A friend and I do weekly singalongs at local nursing homes.
She chooses about a dozen different songs each month (usually golden oldies she
knows her audience will find familiar), makes word charts, and engages and
entertains the residents. I sightread at the piano. Among last month’s
songs was “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” One of the residents – a bomber pilot
from World War II – asked about the origins of the song. Was “Yellow Rose” a
real person? Was her name really Rose? I promised to look it up, and almost
instantly regretted it. It’s a folk song, meaning its author’s name is lost in
time. But it was used in blackface minstrel shows in the early 1800’s. A white
entertainer pretending to be a black man would have sung, “No darkie ever knew
her” as he longed for his yellow (mulatto) girlfriend back home. Suddenly it’s
not the innocent little tune it seemed to be.
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