Talk:Camptown Races

Original
The University of Pittsburgh has an extensive on-line archive of Stephen Foster related materials, as he was a native of Pittsburgh.

Copyvio?
content removed, as it was based on a mistake.

Rising Sun Newsletter
There's an interesting explanation given for this song, in the Rising Sun Newsletter, which appeared in the bottom-outside-corner of the recto pages in The Next Whole Earth Catalog (1981) on p.133 & 135. I'm not sure how to work it in, or whether it's too large to quote in full(?), so I'll leave it here for now. --Quiddity 22:48, 6 July 2007 (UTC) July 28, 1964 Aside from the songs Amanda makes up, she explains them a lot. Take Camptown Ladies which goes, "Camptown ladies sing this song, doo dah, doo dah, Camptown races five miles long, o doo dah day. Gwana run all night, gwana run all day, bet my money on a bob tail nag, somebody bet on the bay." Amanda played the tune over and over on the piano and told us that the Camptown Ladies were radical abolitionists and all around right thinkers and wierdos and they thought their husbands were not nice people for making money off of slavery and gambling. The ladies encouraged the men to go to the track all they wanted because then the ladies had free, unobserved time to help slaves escape and collect anti-slavery petitions to send to congress and whenever their husbands would ask what they did all day they would say, "O honey, I swept the rug and burped the babes and gossiped with the girls," or to put it another way, (and she'd be at the right point in her piano playing) "Doodah, doodah, " and whenever their husbands would wonder how so many slaves were being able to escape, they'd just say they were simple homebodies and didn't understand such matters, "O doo dah day," and then she asked us all what we'd say if we were trying to change things and somebody asked us what we were doing, and we all sang "Doo dah, doo dah" and if somebody asked us why things aren't as nice and quiet as they used to be, we don't show them our noisemaker, we just say, "O doo dah day." And then we sang the whole thing through again, and it sounded different and we did the other verses, that Amanda had printed up with her throwing in commentary. "Old muley cow come onto the track, doo dah, doo dah, the bob tail fly her over her back, o etc." was a distracting plot by the Camptown ladies to cover a slave escape. Promises tomorrow to tell us how "I've Been Working on the Railroad" is a song of women plotting for freedom as their men work for multinational corporations"
 * I, for one, would like more information ^^like this^^ on what this song MEANS. It's very cryptic and I imagine more contextual information like this would be useful. I came here looking for this, and came away empty-handed. -  Agent S even  06:03, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

The ladies
I always thought that the "camptown" of the song was an actual (or imaginary) town not a generic term, and the camptown ladies were the unmarried gals of that town.

I guess that I was wrong. According to the entry, a camptown was a location of temporary housing for men, often working in railroad construction. If this is the case, what would women be doing there. Some might be employed for cooking, cleaning or sewing. However, such a group of young and early middle aged men, who would not have wives or other regular female accompanyment, would attract prostitutes. These must have been the women singing doodah, perhaps to attract customers. 173.18.14.168 (talk) 08:51, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

No mention of "Blazing Saddles"?
I find that odd. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.60.81.80 (talk) 04:09, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that the first verse is right...
I knew that "camptown ladies sing this song" and "camptown races five miles long" parts were right, but I could've sworn that the next part was this: ''Horses travel 'round the bend! Doo-dah, doo-dah! Guess this race just never ends, oh, doo-dah day!''

Maybe I was wrong... RyuKetsueki123 (talk) 21:58, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * This University of Toronto page is apparently what the article is using. If you can find a reliable source that lists a variant (which is possible), then add it in. -- Quiddity (talk) 23:50, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Ten Foot Pole
Is this song the origin of the phrase in American English "I wouldn't touch ____ with a ten foot pole" George 69.119.207.171 (talk) 02:49, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Possibly. In this link a longer version has the verse

--Auric (talk) 12:59, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

- Answer -

NO!

The desire mentioned in the song "Can’t touch bottom wid a ten foot pole" is much different from not wanting to touch something with a ten foot pole (an expression of aversion). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.20.246.33 (talk) 20:46, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

You seem to be quite sure of this when adages, sayings, and aphorisms often have their meaning shift as its usage slowly mutates over time. Such as "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" ("Who Guards the Guards Themselves") which not only slightly shifted in verbiage to "Who Watches the Watchmen", but also in meaning. While today it is considered a remark on the trouble in keeping those in charge of upholding the law and punishing ethical transgressors from being corrupted by that power and becoming transgressors themselves, originally it was a response to a man who was thinking of hiring a guard to keep his wife from seducing other men while he was away work, with the response suggesting "who would keep his wife from seducing the guard?"

I've done a very brief search, and while I've found nothing to suggest this is what the phrase refers to, I've also not found any earlier usage that might be a potential origin of the phrase. 24.17.45.24 (talk) 22:17, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Original Research
I am adding the OR tag until someone can either show why this only needs the one reference tag, or adds more sources. There seem to be a lot of facts in this article, and I don't see many being held up (at least in the article itself).

I have also tagged each fact that should have a reference, if the reference cannot be established, then it is not encyclopedic, and should be removed. IMDB should have a lot of these facts for reference.

