Dixie's Land
| Composer | Emmett, Dan D. |
| Lyricist | Emmett, Dan D. |
| Year Published | 1860 |
| Type | Patriotic |
| Playing Time | 4:20 (medley with Battle Hymn and Battle Cry) |
| Comments | In 1859, on a cold, rainy September morning in New York City, Daniel Decatur Emmett sat in his room trying to compose a new "walkaround" or "hooray" song with which to end his minstrel show. Gazing out his window at the bleak, gray city, he muttered, "I wish I was in Dixie."
Atlas Editions D3 602 17-16 |
| The name "Dixie" became a universal nickname for the South long
before the war. "Unlike many Southern banks, the prospering Creole financial houses
of New Orleans dealt at par; their notes were traded at face value, and no deductions were
made or asked in the brisk trade which came downriver into the gay Louisiana city. The
most popular of these bank notes was a ten-dollar bill. Its French heritage was clear in
the cheery legend on each corner: "Dix." To unlettered tradesmen, stevedores and
boatman, these bills were only "Dixies," and as their soundness became known in
the great river basin, the lower South became "Dixieland" . . . |
|
| "It is marvelous with what wild-fire rapidity this tune of
"Dixie" has spread over the whole South", an Alabama recruit stated in May
1861. Considered as an intolerable nuisance when first the streets re-echoed it from the
repertoire of wandering minstrels, it now bids fair to become the musical symbol of a new
nationality, and we shall be fortunate if it does not impose its very name on our country. Soldiers Blue and Gray, 86 |
|
| It is interesting to know how "Dixie" became the Southern war
song. A spectacular performance was being given in New Orleans late in the fall of 1860.
Each part had been filled; all that was lacking was a national march and song for the
grand chorus, a part the leader had omitted until the very last moment. Dixie was
suggested and tried and all were so enthusiastic over it that it was at once adopted.
Immediately it was taken up by the populace, and sung in the streets, in the homes and
concert halls daily. It was taken to the battlefield and there established as the
Confederate war song. "Dixies' Land" was an escape for the minstrels, a place to
escape the cold wintry days of the North. Notes from Bill Warren, SNGSTR14.SAM |
|
| Was played at both Jefferson Davis's inauguration as well as Abraham
Lincoln's Songs of the Civil War |
|
| Dan Bryant of Bryant's Minstrels, called upon Daniel Decatur Emmett to
compose a lively new walkaround song to be played in New York streets as a lure for his
1859 show. Dixie's Land was the result and was an overnight sensation. Years later, when
the Confederacy had adopted the song, Emmett said he rued the day it was written, since it
had become a hallmark of treason. Civil War: Strange & Fascinating Facts, The, 184 |