Unakceptable_views (@Unakceptabke_views)

**All Coons Look Alike To Me by Ernest Hogan** "All Coons Look Alike To Me" was written by the black performer Ernest Hogan. According to Arnold Shaw in his 1986 monograph black Popular Music In America, this 1896 number was his **biggest coon song** hit, but he regretted writing it for the rest of his life, although this regret was undoubtedly ameliorated considerably by the financial rewards it brought him. When Hogan died from tuberculosis at New York in May 1909 at the young age of 44, the Chicago Record-Herald reported that he was born Reuben Crowdus in Bowling Green, Kentucky, was known as the father of ragtime, and had reputedly made $26,000 from this one song. Five years after his death, Henry Ford began paying his employees $5 a day, nearly twice the average for the automobile industry, which puts Hogan's royalties from this song into some perspective. The best known of all coon songs in New York City, it was hated by blacks and loved by Whites in equal measure. >The title actually became a fighting phrase all over the city; as the publisher Edward Marks said, "**Whistled by a White man, it was construed as a personal insult**." • • • • • Although the song was Hogan's idea, the verse part was actually written by music publisher JEW Isidore Witmark because the original melody did not fit in well with the refrain, so Witmark wrote a new melody together with some of the words for the second verse. As Shaw points out, the song "remains one of the justly famous examples of true ragtime" and it "did not embody the prejudicial stereotype implied by its title", but was "a ballad of a broken love affair in which a woman, now possessed of a new lover who spends money on her, airily dismisses her old love with the comment." This is unquestionably true, and although this is both a coon song and a comic novelty song, it does have a serious message, and may even have been based on personal experience. It probably struck a chord because in spite of its characterization it has a universal message. The girl (or guy) you adored so much, who perhaps you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, was a freeloader, a false friend who has now found some other mug to milk. Even without the romantic angle, the message is the same: you thought this person was your true friend, well guess what, you were wrong, you were just a meal ticket, a shoulder to cry on, or someone to hang out with until a better heeled mark came along, and now you're yesterday's news. So long, sucker. • • • • • In 1896, the sheet music was published by Witmark of New York and Chicago, and by Whaley, Royce of Toronto, and it has to be said that if the song did not pander to racial stereotypes, the same cannot be said for the front cover of the sheet music. Hogan's song was recorded by the White performer Arthur Collins (who performed in blackface) in 1902 on the Edison Bell Winner label accompanied by Vess L. Ossman.“ [Does he look White?? Turns out a lot blackface was performed by jews.] https://www.songfacts.com/facts/ernest-hogan/all-coons-look-alike-to-me • • • • • As Hogan said shortly before he died, (That) song caused a lot of trouble in and out of show business, but it was also good for show business because at the time money was short in all walks of life. With the publication of that song, a new musical rhythm was given to the people. Its popularity grew and it sold like wildfire... That one song opened the way for a lot of colored and White songwriters. Finding the rhythm so great, they stuck to it ... and now you get hit songs without the word 'coon.' Ragtime was the rhythm played in backrooms and cafes and such places. The ragtime players were the boys who played just by ear their own creations of music which would have been lost to the world if I had not put it on paper.” - Wikipedia Lyrics: First verse Talk about a coon a having trouble, think I have enough of ma own, Its all about ma Lucy Janey Stubbles, and shee has caused my heart to mourn, Thar's another coon barber from Virginia, In soci'ty he's the leader of the day, And now ma honey gal is gwine to quit me, Yes shes gona nad drove this coon away, She'd no excuse, to turn me loose, I've been abused, I'm all confused, Cause these words she did say. Chorus All coons look a like to me, I've got another beau, you see, And he's just as good to me as you, nig! ever to be, He spends his money free, I know we cant agree, So I don't like you no how, All coons look alike to me, me. Second verse Never said a word to hurt her feelings, always bou't her presents by the score, And now my brain with sorrow am a reeling, Cause she won't accept them any more, If I treated her wrong she may have loved me, Like all the rets she's gone and let me down, If I'm lucky I'm a gwinw to catch my policy, And win my sweet thing way from town, For I'm worried, Yes, I'm desp'rate, I've been Jonahed, And I'll get dang'rous, If these words she says to me.” (Chorus) https://egrove.olemiss.edu/sharris_a/26/ ARTHUR COLLINS All Coons Look Alike to Me (2:16) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nnNXT5iMMsI