Going Back To Dixie proven to be a postwar tune?

[Nathan Dodds]

I have a recording that was made in 1962 that I have learned a lot of older fiddle tunes from, such as Natchez Under the Hill, Long Eared Mule, Pickett's Retreat, and The World Turned Upside Down. Absie Morrison (1876-1964) plays the fiddle on this recording... only two years before he passed away. Anyway, several of the tunes he plays are ones that he learned from his wife's father, who was in the Civil War. Among these is Going Back to Dixie... he says his father in law told him that after Appomattox Confederate marching bands played this tune before all the men left the final time for home. Only one problem... this tune was supposedly not around until 1874. My question is this: was it really not around, or was 1874 simply the first time it was published? I cannot tell you the number of times that people have taken folk tunes and claimed to have written them... however, I suspect that through the years Absie's memories may have become blurred. Thoughts? anybody have better documentation? I cannot find anything real solid...

[Silas]

Gwine Back to Dixie and I'se Gwine to Leave Old Dixie



All the information I've ever seen on this song, I'se Gwine Back to Dixie, is that it was published by Charles A. White nine years after the war. If a song this popular was from 1865-ish, one would think it would have been published earlier than one decade after the war. Here's the same song in an 1882 collection of minstrel and plantation tunes published by the Oliver Ditson Company still attributed to C.A. White : http://books.google.com/books?id=is8...=gwine&f=false

Oliver Ditson Company was a big time publisher. I'm having trouble seeing this company including a song unless it had clear permission to use it from the rightful owner which was White, Smith and Co. of Boston.

Here's one link to the song : http://library.brown.edu/find/Record/dc109267806246875 It can also be found on the Lester Levy site. Looks like a rather popular song in its day. I can see the appeal of this sappy song to a certain audience about a slave who lamented leaving the plantation and returned to Dixie in his old age. However, C.A. White also wrote the companion song, I'se Gwine to Leave Old Dixie, where this same former slave later wondered why he ever returned : http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/le...5.057;type=pdf