I've sung this song for years, and I like it. I wish it had its roots in something other than minstrel music (I suspect, naively, that it did) When I was in High School I used to pick corn on a a farm owned by an old Italian family. We'd go out at four in the morning before the heat ans start to picking corn. The old man always called it "cracking corn" as a ripe ear made a distinctive "crack" when picked off the stalk. Because of this I always assumed (I could be, and probably am, completely wrong) that Jimmy was stealing corn and nobody cared as the manslaughtered master was not around anymore. I hate to think I'll have to reinvent another myth to perpetuate