The Field Guide » Fiddle http://fieldguide.hollandhopson.com out standing in the field Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:19:20 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Cotton-Eyed Joe http://fieldguide.hollandhopson.com/2008/01/18/cotton-eyed-joe/ http://fieldguide.hollandhopson.com/2008/01/18/cotton-eyed-joe/#comments Sat, 19 Jan 2008 02:20:00 +0000 Holland Hopson http://fieldguide.hollandhopson.com/2008/01/18/cotton-eyed-joe/ Continue reading →]]> The Allmusic blog has an appreciation of sorts for the enduring fiddle-tune cotton-eyed joe. Read it here. The article states: “Legend has it that Cotton-Eyed Joe was a pre-Civil War slave musician whose tragic life turned his hair white and was famous for playing a fiddle made from the coffin of his diseased son.” Wow! Never heard that before, but it’s a darn good story. Somehow more plausible to me is the claim that “…Cotton-Eyed Joe isn’t a person at all but the name of a specific non-partner spoke-line dance and that one doesn’t meet Cotton-Eyed Joe, one does the Cotton-Eyed Joe.” In this case, the lines “Where did you come from / where did you go?” could quite literally refer to a dance partner.

Who do I think Cotton-Eyed Joe might have been/might still be?

  • a Joe with unusually white eyes, of course
  • a Joe with starry eyes
  • a Joe who had picked cotton so long that his hands were cut and his eyes were bleary
  • a Joe hardened from a hard-scrabble existence, yet nevertheless has soft, kind eyes

One aspect of the lyrics that I enjoy is the idea that Cotton-Eyed Joe steals your love away. And as in so many old-time tunes, stealing your love could either mean stealing your heart or it could mean stealing the person who you love or, somehow, both. “I’d a been married a long time ago if it hadn’t a been for Cotton-Eyed Joe.”

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