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In 1830, when Abraham was 21 years old, the Lincolns moved to Macon County, Illinois. A year later, as the family was relocating to Coles County, Abraham would go his own way to New Salem. Between Macon County, New Salem, and Springfield, Abraham would spend 31 years of his life in Illinois. He was a shopkeeper, surveyor, and postmaster. He taught himself law and traveled the 12,000 square mile Eighth Judicial Circuit on horseback. He met and married Mary Todd, raising four sons together. He honed his political skills in the state legislature, served a single term in Congress, and skillfully defended his position against the expansion of slavery in a series of debates with one of the most prominent politicians of the time, Senator Stephen Douglas.

Coinciding with Lincoln's rise to national prominence between the 1830s and 1850s was the rise of blackface minstrelsy. Minstrel troupes laid the foundation for the formal entertainment industry in the United States, touring all over the country and eventually the world. Minstrel shows were music, dance, and comedy shows performed primarily by white people who had their faces blackened with burnt cork. While reducing black people to unintelligent, comical, and frivolous caricatures, minstrel shows enabled white performers and audiences, in a society based on institutionalized racial segregation and cruelty, to indulge their fascination with a culture to which they may have had little or no exposure.

Abraham Lincoln, the man who was to emancipate three and a half million slaves, was no exception in his love for minstrel shows and songs. He would pass up a chance at almost any other type of entertainment to attend a minstrel performance. Old Dan Tucker is one of the songs written for the minstrel stage to which Lincoln showed a preference. It was written by one of the first and greatest of America's blackface minstrels, Daniel Decatur Emmett. The song is presented here with traditional minstrel show instrumentation that includes banjo, fiddle, bones (carved from cow rib bones), and tambourine.

lyrics

chorus:
So get out the way!
Get out the way!
Get out the way Old Dan Tucker
You're too late to come to supper

verses:
I came to town the other night
I heard the noise and saw the fight
The watchman was a-runnin' round
Cryin' Old Dan Tucker's come to town

Tucker is a nice old man
He used to ride our darby ram
He sent him whizzin' down the hill
If he hadn't got up he'd lay there still

Here's my razor in good order
Magnum bonum - I just bought her
Sheep shell oats, Tucker shell corn
I'll shave you soon as the water gets warm

Old Dan Tucker and I got drunk
He fell in the fire and kicked up a chunk
The charcoal got inside his shoe
Lord bless you honey how the ashes flew
Down the road foremost the stump
Master made me work the pump
I pumped so hard I broke the sucker
There was work for Old Dan Tucker

I went to town to buy some goods
I lost myself in a piece of woods
The night was dark I had to suffer
It froze the heel of Daniel Tucker

Tucker was a hardened sinner
He never said his grace at dinner
The old sow squealed, the pigs did squall
He hole hog with the tail and all

credits

from Ballad of America Volume 3: Songs in the Life of Abraham Lincoln, released February 12, 2009

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Matthew Sabatella and the Rambling String Band Florida

With vocals, guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and bass fiddle, Matthew Sabatella and the Rambling String Band bring to life music that is woven into the fabric of the United States: traditional folk songs, fiddle tunes, old-time country, bluegrass, Appalachian music, ragtime, blues, spirituals, railroad and cowboy songs, work songs, sea shanties, reels, breakdowns, ballads, and more. ... more

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