"Old Dan Tucker," also known as "Ole Dan Tucker," "Dan Tucker," and other variants, is an American popular song. Its origins remain obscure; the tune may have come from oral tradition, and the words may have been written by songwriter and performer Dan Emmett. The blackface troupe the Virginia Minstrels popularized "Old Dan Tucker" in 1843, and it quickly became a minstrel hit, behind only "Miss Lucy Long" and "Mary Blane" in popularity during the antebellum period. "Old Dan Tucker" entered the folk vernacular around the same time. Today it is a bluegrass and country music standard. It is no. 390 in the Roud Folk Song Index.
This 1877 illustration from Scribner's Magazine shows the Dan Tucker character as a rural black man.
The Hutchinson Family Singers' "Get off the Track!" puts abolitionist lyrics to the tune of "Old Dan Tucker".
Dan Emmett said that he wrote "Old Dan Tucker" while a boy in Mount Vernon, Ohio, where he retired in his later years.
The graveyard where Daniel Tucker is buried in Elbert County, Georgia, is a tourist attraction due to the minister's possible connection to the song.
Daniel Decatur Emmett was an American composer, entertainer, and founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition, the Virginia Minstrels. He is most remembered as the composer of the song "Dixie".
Dan Emmett
Photograph of Dan Emmett in blackface, probably early 1860s.
