Popularity
The first published edition of "Miss Lucy Long" is uncredited in a 1842 songster called Old American Songs. Billy Whitlock of the Virginia Minstrels later claimed the song in his autobiography: "I composed . . . 'Miss Lucy Long' (the words by T. G. Booth) in 1838."
Despite predating the minstrel show, "Miss Lucy Long" gained its fame there. The song was the first wench role in minstrelsy. The Virginia Minstrels performed it as their closing number from their earliest performances. Dan Gardner introduced what would become the standard Lucy Long costume, skirts and pantalettes. George Christy's interpretation for the Christy Minstrels became the standard for other troupes to follow. The New York Clipper ignored Gardner completely and wrote "George was the first to do the wench business; he was the original Lucy Long."
By 1845, the song had become the standard minstrel show closing number, and it remained so through the antebellum period. Programs regularly ended with the note that "The concert will conclude with the Boston Favorite Extravaganza of LUCY LONG." The name Lucy came to signify a woman who was "sexy, somewhat grotesque, and of suspect virtue" in minstrelsy. Similar songs appeared, including "Lucy Neal". In the late 1920s, a dance called the Sally Long became popular; the name may derive from the minstrel song.
Musicologist Robert B. Winans found versions of "Miss Lucy Long" in 34% of minstrel show programs he examined from the 1843–52 period and in 55% from 1843–47, more than any other song. Mahar's research found that "Miss Lucy Long" is the second most frequent song in popular songsters from this period, behind only "Mary Blane". The song enjoyed a resurgence in popularity from 1855–60, when minstrelsy entered a nostalgic phase under some companies.
There is also reference to "Miss Lucy Long" in Bobby Darin's version of the song "Mack the Knife" by Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill, from their play "The Threepenny Opera".
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Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.... He was fixed in the house of lords, that hospital of incurables, and his retreat to popularity was cut off; for the confidence of the public, when once great and once lost, is never to be regained.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Here also was made the novelty ‘Chestnut Bell’ which enjoyed unusual popularity during the gay nineties when every dandy jauntily wore one of the tiny bells on the lapel of his coat, and rang it whenever a story-teller offered a ‘chestnut.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“A more problematic example is the parallel between the increasingly abstract and insubstantial picture of the physical universe which modern physics has given us and the popularity of abstract and non-representational forms of art and poetry. In each case the representation of reality is increasingly removed from the picture which is immediately presented to us by our senses.”
—Harvey Brooks (b. 1915)