A popular song from 1919
Words and music by Jack Strouse
The sheet music:
Accompaniment by James Pitt-Payne:
Lyrics
- Ragtime Joe with his old banjo
Wanted to compose
Sent for Sloan and his saxophone
Said “Listen to me, Mose
We’ll write a song about the South
And before we’re through
We’ll steal those Southern melodies
Like all the composers do”
And it wasn’t very long
Before they had a Southern song.
Chorus
They took a little bit of Old Black Joe
To start off their refrain,
Kept strummin’, kept strummin’,
That old familiar strain
And they took a little bit of Swanee River
And looked around until they found
Massa’s in the cold, cold ground,
And then they took four bars
Of My Old Kentucky Home,
Those Southern tunes
They tried hard to confuse, they couldn’t lose,
Away down South in the land of cotton
There was nothing they’d forgotten
When it was done and rolled into one
They called it the Dixie Blues
- Ragtime Joe said now listen, Moe
Let’s sail o’er the sea.
We’ll look ’round and we may jot down
A foreign melody”
They went to Belgium, England, France
Searched to beat the band.
They couldn’t find tunes that compared
With those down in Dixieland.
Then they said “I guess we’ll stop
There’s nothing here for us to cop”
Sung here by Laurence Rubenstein: