Blue Tail Fly

Here's some interesting history (courtesy of Wikepedia) about the origins and performance practices of Blue Tail Fly:

"Blue Tail Fly", "De Blue Tail Fly", or "Jimmy Crack Corn" is a blackface minstrel song, first performed in the United States in the 1840s, which remains a popular children's song today.

Over the years, many variants of text have appeared, but the basic narrative remains intact. On the surface, the song is a black slave's lament over his master's death. The song, however, has a subtext of rejoicing over that death, and possibly having caused it by deliberate negligence. Most versions at least nod to idiomatic African American English, though sanitized, grammatically "correct" versions predominate today.

The blue-tail fly of the song is probably a Southern variant of the horsefly, which feeds on the blood of animals such as horses and cattle, as well as humans, and thus constitutes a prevalent pest in agricultural regions. Some horseflies have a blue-black abdomen, hence the name.

It has been conjectured that it might not have been originally a blackface minstrel song, and might have genuine African American origins. Unlike many minstrel songs, "Blue Tail Fly" was long popular among African Americans, and was recorded by, among others, Big Bill Broonzy. A celebrated live version was recorded by Burl Ives. Another popularizer was the folk singer Pete Seeger. At the 92nd Street Y in New York City in 1993, Ives and Seeger performed the song together in what turned out to be Ives' last public performance. The song was also repeated almost in its entirety by Bugs Bunny in the Warner Bros. cartoon short Lumber Jack-Rabbit, though it is done in Bugs' trademark Brooklyn-Bronx accent.

There has been much conjecture over the meaning of "Jimmy Crack Corn and I don't care." However, in the oldest version it is "jim crack corn", and "jim crack" has always meant something cheap or shoddily built, and "corn" is an American euphemism for "corn whiskey".

Abraham Lincoln was an admirer calling it "that buzzing song" and it was likely he played it on his harmonica. When he was at Gettysburg he was said to have asked for it to be played.

When performing their version of the song on their album The Two Sides of the Smothers Brothers, Tom Smothers continually sings, "I don't care, and I don't care...", and when Dick Smothers tells him those aren't the lyrics, Tom replies, "I don't care."

Tom Lehrer's satirical "The Folk Song Army" contains this lyric:

There are innocuous folk songs
But we regard 'em with scorn
The folks who sing 'em have no social conscience,
Why they don't even care if Jimmy crack corn

Allan Sherman included a parody version of the song as the first entry in "Shticks and Stones" on his album "My Son, the Folk Singer":

Oh, salesmen come and salesmen go,
And my best one has gone, I know;
And if he don't come back to me,
I'll have to close the factory!
Gimme Jack Cohn, and I don't care,
Gimme Jack Cohn, and I don't care;
Gimme Jack Cohn, and I don't care,
But at best he's gone away!