The Blue Tail Fly also known as Jim crack corn follow conventions of life in the antebellum South. The musical notes, dated 1846, are from an American song which first became popular during the rise of blackface minstrelsy in the 1840s through performances by the Virginia Minstrels.
Most versions include some idiomatic African American English, although General American versions now predominate.
It was said that this song was a favorite of that very famous and great American Abraham Lincoln.
The basic narrative remains intact. On the surface, the song is a black slave’s lament over his white master’s death in a horse-riding accident. The song, however, is also interpreted freely.
When I was young, I used to wait On my olé master and hold his plate, Pass down the bottle when he got dry And brush away the blue tail fly Jimmy, crack corn, I don't care Jimmy, crack corn and I don't care Jimmy, crack corn and I don't care My master's gone away And when he'd ride in the afternoon I'd follow him, with a hickory broom The pony being rather shy When bitten by the blue tail fly … Ref. One day, he ride around the farm The flies so numerous, they did swarm One chanced to bite him on the thigh The devil take the blue tail fly … Ref. The pony run, he jumped, he flitched He threw my master in a ditch He died and the jury wondered why The verdict was the blue tail fly … Ref. They laid him under a 'simmon tree On his epitaph was there to reed "Beneath this stone, I'm forced to lie A victim of the blue tail fly" … Ref.