I am visiting New Orleans on "spring break" (my wife is a teacher). Yesterday we took a bus tour of the city. Our driver/tour guide was a lifelong NO resident, about 60+ years old. As he drove by the French Market, which is now filled with tourist-oriented shops, he explained that in his youth it was mainly a fruit-and-vegetable market. He said when he was a kid he would go down there early in the morning, before school, and the merchants would pay him to help unload produce from trucks. Watermelons, for example, had to be counted as you unloaded them, and the workers would sing "counting songs."

I asked him: "Sing us a counting song." He said, "I can't" but he explained that any song or hymn that you already knew could be turned into a counting song—you just sing numbers instead of words.

So a counting song, in this context, is a kind of work song.

Anybody know anything more about this?