Seely Simpkins' Jig
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legacy / jig
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Dan Emmett
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"Seely Simpkins' Jig" is similar to "Running through the Rain to Keep Your Hair Dry".<br> It is a fife tune composed by blackface minstrel Dan Emmett, printed in Bruce and Emmett's<br> The Drummers and Fifers Guide and later in Dan Emmett’s own Fife Instructor (1880).<br> It was entered as No. 48 in Dan Emmett's music manuscript book.<br> It was named for Knox County, Ohio’s first fiddler. Simpkins, born in 1799, was a man<br> who reportedly "frequented race tracks, and drew crowds and supplied hoe-downs on demand".<br> In Hans Nathan's Dan Emmett and Negro Minstrelsy (1962), he writes: <br> Mount Vernon (Ohio, birthplace of Dan Emmett) counted a highly unconventional, droll<br> character among its citizens — Seeley Simpkins. Dan must have known him and been<br> impressed by his antics, because he set him a "monument" many years later, by naming<br> after him one of the tunes in his Fife Instructor.<br> Simpkins' home was adjacent to another pioneering resident, Thomas Snowdon, an ex-slave<br> who had followed his former master to Mount Vernon and both were north of the Emmett<br> homestead. Snowdon was a master whistler and is known to have been the inspiration<br> (if not the composer) of Emmett's famous song "Dixie".<br>
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