Please help settle a drunken bet. In the Stephen Foster song, “Camptown Races” do the Camptown ladies sing the entire song, or just the “do-dah” part?
Also (but not part of the bet), what’s the deal with the blind horse and the muley-cow?
Seems like “doo-dah” is repeated after every line, so not related to the ladies singing. The blind horse steps in a mud puddle and is lost. The muley cow wanders onto the track and gets flipped on her back by one of the racers.
But how could the Camptown ladies sing a song that is self-referential? The arguement then becomes chicken/egg. Which came first?
This is the song that never ends…
when I walk down the street I say, My name is Yon Yonson…
I’m singing this note 'cause it fits in well with the chords I’m playing…
It’s been done a few times since then.
I don’t get your logic here. Since “Camptown ladies sing this song,” is the first line, it sounds to me like an explanation of what all the “doo-dah” stuff to follow is about.
(And the colored girls go “doo do doo, doo, doo do doo doo…”)
But…
Please note that the “doo-dah” part is supposed to be sung by a chorus, which would seem to indicate to me a plural (the ladies) singing.
I thought the OP was asking “Is the song that the Camptown Ladies sing ‘doo-dah, doo-dah’?” In that case, the first line would describe how they sing “doo-dah” and then the rest of the lines wouldn’t mention doo-dah anymore. Since they do, I felt it was a nonsense thing unrelated to the actual line “Camptown ladies sing this song”.
I can’t believe I just wrote doo-dah that many times. Now* I* feel drunk.
The first line, on the other hand, could explain the existence of “doo-dah” throughout the rest of the song. The singer tells about a particular race, won by the bob tail. This horse triumphs despite colliding with a muley-cow and avoiding the mud-hole that ended the victory hopes of a less fortunate blind horse. At each critical point in the tale, our Camptown ladies add a “doo-dah” or two. But in case the listener is wondering what the “doo-dah” is all about, the songwriter explains it in the first line.
To me it doesn’t make any sense that the Camptown ladies would sing the entire song.
Here’s a shot of the entire song from the 1850 version, complete with [solo] and [chorus] marks.
Makes it a bit more plain.