Matches in DBpedia 2014 for { ?s ?p "Old Black Joe" is a parlor song by Stephen Foster (1826–1864). It was published by Firth, Pond & Co. of New York in 1853. Ken Emerson, author of Doo-Dah!, indicates that Foster's fictional Joe was inspired by a servant in the home of his father-in-law, Dr. McDowell of Pittsburgh. The song is not written in dialect, Emerson writes, "yet the bluntness of Joe's blackness and his docility reduce Old Black Joe to the status of Old Dog Tray rather than its owner, to simply another white man's possession prized solely for its loyalty." He believes the song "epitomizes Foster's racial condescension" but W. E. B. Du Bois points to the song as a piece standing apart from the debasing minstrel and "coon" songs of the era. Emerson believes that the song's "soft melancholy" and its "elusive undertone" (rather than anything musical), brings the song closest to the traditional African American spiritual.Harold Vincent Milligan describes the song as "one of the best of the Ethiopian songs ... its mood is one of gentle melancholy, of sorrow without bitterness. There is a wistful tenderness in the music." Jim Kweskin covered the song on his 1971 album Jim Kweskin's America.. }
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- Old_Black_Joe abstract ""Old Black Joe" is a parlor song by Stephen Foster (1826–1864). It was published by Firth, Pond & Co. of New York in 1853. Ken Emerson, author of Doo-Dah!, indicates that Foster's fictional Joe was inspired by a servant in the home of his father-in-law, Dr. McDowell of Pittsburgh. The song is not written in dialect, Emerson writes, "yet the bluntness of Joe's blackness and his docility reduce Old Black Joe to the status of Old Dog Tray rather than its owner, to simply another white man's possession prized solely for its loyalty." He believes the song "epitomizes Foster's racial condescension" but W. E. B. Du Bois points to the song as a piece standing apart from the debasing minstrel and "coon" songs of the era. Emerson believes that the song's "soft melancholy" and its "elusive undertone" (rather than anything musical), brings the song closest to the traditional African American spiritual.Harold Vincent Milligan describes the song as "one of the best of the Ethiopian songs ... its mood is one of gentle melancholy, of sorrow without bitterness. There is a wistful tenderness in the music." Jim Kweskin covered the song on his 1971 album Jim Kweskin's America.".