Annotation:Hoop de dooden do (1)

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HOOP DE DOODEN DO [1]. AKA and see "Rattlesnake Jig." American, Air and Galop (2/4 or 6/8 time). C Major (Raven): D Major (Howe). Standard tuning (fiddle). One part (Howe): AABB (Raven). A song credited to A. Nish. A Galop version of "Hoop de dooden do", attributed to Charles Louis Napoleon d'Albert (1809-1886), was published in 1860 [1]. The lyric begins:

Some hundred years ago or so, Good ole Massa set me free,
Den de missus she did cry; "Hoop de dooden do!"
I clap't my trunk upon my back, And started for de railway track.
And soon I heard the whistle holler;
"Hoop de dooden do!"

The phrase is mentioned in a musical contest in an 1862 account of Evan's Supper Rooms by George Augustus Sala, entilted "Twice Round the Clock, or the Hours of the Day and Night in London" (p. 344) [2]:

With respect to the remaining harmonic attractions of Evan's, I shall be very brief. I believe that on some evenings individuals of the Ethiopian way of thinking, and accoutered in the ordinary amount of lamp-black, Welsh wig, and shirt-collars, and provided with the usual banjo, accordian, tambourine, and bones, are in the habit of informing the audience that things in general are assuming an appearance of "Hoop de dooden do," also of lamenting the untimely demise of one Ned, an aged blackamoor, who stood towards them in an avuncular relation, and of passionately demanding the cause of their master effecting the sale of their persons, by auction or otherwise, on the day they entered into the state of matrimony.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Howe (1000 Jigs and Reels), c. 1867; p. 162. Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 148.

Recorded sources:




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