| "Old Black Joe" | |
|---|---|
 Original sheet music cover | |
| Song | |
| Published | 1860 |
| Songwriter(s) | Stephen Foster |
"Old Black Joe" is a parlor song by Stephen Foster (1826–1864). It was published by Firth, Pond & Co. of New York in 1860.[1] Ken Emerson, author of the book Doo-Dah! (1998), indicates that Foster's fictional Joe was inspired by a servant in the home of Foster's father-in-law, Dr. McDowell of Pittsburgh. The song is not written in dialect.
Emerson believes that the song's "soft melancholy" and its "elusive undertone" (rather than anything musical), brings the song closest to the traditional African-American spiritual.[2]
Harold Vincent Milligan describes the song as "one of the best of the Ethiopian [contemporary parlance for blackface minstrel songs] songs ... its mood is one of gentle melancholy, of sorrow without bitterness. There is a wistful tenderness in the music."[3] Jim Kweskin covered the song on his 1971 album Jim Kweskin's America.[4]
The song has sometimes been recorded as "Poor Old Joe", including by Paul Robeson who recorded it several times, for example in 1928 and 1930.[5][6] Other notable recordings were by Bing Crosby (recorded June 16, 1941),[7] Jerry Lee Lewis (1959) and Al Jolson (recorded July 13, 1950).[8]
1.
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".
Chorus
I'm coming, I'm coming, for my head is bending low;
I hear those gentle voices calling, "Old Black Joe".
2.
Why do I weep when my heart should feel no pain?
Why do I sigh that my friends come not again,
Grieving for forms now departed long ago?
I hear their gentle voices calling "Old Black Joe".
Chorus
3.
Where are the hearts once so happy and so free?
The children so dear that I held upon my knee,
Gone to the shore where my soul has longed to go.
I hear their gentle voices calling "Old Black Joe".
Chorus
