Lol how is this a real fucking song..

[Cassius Clay]

I just remembered that this was the first song I dirty danced/grinded with a girl to...unfortunately. I was 12...she was a little older and very aggressive....it was on a boat cruise...for my youth group church retreat. Jesus.

[Derived Absurdity]

I fucking love that song

[Blade Azaezel]

That's the most depressing story I've ever heard.

[Gendo]

http://1derfullxoxo.tumblr.com/post/111 ... anada-hold" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[aels]

I remember this being played at discos at my youth club when I was a kid. It was a Christian youth club and we had to recite a prayer at the start of each session, if that makes you feel better about your own Christian youth group experiences, Troy.

[Cassius Clay]

What's even more depressing is that my mother was about 50 feet away(I was at the center of a crowded dance floor so I couldn't be seen!)

And, aels, yes it does. That song was probably a common choice for many youth group "parties" around the world because it seems like an innocent song you can dance to(not like that stopped kids from freak dancing though).

[CashRules]

The lyrics and music to that song have changed a lot in 175 years. It has gone from being a plantation song to a minstrel number to a country square dance standard to a Western Swing hit to whatever the fuck Rednex calls their music.

[Cassius Clay]

That's a 175-year old racist song??

Bloody hell.

[CashRules]

Yeah, the original version was a plantation song. The narrator was an elderly slave in the Deep South bitter over never marrying because a free black man (Cotton-Eyed Joe) had paid for the freedom of the narrator's one true love and taken her to Tennessee and married her. The repeated line was "If it hadn't been for Cotton-Eyed Joe, I'd been married forty years ago (not "a long time ago). After slavery ended it became a common minstrel song throughout the South. In the early 20th century it became a popular square-dance song at a time when a large number of country musicians, and almost all skilled banjo players, were black. As the Blues became the music of poor Southern blacks and they started abandoning Country Music, that song didn't fit well for most Blues musicians so it remained a Country square dance number and, eventually, a Western Swing hit that was recorded by the greatest Western Swing band in history, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. I only know of one true Blues artist to record a version of the song, Nina Simone, and the one version I've heard of hers may more properly be referred to as a combination of Blues and Jazz rather than a pure Blues number. I'm not sure if Blues artists shied away from the song more because of its racist elements (even though it was originally a slave song) or because any 'decent' version of it really requires a banjo as the lead instrument and the banjo is not commonly used by modern Blues artists even though the banjo was originally an instrument developed and favored by the most skilled black musicians. But at least the song no longer includes the n-word.