What's the story behind 'Jimmy Crack Corn'? It may be darker than you think Opinion: The song seems bright and peppy, but there's more going on than meets the ear.

Clay Thompson | The Republic | azcentral.com

Today’s question:

Can you tell me what Jimmy is doing when he “cracks” corn?

I wonder if little kids still sing “Jimmy Crack Corn” in school. I hope not. It is not what you would call politically correct.

First of all, corn can be cracked, or ground up, for food.

However, the roots of the song’s lyrics have kind of a distasteful history and don’t have anything to do with processing food.

First performed in the 1840s by blackface minstrel groups, it tells the story of a young slave named Jimmy who tells us:

“When I was young I used to wait/On the master and hand him his plate/And pass the bottle when he got dry/And brush away the blue-tail fly.”

It develops that when his master went out on horseback, young Jimmy’s assignment was to follow along and brush away the annoying blue-tail fly with a hickory broom.

One day the flies were especially thick. The horse was bitten and panicked and the master was thrown into a ditch, breaking his neck.

An investigation followed. The verdict put the blame for the master’s demise on the blue-tail fly. Jimmy was off the hook and was in a good mood.

Now, at last, to the part about cracking corn. That was a very old piece of slang for sitting around idly gossiping.

A more likely explanation is that Jimmy cracked open a jug of his late master’s corn whiskey and kicked back a bit.

Either way, nobody cared because the master was gone away and wouldn’t be coming back.