JIM CROW! THE CELEBRATED N***** SONG, Sung by Mr Rice with unbounded shouts of applause at the Royal Surrey Theatre [with] Jim Crow’s Trip to Greenwich

Rare, apparently unrecorded, English song-sheet edition of two of Thomas Rice’s black-face minstrel song as performed in the USA and exported to England by the ‘father of American minstrelsy’.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION An unrecorded ‘Second edition’ of this racist London imprint priced at ‘1/6’ with a lithographed caricature of Rice depicted as a dancing African-American man on the cover; lithograph signed ‘Pell’(?). The sheet measures 24x34cm, ‘Sold by’ stamp trimmed by hand at base, and hand trimming to foreedge; old stab sewing in the gutter. The imprint comprises 3 leaves: lithographed cover; blank; 2 pages of engraved music which have been sewn back to front, beginning with the Second verse instead of the piano introduction; a single page offering verses 3-10 followed by ‘Jim Crow’s trip to Greenwich’. Imprint and date taken from records for the the first edition which OCLC locates at Library Co Philadelphia and Historic Houses New South Wales - we can find no trace of this second edition.

CULTURAL HISTORY Based on the racist imitation of black people ‘Jump Jim Crow’ or just ‘Jim Crow’ was a song and dance from 1828 that was often performed in blackface by the white minstrel performer Thomas Dartmouth Rice (1808-1860). The song became a 19th-century hit and Rice performed it all over the United States and in London prompting song sheet editions on both sides of the Atlantic, all now rare. Rice introduced his character in England in 1836 and achieved similar levels of success in London, marrying an English woman a year later.