Musical Interlude: Skiffle

The Faded Republic 19

To get any sense of what the Carolina Chocolate Drops were up to you needed to be like that guy in The Da Vinci Code to unpack layer upon layer of meaning and ‘symbology.’

The short version is they were an Old Time string and Skiffle band.

Skiffle was a form of music, originating with African Americans, in the early twentieth century, maybe in New Orleans.

It is characterized by two main things. First, it often used homemade or found instruments (jugs, washboards, kazoos, bones). Second, it mixes together Blues, Country, Jazz, and other musical elements.

Gettin’ down in that old soil where it all mixes together to form a fertile loam.

Or, maybe, it just comes out as Country.

I’ve shared music from several recent artists who I think are digging down deep in the Roots. Mostly they’re White folks. But many of my brother and sister hillbillies were Black folks. When A.P. Hill went collecting songs for the Carter Family (the royal family of Country Music) to sing, he hired a Black musician as ‘driver’ so they could visit the Black folks around the hills and learn (and record and copy right) their songs as well.

Time to put on the Davinci Code hat. ‘Jackson’ was a June Carter and Johnny Cash song. June was daughter to Mother Maybelle Cater. Mother Maybelle was sister-in-law to A.P. and part of the Carter Family… it all comes together. And perhaps the ‘borrowing’ comes full circle.

‘Chocolate Drops’ is a derogatory racial term. However, it’s one of those that my Black relatives sometimes use. That’s that territory where ya gotta be careful. Who’s saying it, in what context, etc…like with Jazz, that all matters.

Here’s a ‘genuine negro jig’. The Chocolate Drops dig down deep in that old ‘race music.’ OK, they’re playing some old Black music that used to be termed ‘race music;’ that’s a couple layers but don’t need the Davinci Code hat to figure that out, right?

Except, ‘Genuine Negro Jig’ was copy righted and sung by Dan Emmett, a White dude. Except… he was a White dude who was a minstrel¹ singer and performed in Blackface. And except he probably actually stole the tune from some Black folks named Snowdens (hence the Chocolate Drops also denote it as ‘Snowdens’ Jig’). Emmett was from Ohio, as were the free Black Snowdens. It twern’t just a Southern thing.

But they also dig into that old Euro folk music which came together with the Black folks’ stuff to form American music. Here a very straight forward version of an old tune that was a more macabre version of ‘Maddy Groves/Little Margaret’ (with old folk music, there are always multiple versions, or even families of songs).

I’ve been speaking in the past tense about the Chocolate Drops because they were together only from 2010-2014.

Except, they got back together to do the first Biscuits and Banjos Festival in 2025- keep hope alive; maybe they’re back.

Well, there’s some Skiffle and symbology for ya. Got big in England in the 1950s and contributed to a little thing we call ‘The British Invasion’ in the 60s which was also bringin’ it all back home.

1. Keep that Davinci Code hat on. Minstrelsy is now pretty much a verboten topic, but back in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it played a part in lots of musical race-line crossing (which the music always found a way to do). It was a way White folks could appropriate Black music. Now, cultural appropriation is also very bad - just can’t do that. But what seems clear is that many of the White folks dug the Black folks’ music, but you couldn’t just be a White person and go sing Black music. Part of the deal was you also had to adopt stereotypical and derogatory mannerisms, etc…. Race-lines really screw with people’s psyches.

Further, Country music absorbed much Black influence via White minstrel musicians appropriating Black music into it. Roy Acuff, Gene Autry, Bill Monroe, Jimmie Rogers, Ralph Stanley, Hank Williams and others (sometimes performing under other names) all performed in Blackface at some point.

I say this not to justify the phenomenon but to point out that race in America always requires multiple lenses and must be approached on multiple levels to understand and that American music works in mysterious ways sometimes.