[Rarebooks] fa: "ZIP COON" MINSTREL/JIM CROW Illus. Sheet Music 1837: "Sich a Gitting Up Stairs"

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 17th, 18th, & 19th-century titles, auctions ending Sunday, October 28. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/97rae6c

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


Sich a Gitting Up Stairs : Sung by Mr. Bob Farrel, The original Zip Coon. Baltimore: Published and sold by Mr. Geo. Willig, Jr., [ca. 1837]. Folio (13 1/2 x 10 1/8 in.); 4 pp.; lithograph illustration to front cover. Publication year from the African American Sheet Music Collection at the John Hay Library, Brown University. Some spotting and a few stains to the front and the margins of the interior, otherwise clean and sound. This is the original vintage sheet music, not a reproduction.

An uncommon artifact from the early days of blackface minstrelsy, a tradition that began in the 1830s and continued in all its offensive political incorrectness well into the 20th century. In the unabashedly racist parlance of the time, a "zip coon" was a dandified urban Negro, often of a jealous and pugnacious nature. Here, Bob Farrel is given credit for having originated the stereotype, though George Washington Dixon and other blackface performers claimed that distinction as well.

In the song, the narrator travels from a "Suskehanna raft" to Washington and Baltimore, along the way encountering Jim Crow, another and even more pernicious stereotype. He preaches at a Temperance meeting and attends a "meeting about de Clonization [colonization]." Finally, in Washington he calls on Yaller Sal and finds Big Joe already in attendance on her. The ensuing action is depicted on the front cover: "Says I you see that door? just mosey, niggir Joe, / For I'm a Suskyhannee boy what knows a ting or two; / …And den I show my science—prenez gardez vous, / Bung he eye, break he shin, split de nose in two…"