A common song that ice cream trucks in the US play is this:
In 1920, Good Humor put its first ice cream trucks on the street, in Youngstown, Ohio. So was there a song back then with that tune having to do with ice cream? Yes. In 1916, Columbia Records came out with:
“Nigger love a watermelon HA! HA! HA!”:
From the song:
Browne: “You niggers quit throwin’ them bones and come down and get your ice cream!”
Black men (incredulously): “Ice Cream?!?”
Browne: “Yes, ice cream! Colored man’s ice cream: WATERMELON!!”
The chorus:
Nigger love a watermelon ha ha, ha ha!
Nigger love a watermelon ha ha, ha ha!
For here, they’re made with a half a pound of co’l
There’s nothing like a watermelon for a hungry coon
It gets worse.
The reason ice cream trucks played music was because ice cream shops did. They wanted to create the ice cream parlour experience as much as possible. And part of that was listening to minstrel songs! In fact, the song that made that tune famous across the US was “Zip Coon” from the minstrel shows that travelled the US in the 1800s.
“Zip Coon” was first performed in 1834 in New York by George Washington Dixon – in blackface. Zip Coon, like Jim Crow, became a common character in minstrel shows. He was a free Black man who becomes a laughingstock by trying to dress and talk like a White man of means. Zip Coon and Jim Crow would later give rise to “Amos ‘n’ Andy”, which was sent across airwaves of the US from 1928 to 1966.
The song was in Mock Ebonics. Zip Coon becomes president:
An wen Zip Coon our President shall be,
He make all de little Coons sing posum up a tree;
O how de little Coons, will dance an sing,
Wen he tie dare tails togedder, cross de lim dey swing.
The word “coon” was short for raccoon (Procyon lotor), but by 1837, three years after this song came out, “coon” first appeared in print as a racist slur for Black people.
From the song:
O Zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day.
O Zip a duden duden duden duden duden day.
O Zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day.
Zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day.
From that Disney got the words (but not the tune) for its Oscar-winning, Happy Darky anthem, “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” (1946).
“Zip Coon” made the tune famous, but it was not the first song to use it. “Turkey in the Straw” might be a bit older, but the oldest song published in the US with that tune is “Natchez Under the Hill” (1834), also performed in blackface.
But the tune itself is older still. Although much of minstel music was, like Anglo American music in general, watered-down Black music, this tune was not. It comes from “The (Old) Rose Tree”, brought to North America by the Scots-Irish (Ulster Scots) who settled in Appalachia in the 1700s.
– Abagond, 2016.
Sources: mainly NPR, pancocojams, Online Etymology Dictionary.
See also:
- other racially questionable songs:
- minstrel shows
- blackface
- Mock Ebonics
- The watermelon stereotype
- The coon stereotype
- darkies
- The N-word
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
Not a coincidence. I am working on a post on the word “coon”. This post is a spin-off of that.
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Is that tune still used commonly today?
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That’s messed up. But I would like to know if that melody is also in other songs, because I thought I heard it elsewhere. Sounds like some other dixieland music maybe?
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Oh! My bad I read the rest of your post and saw it was Irish folk. Duh Dave!! lol!
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Dang! Everything had some ugly racial history to it. Even a sweet childhood memory like the ice cream truck. I guess this is America, the ugliness of racism finds its way into everything.
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@ Abagond
That is amazing research! White Supremacy and deep, deep racism is embedded in the bones of this country. Thank you for adding this perspective.
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@ Abagond
A lot of Americans don’t know this, but “Scotch” to describe the Scottish people is considered to border on offensive. The Chicago Manual of Style has been recommending the use of Scots and Scots-Irish for at least 20 years now.
I’m very much looking forward to your post in progress.
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
Difficult for the smoke to clear while the cannons are still firing.
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@ Zoe Jordan
The tune is incredibly common, but usually it is associated with the song “Turkey in the Straw” which doesn’t have racist lyrics (at least as far as I’m aware; heaven only knows what Abagond will dig up in his research). I never knew until today that the tune had been used for at least three sets of minstrel songs with racist lyrics.
It’s also a tune most of us learn in childhood, whether because ice cream trucks constantly play it, or on children’s music albums and tv shows, or as a square-dance tune (some elementary school districts teach square dancing as part of physical education classes).