☠ Travis "TeamColtra" McCrea  ☠ - (T)(C) 06:48, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Many of the items you marked for original research seem to refer to their source material (i.e. an appearance of the song in a named movie at a stated place). This seems to fall under the guideline that we "know sources for that sentence exist". Additionally, they provide cultural context for this song, so unless they are challenged, I would vote to keep them. Benf1977 (talk) 20:45, 8 September 2010 (UTC)


 * How does this constitute "original research"? I'm not denying that there need to be more references listed, but the tag seems inappropriate. Mkubica (talk) 04:04, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

The actual Camptown Race
Growing up near Camptown PA, I find it unusual there is no mention of the actual race, on which the song was originally based (at least according to local legend). At the time the song was written there was an actual Camptown horse race, that went from Camptown to nearby Wyalusing, which is almost exactly 5 miles (measured from what most would call the town centers) following a creek bed that is usually either dry or little more than a mud hole the week after Labor day, when the race is held. The race is still held to this day, as a 10k foot race, but follows a different track. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cgw705 (talk • contribs) 15:22, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Lincoln Parody
Mentioned in the article... Anyone know a source? --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 05:25, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Possible Context:
While many focus on the word 'Race' and 'Track' in this song, it is my firm belief that this song does not talk of an actual race or an actual track. Informed by the knowledge that there were once many mills and lumbering operations along the Susquehanna River in the area around Camptown, Pennsylvania, and northward to Owego (and not inconsequentially, Campville, New York). And with the knowledge that the Susquehanna River was once a path followed by many escaped slaves to the north on their way to perhaps Canada. To me it makes sense that this song is about how the 'Camptown Ladies' (not necessarily ladies at all) would advertise that workers were needed at the 'Camptown Races' (meaning the Camptown area Mill races). The advertising by the criers (or Camptown Ladies named in the song) told them that the Camptown Race track was five miles long (and indeed, it is about five miles from Camptown PA to Wyalusing PA along the Wyalusing Creek). The narrator on arrival, is able to choose between the 'old bob tail nag' and the 'bay' (or perhaps he is left with the bob tail nag because someone ahead of him got the bay).

The narrator tells us that the prime horses in 'the race' to the mill are the long tail filly and the big black hoss, but in the last verse he tells us that with his bob-tail nag, he was still able to 'win' money which he kept in his 'tow bag'. To me these are some of the biggest clues aside from the five mile track and 'ten mile heat', that this is a job towing (perhaps lumber), and not really a race. The rest of the song is just bluster about how great his horse is with this 'race', and attempts to trivialize the huge amount of work that these men do to earn their pocket full of tin. Perhaps there were also side bets made about how much lumber the old bob-tail nag could haul versus other horses, the muley-cow (perhaps a mule or a cow or both). I think side bets may have been a way for these workers to keep a mundane job interesting, and for an employer to keep lumber running to the mills in a quick and efficient fashion.

Language:

In my interpretation, "Doo-Dah" is simply the work foreman telling the worker to do this or to do that. So when the 'doo-dah' is used within the line "Oh! doo-dah day!", it means that the work is nothing but doing this or that all day long. So in other words, to the escaped slave it is not much different from being a slave. But in the first verse the "Oh! doo-dah day!" is followed by the lines "I come down dah wid my hat caved in—Doo-dah! doo-dah!, I go back home wid a pocket full of tin—Oh! doo-dah day!" So the narrator is advertising that even though you may work like a slave, if you truly need spending coin, then this hard work will pay. This is reinforced by the lines in the chorus that tell us, "Gwine to run all night! Gwine to run all day!" meaning that these 'races' (and their associated mills) run all night and day, so a person could work around the clock.

Inescapable conclusions:

In my view of this song, it becomes obvious that Stephen Foster may have simply committed to paper a negro work song that had already existed in parts for a number of years prior to his compiling it and publishing it. I'm sure this conjecture might upset some Stephen Foster fans, and it is probably why this interpretation has not made it to the Wiki itself. But I think an honest understanding of the historical context and time frame can lead to few other conclusions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.20.246.33 (talk) 20:39, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

German influence in "Camptown Races".
Given that Stephen Foster was a youth 14,15 years old when he was going to school in heavily rural German-populated Pennsylvania, and (a) given the literature about what kinds of mischief youths of that age in the mid-1870's could get into (e.g., Twain's "Tom Sawyer" and his "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"), and (b) given Foster's fondness for mimicking the dialects he had heard, I've come to believe that the "doo dah" expression Foster wrote into "The Camptown Races" was a German expression that he must have heard quite often when he, alone or with some summer-time friends, would sneak into a German famer's watermelon patch to swipe a big, fat, juicy watermelon to slice up and eat under the shade of a tree, a tree possibly by a nice cool river or a small Pennsylvania lake somewhere. On the German farmer discovering that he had some watermelon-marauding teenagers in his carefully tended watermelon patch, he would naturally have shouted an expression at the boys, a German expression that Foster heard (and remembered) as something he later recalled as sounding like "doo dah! doo dah!". But I believe what that farmer would have naturally shouted -- again, in German -- was the warning phrase often shouted to young people like the marauding Foster and his friends, "'Du da! Du da!"("Hey! You there!  You there!"). The etymology of that German phrase is simple: "du" ("you" in English) is used when familiarly speaking to friends or [shouting at] children, and "da", which means "there" in English. And in German the two words in the phrase are pronounced literally as "Doo [du] dah [da]! Doo [du] dah [da]!" So, in Foster's "Camptown Races" his "doo dah" isn't at all gibberish; it is fitting, euphonious German that has led to his song becoming one of America's all-time favorites. K. Kellogg-Smith (talk) 02:58, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

A notable cover of the song
I heard that Pete Seeger covered the song in the 60s. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Florence Hansen (talk • contribs) 16:26, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Is the music cover photo related?
I don't see "Camptown Races" among the 16 songs listed on the cover. Misty MH (talk) 02:44, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Ebonics?
Is there no comment on the dialect of the lyrics which recall 19th century African-American vernacular which has particular social connotations that may be suspect in the contemporary culture of poltical correctness. 98.244.137.86 (talk) 19:29, 12 August 2023 (UTC)kolef98.244.137.86 (talk) 19:29, 12 August 2023 (UTC)