Cotton-Eyed Joe

“Cotton-Eyed Joe” (also known as “Cotton-Eye Joe”) is a traditional American country folk song popular at various times throughout the United States and Canada, although today it is most commonly associated with the American South.  “Cotton-Eyed Joe” has inspired both a partner dance and more than one line dance that is often danced at country dance venues in the U.S. and around the world. The 1980 film Urban Cowboy sparked a renewed interest in the dance. In 1985, The Moody Brothers’ version of the song received a Grammy Award nomination for “Best Country Instrumental Performance”. Irish group The Chieftains received a Grammy nomination for “Best Country Vocal Collaboration” for their version of the song with lead vocals by Ricky Skaggs on their 1992 album Another Country. In 1994 a version of the song recorded by the Swedish band Rednex as “Cotton Eye Joe” became popular worldwide . The origins of this song are unclear, although it pre-dates the 1861–1865 American Civil War.  American folklorist Dorothy Scarborough (1878–1935) noted in her 1925 book On the Trail of Negro Folk-songs, that several people remembered hearing the song before the war. Scarborough’s account of the song came from her sister, Mrs. George Scarborough, who learned the song from “the Negroes on a plantation in Texas, and other parts from a man in Louisiana”. The man in Louisiana knew the song from his earliest childhood and heard slaves singing it on plantations.  Both the dance and the song had many variants. American publishing house Harper and Brothers published the first printed version of the song in 1882.  It was heard by author Louise Clarke Pyrnelle (born 1850) on the Alabama plantation of her father when she was a child. That 1882 version was republished in 1910.