A catchy childhood song suddenly turns into a sour note

“Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care ... ”

The song popped into my head. I dug for more and found it quickly.

“Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care, my master’s gone away.”

I was walking from one room to another and bumped into the ditty. It forced me to a dead stop.

I had tripped into a childhood memory. Me in a classroom at one of those desks with the wooden top that lifts up over a belly below.

Everyone was singing that song. A catchy tune that embeds itself. It must have since, many years later, the words danced back into my life.

This time it was not the jaunty melody I sang as a kid. I realized I clearly was singing about slaves. We were kids ... having fun ... singing about slaves.

I don’t remember if it was a history lesson back then. But it is now.

I did some research and came up with a fresh look – and some controversy.

The song is about a slave and his master:

“When I was young I used to wait / On the master and hand him his plate; / And pass the bottle when he got dry, / And brush away the blue tail fly.

“When he would ride in the afternoon, / I’d follow him with my hickory broom, / The pony being rather shy, / When bitten by the blue-tail fly.”

The nasty fly bites the horse.

“The pony run, he jump and pitch, / And tumble master in the ditch; / He died, the jury wondered why, / The verdict was the blue tail fly.”

You can wonder if the slave held back a bit with the broom but it still ends the same … Jimmy cracked corn and he didn’t care the master died.

Cracking corn was slang for sitting around gossiping or it could mean cracking open a jug of the master’s corn whiskey and celebrating.

The song dates to the 1840s and some argue it was an abolitionist message, even suggesting the blue tail fly represented the Union blues fighting against slavery.

Others point out the song was written for blackface minstrel shows, made popular by Daniel Emmett, the same songwriter who wrote “Dixie,” which turned into an anthem for the Confederacy.

It was a well-known folk song in the 1940s and then a popular children’s song with a variety of versions.

I don’t think we had any tutoring about slavery when we filled our classroom with the memorable chorus. I doubt the word “master” was discussed. I probably focused more on the blue tail fly.

I do have a whispering memory of also singing about the Eerie Canal and stories about Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed.

My young mind loved those stories. I think they helped me feel a sense of pride in America.

I do not feel that same pride now ... after humming “Jimmy crack corn” again. I feel some shame.

But then we were just kids. Singing. About corn and blue tail flies biting horses.

And some guy named Jimmy ... whose master had died.

• Lonny Cain, retired managing editor of The Times in Ottawa, also was a reporter for The Herald-News in Joliet in the 1970s. His Paperwork email is lonnyjcain@gmail.com. Or mail The Times, 110 W. Jefferson St., Ottawa, IL 61350.