Talk:Dan Emmett

Untitled
If anyone is wondering, the large body of material not really about Dan Emmett that was here has ended up at Minstrel. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:51, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

location of Virginia Minstrels premiere
The Virginia Minstrels didn't perform in Boston until after performances in New York City. I've provided some citations referring to the New York origins. Declair (talk) 17:59, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Song titles
Song titles are in quotes, per Manual of Style (titles). Please read that document before reverting. — BrianSmithson 12:30, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Authorship of "Dixie"
Hello, Brian Smithson. Joseph Byrd here. I appreciate the contributions you've made to the Encyclopedia, and your breadth of interest, but I'm confused as to why you removed my edits to the Dan Emmett page. Everything I said is well-documented, and I'm told by another editor that I've violated no copyright in my citation from a Dan Emmett outside link. I wrote defending Emmett's authorship of Dixie, and added a bit that refutes a common misinterpretation of his feelings about the song. I could easily quote you the details (which I felt were too scholarly to bother with in a popular setting). There is no doubt about the correctness, yet you essentially eviscerated everything I wrote. Would you care to explain why?

Thanks,

Josephbyrd 04:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

P.S. In Nathan's exhaustive book, he says, "Ëmmett was devoid of any business instinct.  Instead of publishing and immediately copyrighting "Dixie,' which was on everyone's lips, he waited more than a year before giving it to Firth, Pond & Co. They deposited it with the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York on June 21, 1860. Other publishers, considering the tune public property, were hard at their heels. For example, on June 26, Joh Church Jr., in Cincinnat, 'filed a piano arrangement...but acknowledged in a later edition, no doubt under pressure, the permission of the original publishers'."

There is also citation of a convention of music dealers that year, in which it was acknowledged that Emmett was the author.

The matter of Emmett's feelings about the legacy of his song is more complex. There is, I agree a story of Emmett's having said, "If I had known to what use they were going to put my song, I will be damned if I'd have written it." But that story is countered by the interview he later gave to the editor of The Confederate Veteran in 1895. And the context of the premiere performance, in the Bowery district, the heart of Democratic opposition to the coming war, together with the lyrics I quoted (likewise from Nathan), make it clear that he was sympathetic to the view that blacks were better off in the South.

As to Emmett's memory lapses and inconsistency, if that were the criterion, composers (including myself) would be in deep trouble. I'm currently being questioned by people regarding what I wrote or said 40 years ago, and my memories are as flawed as Emmett's. The alleged comment in the previous paragraph is at best third hand, being quoted from a letter from Col. T. Allston Brown, who was not even present at the conversation. It is thus third-hand hearsay. In any case, it is not justification for wholesale removal of an edit.

Josephbyrd 05:14, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comments, Joseph. The reason I removed and retooled your edits are twofold. First, you presented the case for Emmett's authorship of "Dixie" as the truth without mentioning how controversial the assertion was in Emmett's day and remains today. Second, who authored the song is a subject probably better left to the article on the song itself, (Dixie (song)), which does go into quite some detail about the song's composition and copyright. I felt it best to replace the detailed information with a summary that was more neutral (in keeping with WP:NPOV) and did not outright claim Emmett as the author. I own Nathan's book, by the way, and it's quite good, but there is more to be said on the subject than what Nathan wrote, especially in Sacks and Sacks's Way Up North in Dixie and Abel's Singing the New Nation. — BrianSmithson 06:47, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Brian, I'm relieved that your edits are based on scholarship. Regarding the "controversy" around "Dixie's" authorship, I was referring to Nathan (1962), pp. 266-269, which seems to put to rest any legitimate alternative claims. The only exception to the general agreement during the first decade is J.C. Viereck's edition of the song (New Orleans: P.P. Werlein, 1860), which was resolved in Firth, Pond & Co.'s favor, although during the Confederacy the copyright agreement was ignored by Southern publishers.

You mention Sacks and Sacks, and Abel. Not having the books, my question is, do they deal with contemporary "controversy", or are they claims made long afterward? In any case, should they be included in the books cited?

Finally, the most convincing evidence to me (as a music scholar and composer) is Nathan's punctilious citation of stylistic qualities that link the tune, at least, to previous ones by Emmett, as well as tracing the verse to Henry Bishop's "The Dashing White Sergeant" (parodied in the U.S. as "If I had a mule what wouldn't go..."), also used in the early minstrel song "Gumbo Chaff", as well as the "Scotch snap" of the chorus,p. 261. If your erudition extends to melodic/rhythmic analysis, I would urge you to take another look at Chapter 16, and reconsider your statement that there is a legitimate controversy.

There is nothing wrong with musical amateurs contributing (indeed, independent scholars' passion is one of Wikipedia's strengths), but unless there is a reasonable answer to Nathan's detailed analysis, I think it unfortunate that such opinions override it, as it fuels claims that the encyclopedia is a hotbed of un-supported convictions. Many college teachers (certainly not myself) refuse to accept Wikipedia citations from students for this reason.

Lastly, while I support the right of anyone to submit verses backing contrary opinions, I think the removal of the lyrics I supplied (Nathan p. 358) is arbitrary. Refute them if you like (this should not be too difficult, as Emmett seemed to constantly insert new verses), but don't excise them, because they are evidence to the fact that the song played to working-class xenophobia and racism in the Bowery, which was soon after to be the center of Copperheadism and the Three Corners (anti-war) riots. My point is that "Dixie" was not written in a vacuum, but reflected the era and mood of its audience. If you don't like the analysis, supply your own, but don't simply wipe mine away with a stroke of The Administrator's cursor. This is another charge increasingly leveled: Administrators feel they "own" the site, and less frequent/dedicated contributors are unwelcome.

Josephbyrd 15:38, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Hello again, Joseph. Nathan does a decent job of describing the controversy as it was in the 1960s (when Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy was written), but he ignores the claims put forth by William Shakespeare Hays and the Snowden Family Band. Their cases are explored in great detail in Abel's and Sacks and Sacks's works respectively. I unfortunately don't own either of those books, so I can't quote anything specific, but they at least show that the solid case for Emmett isn't completely solid. These books should probably be added to the list of references, yes. I believe that large sections of both are available through Google Books.


 * As for removing the lyrics, I can assure you it has nothing to do with feelings of "ownership" over the article (and the fact that I'm an administrator has nothing to do with it). I did this because I felt they were inappropriate for a biography article and more appropriate to the article Dixie (song) (which already discusses the atmosphere in which the song was written and quotes from the lyrics). Would you mind taking a look at that article and deciding if you think some of your material should be inserted there instead? (Incidentally, this article on Emmett is sorely lacking and could use with some major expansion . . . ) — BrianSmithson 00:03, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

External links modified
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Orphaned references in Dan Emmett
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Dan Emmett's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "grave": From John Baptist Snowden:  From William Shakespeare Hays:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 19:40, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

In the Army, 1836-1835
Umm, what? Is either of these dates well documented? Jim.henderson (talk) 18:37, 9 September 2021 (UTC)