoln's Era. Stoughton, Massachusetts: PineTree Press, 2009.
• Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-19-507832-2.
• Nathan, Hans. Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962