Where did "Cotton Eye Joe" come from, and who or what is he?

A paper presented by Holly Everett at the International Association for the Study of Popular Music conference in Montreal in 2003 analysed the history of 'Cotton Eye Joe' in detail, and this post is largely going off her excellent work here.

Everett argues that the song goes back at least to the mid-19th century. The song is certainly mentioned several times in literature before it gets the chance to be recorded. The first mention of the song might be in an 1882 novel by Louise Clarke Pyrnelle, which was inspired by her pre-Civil War plantation childhood in Alabama (she was born in 1850, and white). At one point in the novel she relays the lyrics that the slaves sing while one slave called 'Old Sambo' plays fiddle:

Cotton-eyed Joe, Cotton-eyed Joe

What did make you sarve me so

Fur ter take my gal erway fum me

An' cyar he plum ter Tennessee?

Ef it hadn't ben fur Cotton-eyed Joe

I'd er been married long ergo

HIs eyes wuz crossed, an' his nose wuz flat,

An' his teef wuz out, but wat uv dat?

Fur he wuz tall, an' he wuz slim

An so my gal she follered him

Ef it hadn't ben fur Cotton-eyed Joe

I'd er ben married long ergo.

Dorothy Scarborough, a white Texan, relays a similar version in her 1925 book On The Trail Of Negro Folk Songs. Scarborough's published version is an amalgam of different versions from Texas, Louisiana and one sent to her by someone with a pen name; one suspects it's not impossible that Pyrnelle's published version influenced her. Nonetheless, Scarborough said of the song that:

A less comely person of a different sex is celebrated or anathematized in another song [i.e., Cotton Eyed Joe], which seems to be fairly well known in the South, as parts of it have been sent in by various persons. According to the testimony of several people who remember events before the [Civil] war, this is an authentic slavery-time song. The air and some of the words were given to me by my sister, Mrs. George Scarborough, as learned from the Negroes on a plantation in Texas, and other parts by an old man in Louisiana, who sang it to the same tune. He said he had known it from his earliest childhood and had heard the slaves sing it on plantations. A version was also sent by a writer whose pen name is Virginia Stait.

According to Scarborough, Cotton-Eye Joe is a hoodoo man who travels with a travelling medicine show:

Dat gal, she sho' had all my love,

An' swore fum me she'd never move,

But Joe hoodooed her, don't you see,

An' she run off wid him to Tennessee.

I'd 'a' been married forty year ago

Ef it had n't a-been for Cotton-eyed Joe!

A 1922 book by an African-American chemistry professor named Thomas Talley, called Negro Folk Rhymes, tried to collect the lyrics of his Shelbyville, Tennessee childhood, and his version of 'Cotton Eyed Joe' is a little different to Pyrnelle's and Scarborough's, but identifiably the same song - notably, the Tennessean Talley doesn't mention the line about Cotton Eyed Joe moving to Tennessee:

Oh, it makes dem ladies love me so,

W'en I comes 'roun' pickin' ole Cotton Eyed Joe.

Yes, I'd a been married some forty years ago,

If I hadn' stay's home wid Cotton Eyed Joe.

The first extant recordings of the song were recorded very soon after record companies realised that rural folk music could make money (and after it became possible to record relatively quiet music using electrical recording). The Dykes Magic City Trio appear to have been the first to record it in 1927, while there were 5 other recordings of the song in the next couple of years - suggesting that at this point it was a very popular song amongst rural folk musicians.

Everett identifies there being three variant versions of the song. Remember, of course, that before the advent of recording, and before anybody had any interest whatsoever in commercially marketing folk tunes, that folk songs circulated when one person taught it or even just played it to another; often the folk musicians doing this were illiterate. As a result, folk tunes often have variant versions which have diverged from each other in important ways, and the places where those variant versions are found, and the degrees of variation can give some clues as to the ways that the songs have been altered to suit different situations and purposes, and perhaps the origins of the songs.

Everett argues that there are southeastern, southwestern and Acadian versions of Cotton Eyed Joe. The Southeastern versions of the song, such as that by the Dykes Magic City Trio, are the first to be recorded. However, the more famous versions are Southwestern versions, such as the 1940s version by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys; it's the Southwestern version that the version by the 1990s Swedish dance act Rednex derives from. Finally, there's a Canadian variant of the song, associated with Don Messner, which is usually an instrumental fiddle tune in the Acadian style; this version seems to have spread to northern American states like North Dakota.

Everett argues that the southeastern version is likely the original - it certainly feels less garbled than the southwestern version of Bob Wills, which is much more nonsensical - e.g., "I fell down and stubbed my toe, send for the doctor, Cotton-Eyed Joe".

Anyway, Rednex's 1995 version is very clearly a sort of kitschy parody of country dance music set to modern electronic beats; the group have stereotypically Southern American clothing and indeed indeed stereotypical names like 'Mary Jo' and 'Billy Ray'. In a funny way, Rednex's kitsch does get across what was one of the main purposes of the song in the 19th century and early 20th century would have been: it was likely a common minstrel song (though I can't find specific primary evidence of this). Nonetheless, it's very likely indeed that, if an African-American folk song was spread throughout the South of the USA widely enough to basically be a rural standard amongst white people, that it was spread by minstrel shows - minstrel shows were a dominant form of entertainment in America (and Australia for that matter) for almost a century.

Except that where Rednex is Swedish people making fun of the white American South based on what are probably offensive stereotypes, 'Cotton-Eyed Joe' as a minstrel song was the white American South making fun of the black American South based on what are definitely offensive stereotypes. Additionally, it may or may not be a coincidence that Pyrnelle's 'Old Sambo' also happens to be the name of a minstrelsy stereotype - I wouldn't be surprised if Pyrnelle knew the song through a more recent minstrel show rather than her childhood. There's perhaps some bitter irony there.

So, 'Cotton Eye Joe' probably came from the South-East of the USA. He possibly may have, more specifically, come from and gone to Tennessee. Or maybe Tennessee is just a good place to rhyme the line 'don't you see' with? He might have had untreated eye conditions like cataracts that made his eyes appear whiter than usual (white being the colour of cotton, and eye conditions that are now reversible being endemic in poor rural areas). Or maybe he just had the kind of pale eyes that the ladies get lost in. He may have been someone who sold potions in a travelling show, or - I know it's not much - but given the times and the probably African-American identity of the guy, it's also very possible he was a slave. The Bob Wills version mentions how 'Daddy worked a man called Cotton-Eyed Joe'. The Thomas Talley book relates myths that Cotton-Eyed Joe was a famous slave musician who had to bury his own son, but I don't see any corroborating evidence for that.

But all of this, of course, is if the origin of the song was based on a real life person - and of course, Everett's article points out that there's no one author of the tune here (whose intentions we have access to, anyway). By the time you get to Dorothy Scarborough or Bob Wills, if there was an original meaning to the song, it was long lost. Perhaps the original Cotton-Eyed Joe doesn't matter so much as the idea of Cotton-Eyed Joe.