Who wrote the song "Follow The Drinking Gourd"?

Question

can anyone tell me who wrote that song?? and could yew tell me the sight where yew found it...please & thank yew!!!

Answer 1

Nobody knows :

"According to legend, the song "Follow the Drinkin' Gourd" was used by a conductor of the Underground Railroad, called "Peg Leg Joe" to guide some fugitive slaves. However, the authenticity of the legend is disputed. It is based on the field notes of a single folklorist, H. B. Parks. He records overhearing the song on a few chance occasions. The related story of "Peg Leg Joe" was recounted in a conversation with an elderly man and his grandson in 1912. Since then, little confirming evidence has emerged. No record of the song appears in old hymn books, historical documents or family traditions. While the song may refer to some lost fragment of history, the origin and context remain a mystery."

"Follow the Drinkin' Gourd" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Follow_the_drinking_gourd

"If you accept folklorist H.H. Parks’ 1928 essay that introduced the song to Americans, “Follow the Drinking Gourd" has special significance to West Alabama. Parks wrote that the song’s coded lyrical path to freedom begins north of Mobile and follows the Tombigee River."

"From there, he said, it leads to the river’s headwaters, then “over the divide and down the Tennessee River to the Ohio." "

"Parks wrote that a member of his family who had been involved in the underground railroad movement remembered a one-legged sailor “known as Peg Leg Joe" who “would go through the country north of Mobile and teach this song to young slaves and show them a mark of his natural left foot and the round spot made by the peg-leg." "

"Then Joe would chart the route north on trees using charcoal or mud to make the sign of a left foot and a round peg."

"Again, it’s irresistible stuff. Except that the whole story is probably a romantic fabrication."

"That’s the judgment of a new breed of scholars who challenge the authenticity of both the song and Parks’ story. And their case is pretty convincing."

"For one thing, nobody has turned up documentary evidence of any Peg-Leg Joe. The idea of a Yankee songmeister stomping the rough Tombigbee bottomlands to teach slaves a subversive tune is fairly ludicrous anyway. "

"Too, Parks claimed he collected the song in North Carolina, Louisville and Texas. Any song with such a widespread propagation, the modern critics say, should have been on the lips of as many rural singers as “John Henry" or “Barbara Allen" and collected widely."

"Yet the only place it turns up is in Parks’ essay. There’s nothing like it in any other vintage folk-song collection or field recording. Nothing even close. "

"One other thing, the critics note: Slaves didn’t need a coded song to tell them to go north toward freedom. That was a fact of life."

"That’s the thing about these critics and scholars, always punching holes in our balloons."

"Underground Railroad Research Forum : Follow the Drinking Gourd" : http://www.afrigeneas.com/forum-ugrr/index.cgi?noframes;read=420

"Was Peg Leg Joe an actual person?"

"Perhaps. But even if there was a Drinking Gourd song "in the field", that doesn't prove that there really was a Peg Leg Joe. There are many songs based on real people, there are many songs based on composite characters, and there are many song based on fictional characters. For the record, I reviewed two decades' worth of minutes from the New England Anti-Slavery Society along with various Society ledger books. I found H.B. Parks's great-uncle Dr. Harris Cowdry (who served as a Vice President from 1840 to 1848.) But sadly, there's no trace of a peg-legged sailor. Nothing would delight me more than to find the old salt lurking in a slave narrative or other primary source document. Please send any Peg Leg Joe sightings my way – they would be very welcome indeed! "

"Perhaps Peg Leg Joe was an actual abolitionist, or a composite character, working in the South."

"Follow the Drinking Gourd: A Cultural History : "Is This Song 'Authentic' "?", Joel Bresler, http://www.followthedrinkinggourd.org/Afterword.htm

Answer 2

What Is A Drinking Gourd

Answer 3

Peg Leg Joe a one legged sailor made freinds with the slaves and taufgt them the song Follow The Drinking Gourd
So maybe he must have written this song as well

Answer 4

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LOL!!!! I know this one!!! I heard it on Doctor Demento. I dont remember who did it but it is called "Fast Food". It's a short novelty bit on the radio about a guy talking into a drive through speaker *ordering a double cheeseburger, onion rings and a large orange drink" but the static feedback is so horrible he keeps repeating it over and over until he finally screams it at the top of his lungs, give off a scream that would make Howard Dean proud, and roars off *all the while there's this goofy music in the background.

Answer 5

www.followthedrinkinggourd.org -- a whole site devoted to the song and its history.

There is no simple answer to your question. The song was first published in 1928 and the arrangement almost universally performed today was first published by Lee Hays in 1947.