Forgive me for losing my cool earlier. I'm just going to post the lyrics to the song so that everyone has a reference.

In my view you cannot say the word Dixie, let alone make a melodic/lyrical reference to it without intentionally calling up conceptions of "The Old South", and "Southerness". I will be happy to elaborate on those concepts if need be. Additionally, the narrative of the song is highly suggestive of Civil War balladry in which a dying soldier is given space to utter his last words, and relates his love of home and family to a commrade (Think: Just as the Sun Went Down, Brother Greene etc.) These sentimentalist tropes were used extensively during the war and are an outgrowth of 19th century conceptions of the proper stages of death, dying, and grieving.

Just for the record. I've never used the word racism once in all of these threads because i'm not interested in moral valuations right now. While I'm glad of the spirited debate that has occured as a result of my original post, and find it to be very very interesting and indicative of some important truths about where we as a nation stand on our conceptions about the war, I perasonally have been mostly interested in comparing narrative structures of songs and trying to suggest some historical concepts about the developement of Country music.

Here's the song currently in question.


I sang Dixie as he died
The people just walked on by as I cried
The bottle had robbed him of all his rebel pride
So I sang Dixie as he died

He said way down yonder in the land of cotton
Old times there ain't near as rotten as they are
On this damned old L.A. street
Then he drew a dying breath
And laid his head against my chest
Please Lord take his soul back home to Dixie

Chorus

He said listen to me son while you still can
Run back home to that Southern land
Don't you see what life here has done to me?
Then he closed those old blue eyes
And fell limp against my side
No more pain, now he's safe back home in Dixie

Chorus:

I sang Dixie as he died
The people just walked on by as I cried
The bottle had robbed him of all his rebel pride
So I sang Dixie as he died