The ice cream crossover happened concurrently: 19th century ice cream parlors played the popular minstrel songs of the day. Browne meshed the theme of the popular coon cards with the familiar melody, and voilà: "Nigger Love a Watermelon Ha! Ha! Ha!" These items were essentially the racist version of trading cards and were nearly ubiquitous. (If this sounds similar to the Academy Award winning " Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah," it's because that song was derived from this chorus.)Īt the turn of the 20th century, one of the nation's most popular collectibles was the coon card - a postcard with racist artwork, such as bug-eyed, clown-face blacks eating watermelon. O zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day. There is simply no divorcing the song from the dozens of decades it was almost exclusively used for coming up with new ways to ridicule, and profit from, black people. The first and natural inclination, of course, is to assume that the ice cream truck song is simply paying homage to "Turkey in the Straw," but the melody reached the nation only after it was appropriated by traveling blackface minstrel shows. As often happens with matters of race, something that is rather vanilla in origin is co-opted and sprinkled with malice along the way.įor his creation, Browne simply used the well-known melody of the early 19th century song " Turkey in the Straw," which dates to the even older and traditional British song " The (Old) Rose Tree." The tune was brought to America's colonies by Scots-Irish immigrants who settled along the Appalachian Trail and added lyrics that mirrored their new lifestyle. I learned that though Browne was fairly creative in his lyrics, the song's premise and its melody are nearly as old as America itself. I wondered how such a prejudiced song could have become the anthem of ice cream and childhood summers.
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