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.I remember in 1985 – 1989 I sang some of these songs as a kid in elementary school. ‘Dixieland’ was something in music class. I actually enjoyed singing these songs without knowing wth I was singing about.
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“A lot of Americans don’t know this, but “Scotch” to describe the Scottish people is considered to border on offensive.”
I thought it was because “scotch” refers to liquor and people confuse the two.
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@Solitaire
“The Chicago Manual of Style has been recommending the use of Scots and Scots-Irish for at least 20 years now.”
Thanks for pointing that out. I’m currently reading The Scotch-Irish: A Social History by James G. Leyburn. published in 1962. So the term is probably quite dated.
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@ Michael Jon Barker
That’s part of it, because it’s still ok in Britain to use “Scotch” for objects like Scotch whiskey, Scotch egg, etc. But it goes a lot deeper. The short version is that the Scottish people called themselves Scots while the English called them Scotch, and eventually the Scots insisted on their own terminology.
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@ Afrofem
A lot of Americans still proudly identify as Scotch-Irish because the brouhaha over the term largely took place across the pond. However, in American scholarly publishing, it has been almost entirely replaced by Scots-Irish. So yes, it’s an outdated term that is slowly falling by the wayside.
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@Solitaire
.
Don’t forget tape made by 3M. “Scotch it together”.
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Re: Scotch Irish
Interesting. The Wikipedia uses Scotch Irish. So does President Obama, who himself is part Scotch Irish. It is also the most common form on the Internet. The Economist prefers Scots-Irish but uses Ulster Scots even more. NPR, the main source for this post, used Scots-Irish. The Oxford dictionary says to use Scots, that Scotch is only for fossilized forms, like Scotch tape.
In Google Books, Scotch Irish was the most common form till 1930, Ulster Scots since 1970. Scots-Irish has always been in third place, but by 2008 was gaining on Scotch Irish for second place and might be there by now. Ulster Scots was way ahead of either in 2008.
Sir Walter Scott used Scotch, but in the late 1800s there was a push in England to move from Scotch to Scots: Scotch had become too tied up with English stereotypes about the people of Scotland as cheap (the meaning it has in Scotch tape).
I updated the post to say “Scots-Irish (Ulster Scots)”.
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The worst way racism has screwed our society is by the simplest means; jokes, song, tv, music (media basically). It’s the disturbing fact that the pale demons think nothing about slaving a people that’s they have no problem in demeaning a people as well… even if it’s through talk, conversation, thoughts that you eventually see on media and that become media.
I try to block out as much western media as I can now that I have the tools through the web to do so. I’d suggest everyone do it. It’s helped me so much!
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Thanks, Abagond. If I remember correctly, the Wikipedia article on the Scotch-Irish discusses the nomenclature issue a little but not what I would consider thoroughly or with much knowledgeable background (mostly just “Americans still use it so we’re going to”).
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Ignorance is bliss:
Jiggs – ‘Chain Hang’ Low rap song:
(https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SBN_ikibtg)
The lyrics are different but the racist tune is the same:
“N%#*er love a watermelon HA! HA! HA!”
“Do yo’ chain hang low…”
Can you image Jewish children and young adults singing and dancing to a song that has a tune that deals with the gas chambers of Nazi German?
Can you image young Japanese children and young adults singing and dancing to a song that has a tune that deals with the harsh living conditions of the internment camps of World War II America?
Are we, Blacks, progressing or regressing?
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@Cooper
Seems the artist ‘Jibbs’ was only 16 or younger when this song was released. There’s got to be a dozen more hip hop songs that use this tune somewhere at one time or another.
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Hey,
I’m the guy playing “Rose Tree” in the video you linked. Interesting to see my video used as a sample in a discussion of the history of “Turkey in the Straw”. I have another video on my channel in which I segue from “Rose Tree” to “Turkey in the Straw” in a medley. Check it out, you can sort of get a feel for the similarities between them:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx_Qs_rl754)
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Remember, black culture is not a monolithic entity. After all, whites aren’t questioning the evolution of their society just because “Honey Boo Boo” exploded in popularity.
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Don’t think it fair you use a pic of Mr Softee at the top of this post. As this company has and still uses a jingle written specifically for them (and can only be played by licensed franchises trucks) almost since their inception, over 60 years ago. The others are fair game, but Mr Softee, nah.
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That’s horrible
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