REDISCOVERING LATE 19TH CENTURY AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSIC: RECEPTION AND ANALYSIS OF TWO SONGS BY SAM LUCAS (1840-1916)

Racial discrimination persisted after the U.S. Civil War (1861‒1865). However, Black-only Minstrel and Jubilee ensembles became popular and offered opportunities for earning a good income and an outlet for artistic expression. Songs written for such performances also found their way into early Black Musical Theatre. The first Black music drama was Out of Bondage (1876), which was commissioned by the Redpath Lyceum specifically for the Hyers Sisters and Sam Lucas; it depicted Black lives amidst slavery during and after the Civil War. Two songs that were originally written for African-American minstrel shows and later integrated into Out of Bondage are the Sam Lucas songs “Shivering and Shaking Out in the Cold” (1875) and “Carve dat Possum” (1874). While “Shivering and Shaking Out in the Cold” is a song without racial reference about a “poor wretch” being out in the cold, “Carve dat Possum” is a humorous song written in stereotyped African-American dialect and refers to catching, cooking, and eating an opossum. Both songs are in verse-chorus form and have a memorable melody with relatively simple harmonic progressions. But while “Shivering and Shaking Out in the Cold” didn’t become immensely popular (according to mentions in newspaper articles), “Carve dat Possum”, based on the melody of the traditional spiritual “Go Down, Moses”, became a widely (internationally) performed and recognized song across racial boundaries. This paper summarizes the re-discovery (primarily based on newspaper articles) of African-American music and discuss the reception and an analysis of Sam Lucas’ songs “Shivering and Shaking Out in the Cold” and “Carve dat Possum”.