Nice try Brad, but Alabama Jubilee is a minstrel song-- No Pat or Jeanne in these songs--and Lizzie would have to be "Liza".And there'd have be a Mr. Jackson, or maybe "Deacon Jones" and Mammy (actually, she's in the song already)--and Rufus and Sammy, maybe a visit from Rastus.

The lyrics Alabama Jubilee, more than being "not that great", are are an embarrassment to us now, as are many of the old popular songs. It is interesting to note that for more than a hundred years, and until fairly recently, blackface, "coon" songs, and darkie jokes were one of the fundamentals of American entertainment.

I've always thought that a major reason for the "folk revivals" that we periodically have, was a concerted effort by educated and intellectual people to redraft America's Musical past so that it wasn't inherently racist, sexist, and , perhaps "worst" of all, rife with "cheap, maudlin, sentimentality".

The truth is that the songs that we regard as being part of our American folk heritage were generally unknown outside of the areas where the were discovered by people like the Lomaxes, and Carl Sandberg.

I love "traditional" music, but I really love the old popular stuff too, even as I shudder at the references to darkies.

To put it into perspective, it turns out that the chords to "Puff the Magic Dragon" are also the chords to "Mammy". We can't get away from it.

Ted cntb@bellatlantic.net