S.O.D. "Cotton-Eyed Joe" by Rednex

7/17/2016     This is a majorly updated version of the pre-1861 folk song.  The main instrument in the song is a fiddle and we will never be able to count the number of fiddle players who have attempted it.  There are 24 known recorded versions with the earliest in 1928 by Gid Tanner's Skillet Lickers Columbia and another version the same year by Carter Brothers Vocalion.  

     This version by the Sweedish group Rednex is a special SOD request by a 6 foot, 14-year-old boy and was released in 1994, taking the #1 position in six countries, many for several weeks.  The chieftains with Ricky Skaggs on vocals, got a Grammy nomination for Best Country Vocal Collaboration for their 1992 version. On the Roud index of folk songs which is a database containing close to 25,000 songs, it is listed at #942.  Steve Roud, a former librarian in Croydon, London, compiled this list.  

     The tune predates the Civil War and this is proven in the book "On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs" written by American folklorist Dorothy Scarborough.  Many people from that era remember hearing the song sung by slaves on plantations throughout the south.  The lyrics have changed quite a few times as well.  About the time that Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was being published, the song went by the name of "An Old Familiar Air."