The earliest known text (1842 - with the "Mr. Bugger" refrain) was printed anonymously. Fuld had no access to this version, which has only recently been digitized. Though the newspaper it appeared in was published in St. Augustine, Fla., it may have been printed earlier in a big-city paper, not every page of which has survived.

As the openings lines show, it was clearly from a stage performance:

I have sung about the long-tail blue,
So often you want something new,
With your desire I'll now comply,
My song is about a blue tail fly.

The minstrel song "My Long-Tail Blue" was printed in the Louisiana Register (Apr. 11, 1834). The N.Y. Evening Post (Dec. 15, 1834) noted it was sung by "Mr. [Thomas D.] Rice," the noted blackface performer who had created the character "Jim Crow" in 1829-30, to judge from newspaper notices.

It would be tempting to cite Rice as the composer of the 1842 "BTF," but others may have "borrowed" and sung "My Long-Tail Blue" in the years between 1834 and 1842.


The 1846 BTF sheet music is titled "The Virginia Minstrels, No. 5, 'Jim Crack Corn,' or The Blue-Tail Fly, Composed for the Piano Forte."
No composer is specified, the piece being copyrighted in the name of F. D. Benteen, the Baltimore publisher. The song was advertised as "new" in the "Times and Compiler" (Richmond) on Dec. 3, 1846, though
The title "Jim crack corn" is mentioned in passing in the Yale Literary Magazine for July, 1846. The tune is a variant of that popularized by Burl Ives:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKZDeJ7cajI



Daniel D. Emmett (composer of "Dixie" and "Old Dan Tucker") was the founder and principal player of the Virginia Minstrels, organized in 1843. In 1842 he was already a blackface circus performer. He may have been behind the earlier version of BTF, or he may later have adapted an earlier version of the song.


A lesser known 1846 version was published, copyrighted by C. H. Keith, in Boston by Oliver Ditson, under the title "De Blue-Tail Fly," beginning,

"O when you come in summer time
To South Carlinar's sultry clime...."

Instead of "Jim crack corn," it has the odd refrain, "An' scratch 'im wid a brier too." It goes, moreover, to an unusual modal tune and is not attributed to the Virginia Minstrels. Listen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OriDf7Y4e7Q