Coon Song - Rise and Fall From Popularity

Rise and Fall From Popularity

The first explicitly-coon song was "The Dandy Coon's Parade" by J.P. Skelley, published in 1880. Other notable early coon songs included "The Coons Are on Parade," "New Coon in Town" (by J.S. Putnam, 1883), "Coon Salvation Army" (by Sam Lucas, 1884), "Coon Schottische" (by William Dressler, 1884).

By the mid-1880s, coon songs were a national craze; over 600 such songs were published in the 1890s. The most successful songs sold millions of copies. To take advantage of the fad, composers "add words typical of coon songs to previously published songs and rags."

After the turn of the century, coon songs began to receive criticism for their racist content. In 1905, Bob Cole, an African-American composer who had gained fame largely by writing coon songs, made somewhat unprecedented remarks about the genre. When asked in an interview about the name of his earlier comedy A Trip to Coontown, he replied, "That day has passed with the softly flowing tide of revelations." Cole's comments may have been influential, and (following further criticism) the use of "coon" in song titles greatly decreased after 1910.

On August 13, 1920, the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League created the Red, Black and Green flag as a response to the song "Every Race Has a Flag but the Coon" by Heelan and Helf. That song along with "Coon Coon Coon" and "All Coons Look Alike To Me" were identified by H.L. Mencken as being the songs which firmly established the term "coon" in the American vocabulary.