“Old Black Joe” is a parlor song by Stephen Foster (1826–1864). It was published by Firth, Pond & Co. of New York in 1860. 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. 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 ] Jim Kweskin covered the song on his 1971 album Jim Kweskin’s America. 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. Other notable recordings were by Bing Crosby (recorded June 16, 1941), Jerry Lee Lewis (1959) and Al Jolson (recorded July 13, 1950
Songs with Banjo from Harold Hagler
