[WARNING: contains politically incorrect stereotypes. No hatred intended. Presented as musical history.]
a 1878 popular song
words and music by James A. Bland
A poignant ballad that was sung in the minstrel shows. James Bland was possibly the first African-American songwriter published. As a young man in 1875, long after slavery, he visited a plantation in Virginia. He was moved by the soft, peaceful atmosphere of cotton fields and cornfields. He translated his feelings into the plea of an aging person who longs to return to the scenes of his childhood. Bland loved the minstrels. His song fits the unrealistic minstrel show formula of the slave wanting to go back South. He gave his song to the minstrels who began to make it popular. Bland became a successful minstrel himself. In 1940 it became Virginia’s state song. These are the original lyrics that are now offensive to many.
The sheet music:
Accompaniment:
Lyrics
1. Carry me back to old Virginny
There’s where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow
There’s where the birds warble sweet in the springtime
There’s where the old darkey’s heart am longed to go
There’s where I labored so hard for old massa
Day after day in the field of yellow corn
No place on earth do I love more sincerely
Than old Virginny, the state where I was born
Chorus
Carry me back to old Virginny
There’s where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow
There’s where the birds warble sweet in the springtime
There’s where this old darkey’s heart am longed to go
2. Carry me back to old Virginny
There let me live ’til I wither and decay
Long by the old Dismal Swamp have I wandered
There’s where this old darkey’s life will pass away
Massa and missis have long gone before me
Soon we will meet on that bright and golden shore
There we’ll be happy and free from all sorrow
There’s where we’ll meet and we’ll never part no more
Sung here by Fred Feild: