[Alternately: “Dr. Heckock’s Jig”]

Music credited to Z. Bacchus (dates unknown) by Hans Nathan. Nothing is known about this composer but Nathan also credits him with “Briggs’ Breakdown” as well as “Division Street Jig”. In this canon of song, “jig” has a unique meaning; unlike its English and Irish cognate, it here refers specifically to minstrel dances and not the music itself (Nathan 455). According to Nathan, many of these jigs for the banjo appeared in the 1840s and were made available to the public via method books that were published during the 1850s (455). Given the general chronology of this type of song, it is unlikely that Z. Bacchus is a bowdlerization of Charles Backus (c.1831-1883), the American Minstrel. Likewise, there is no discernable relationship between the composer of this song and the Backus Minstrels.

As the piece is a jig, and necessarily has no lyrics, it follows that there are no surviving examples of the song transcribed for parlour use. Neither does it appear in any of the extant programs from the United Kingdom during the period. The only confirmed published versions of the song are included in: Emmit’s [sic] Celebrated Negro Melodies published at London (c.1844); Nathan’s article “Early Banjo Tunes and American Syncopation” published in The Musical Quarterly (1956) as well as Nathan’s Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy (1962). The popularity of the song did not endure into the twentieth century, but there is at least one known recorded version of it (see below).

Select Recording History:

Winans, Robert, music director and program consultant. The Early Minstrel Show. New World Records, 1998.

Works Cited:

Nathan, Hans. “Early Banjo Tunes and American Syncopation.” The Musical Quarterly 42.4 (1956): 455-472.

Mark Turner