Jenny Get Your Hoecake Done - 2nd South Carolina String Band
Historic Music
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4m 49s
Private John Dinkins remembered this song as “Sallie Get Your Hoecake Done” when he and the men of the 18th Mississippi sang and marched to the Battle of Sharpsburg/Antietam. However, in 1840 it was published under its minstrel stage title as “Jenny Get Your Hoecake Done” by Firth & Hall in New York. The composer was Joe Sweeney a minstrel performer who introduced and popularized the banjo to America in the late 1830s and to Great Britain in the early 1840s. Whichever name is used, this tune clearly shows the influence of African rhythms on plantation life. It is easy to imagine a column of dusty grey clad Mississippians swinging along a Maryland road to the cadences of this song.
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