Does that make any sense to anyone else? Your initial interpretation that Dinah was the train may actually be correct. Though they would have been building the railroads a train would have accompanied the workers, bringing materials etc.
Dinah was a generic name for a black women not specifically a slave it would have been logical to name a black steam engine Dinah, and to blow the trains horn to call a break. There is no indication in the original train song that Dinah is a cook, except perhaps that the name Dinah could imply a black cook.
The medley version we know now and Dinah moving from the house to kitchen may not have happened until the s. It has nothing to do with railroads or the s minstrel skit that has the same chorus but with house rather than kitchen. My guess is that after that song was on the radio someone made the connection of Dinah in the kitchen to Dinah blowing her horn for a lunch break in the familiar train song. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account.
You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. I think that this is the one to whicn Masato referred. Note lines suggestive of "Old Dan Tucker," which seems to be older. He came to town in shocking fright, For he heard a noise, and he saw a fight; Some boys were running up and down, Shouting, "Old Joe is just come to town!
Bodleian Collection, Harding B11 Printed between and by Walker, Durham. Broadsides crossed the water as fast as sailing vessels could carry them. It is much more recent than "Dinah," as previously noted. Levee, in about , was often applied to almost any construction requiring laborers. The full text is quoted by Masato.
Why it is called Dinah is not known, although an unwelcome shrill blast might well be given a female name. From: Joe Offer Date: 16 Sep 08 - PM "If you look above you'll see that the best guess as to the origin of "I've Been Working on the Railroad" is that it was published as "Levee Song" in the edition of Carmina Princetonia - although portions of the song came earlier. Masato posted the lyrics in this thread.
Take a look at the crosslinked threads listed at the top of this page. I wonder when and how it achieved such universality. In addition to the printing in Carmina princetonia, sheet music to "The Levee Song" was published by Hinds, Noble and Eldridge, note in Scarborough. Noted in no. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, vol. Neither Newman I. Scarborough recorded an add-on verse, from minstrel shows- Sing me a song of the city, Roll dem cotton bales Darky ain't half so happy As when he's out of jail.
Mobile for its oyster shells, Boston for its beans, Charleston for its cotton bales, But for yaller gals- New Orleans! It's full of the N word and the worst stereotypes of African-Americans you can imagine. It's almost as bad as the "coon" songs of the ss, when the happy-go-lucky image of contented darkies who lub dem dar massa gave way to chicken-stealin', razor-cutting, dangerous Negro images, which I think are more accurately "these-are-poor-folk-like-us-and-compete-for-our-jobs" images.
In Minstrel show days, African Americans were child-like and nearly innocent. And more or less safe, since they were confined to Massa's keeping. After , and particularly after Reconstruction ended, freedmen were competitors, and much less safe. So the imagery changed to match. There's certainly no repeated chorus lines like in the latter song; it's possible someone found the lyrics to "Kitchen" and, not knowing the tune, incorporated it into "Railroad" -- but just one line.
The opening also uses a work song call and response form. It would go on to have a variety of lyrics, some of them more offensive than others. The three sections joined at Princeton also received a new set of lyrics a decade following publication. As the song was first performed in a student minstrel show it is possible the music was lifted directly from the Princeton version.
As written it follows the three section format of the Princeton arrangement, but within just two or three years it was being performed as simply the familiar chorus section.
Take note for later that in the opening couplet had become a fuller opening verse. The warning to uphold good behavior was directed at students and never implied African Americans even when it was performed by student minstrels in blackface. This is more obvious when the original lyrics are read in full. An interesting example of the exonerating lyrics being the forgotten ones.
The confusion and contradictions within the Princeton lyrics point to a folk origin for them. Some sources have linked the lyric patterns to either an African American spiritual or an Irish hymn adapted for work gangs. The mixing of the terms levee and railroad in the published lyrics sounds odd to us now.
At that time the term levee was being used generically to refer to any construction site. If you picture the raised bed on which a railroad is laid it makes more sense. Still, various verses added to the song do imply actual water levees, which were being built across the south, and obviously the railroad section refers to railroads.
It is not unreasonable to conjecture that actual railroad and levee workers sang the tune or parts of the lyrics before any minstrels had, and workers certainly enjoyed the song after it became popular.
While it may have appeared on the minstrel stage in some form before its most prominent use as a minstrel song only occurred in the two decades after publication. Using the three printed examples provided by Dr. The simple verses are all borrowed from other common work song material. There are no racial lyrics and the song is sung without dialect other than a slight Irish brogue.
It is sung in dialect, slowly, by a male chorus and is probably very similar to what would have been heard in minstrel performance up to that time, almost as a spiritual.
We associated minstrel shows with rollicking humor but much of the appeal was the mixture of moving or sentimental material with the humor. The group, known as The Sandhill Sixteen, specialized in religious spirituals and only left six recordings. Because one of the solos is credited to Thad S. Page, who went on to work in the National Archives , it is clear this was a white group, though there is little to distinguish their repertoire from Black church music of the same region.
The recording uses the opening couplet structure as well as the second offensive verse from the version. This would mean the railroad section we currently use originated separately from the sections containing offensive language. A hot jazz version from is the first recording at the tempo we associate with the song. The opening section follows the pattern of an opening verse specifically mentioning levee activities. The specific section of lyrics that became the modern verse we know were:.
It is sung once, no variations on this verse are included. It is possible the published lyrics were adapted from existing morris dance lyrics, and then the lyrics in use evolved to follow the publication.
The same tune had many bawdy variations. Actually, the verse disappears entirely for a century as far as publication is concerned.
The new words were by Johnny Lange , and the music by Arny Freeman. Structurally and topically the song is unrelated to the s minstrel song. The inspiration for the songwriter to adopt, and adapt, those lines is unlikely to have been an obscure English minstrel skit of years before. The verse had passed into folk music at that point or always had been. It is likely the authors associated it with barroom sing-a-longs rather than minstrelsy. P Christy , the original lyrics have no racial element.
It was likely authored by an actual person whether a member of the progressive folk movement or some other tune-smith. It is possible, likely even, that it was Beatrice Landeck herself who created the song we know for the book in which she first published it.
There were arrangements of true folks song in her Songs to Grow On , but many of the titles were her own. He could be right. There is no transition period, it suddenly appears in with the exact setting and lyrics it has today.
At the least, the new song was penned sometime after and probably very close to It combines three very catchy melodic sections into one song and is structurally as well as lyrically unique. The end result is that none of the current musical sections were ever set to racist lyrics. The musical portions set to racist lyrics evolved out of the song entirely. There is nothing inherently racist about a Black man playing the banjo, an instrument descended from African instruments.
A variation of those words was first published as part of a racist skit about a drunk man coming home to a cheating spouse, but the words themselves may have been picked up from elsewhere. The pop version is about neighborhood curiosity. Who does Dinah have in the kitchen? Why has she been so happy recently?
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