Let’s see – the slave comes back from a ride with his master to report that something happened, and the master is dead. The verdict says it was the blue-tail fly. Sounds kinda straightforward to me, especially if the master was a mean one.
As for Daniel Emmett, author of “Dixie” and possibly of “The Blue-Tail Fly” as well, while he was a composer and performer of blackface minstrel material, he also turns out to have been an Abolitionist. People are complicated.
[Pinky]If Jimmy keeps cracking corn and no cares then why does he do it? NARF!![/Pinky]
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Who is Jimmy, and why does he crack corn? (30-Oct-1998)
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I was not aware that Daniel Emmett was an “Abolitionist”. Perhaps the poster could provide a citation for that particular assertion. 
DS I have been “Googling” the last hour learning about this thread. I saw a cite(which seemed scholarly) that indicated his parents were abolitionist. I can’t find it right now, but it’s there.
Crap! Now I find it. And, while it isn’t the scholarly treatment I promised, please read the article. The reporter obviously contacted some scholarly people for their views. abolitionists
The operative passage was…
I read some time ago that “Jimmy crack corn” refers to distilling whiskey. The word “cracking” is still used in the oil industry to mean (fractional) distilling. This makes more sense to me than the other explanations I just read.
Maybe the blue-tail fly got past Jimmy because he wasn’t completely sober… Can anyone supply (a link to) the full text of the song?
At your service.
Lyrics to Blue-tail Fly
Thanks Arnold. From that link, there doesn’t seem to be any direct connection between Jimmy cracking corn and the blue-tail fly incident. The only connection is since master is gone away (i.e. croaked), Jimmy can do whatever he wants and not get in trouble, and the slave that is singing the song says he doesn’t care, he doesn’t have to report Jimmy’s behavior to anyone.
So to me it’s either “goofing off” or, more probably, drinking whiskey.
Or conversely, Jimmy, being sober and industrious, has found renumerative employment now that he is free, and through honest sweat and hard toil (cracking corn - making popcorn in a theatre?) he will learn to forego the demon whiskey and save up enough money for a nice little retirement in the Floriday keys.
Jimmy indeed made a fortune and retired to Florida. Unfortunately, DDT hadn’t been invented yet, he contracted malaria, and died. Life just ain’t fair. 
Hmmmmmm Now, look here, folks. Being the son of an abolitionist doesn’t make you an abolitionist; it’s not an ethnicity. Further, an unsupported citation asserting that his parents were “strict abolitionists” is hardly evidence of much of anything we can consider the “straight dope.”
Show us something of substance, please.
But Arnold, the lyric implies that cracking corn is something that “I” would normally be upset about. The fact that “master’s gone away” means there’s no repercussions, so it isn’t a problem that Jimmy is doing something that normally would get him in deep kimshi.
Irishman - first let me note that I am not 100% convinced that in the phrase “Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care” Jimmy and “I” refer to two different people. It could be someone referring to himself in the third person in the first part of the sentence. e.g. “Arnold is a moderator, and I’m happy to help out at the SDMB”. (thought it seems unlikely)
However, working with the assumption that “Jimmy” and “I” are two different people:
“I” is the person in charge of waiting on the master at the dinner table, and accompanying the master on his pony rides. Arnold thinks it’s safe to say that “I” is a slave. “Jimmy” would be another person under the supervision of “I”, so presumably another slave.
If “I”, as a supervisor, found “Jimmy” goofing off (the Irishman interpretation), I would be upset. But if “I” found out that “Jimmy” had taken a part-time job in town and was planning to save up his money and move to Florida (the Arnold interpretation), “I” would also be upset, since a slave shouldn’t be earning money through “moon-lighting”. Or, to use your expression, a slave taking a part-time job somewhere else would very probably be in “deep kimshi”. So Arnold argues that his interpretation cannot be dismissed out of hand.
Also Arnold adds that in his interpretation, the song becomes a stirring tale of struggle, triumph against adversity, and redemption.
As I understand it, these songs were usually written phonetically to immitate the accents and dialect of the south. So we should not take any notice of the spelling.
Next, it was originally “jim crack corn”. I would take a good guess that it was really “gimcrack corn”, i.e. cheap good for nothing corn whiskey. The singer was merely saying that he was well out of his head, and didn’t care (about anything!)
Steven_G: where have you seen the expression “gimcrack corn”? I couldn’t find it in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary or in a google search.
“gimcrack” = 1676, a showy object of little use of value:: gewgaw.
MW Collegiate Dictionary
lyrics in dialect as written indicating “jim crack corn.”
Steven-G could indeed be right. Arguing against his theory, jim crack is definitely two words in the original song lyrics. Gimcrack, on the otherhand, is one word. But the theory sounds pretty believable.
gim·crack (jmkrk)
n.
A cheap and showy object of little or no use; a gewgaw.
gimcracker·y n.
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved
It is used as an adjective, and does have old roots, so the word could have been known. I have not seen it specifically used with corn or whiskey, but the phonetic transcription of folk songs and the like leads me to not be concerned about the “jim crack” separation. I have found it spelt as “jimcrack”.
So no definitive link, maybe someone can find better supporting evidence?
samclem, I found the noun in Merriam-Webster but not the adjective. I really need to get an OED.
But from the link you found with a version probably closer to the original lyrics, it looks like Steven_G’s theory is definitely tenable.