Whups! Simulpost 
Hmmmm. You might take a look at the lyrics, and the bio of the guy who wrote this thing (same abolitionist who wrote “Marching Through Georgia”). Strange choice for a Southern character. I wonder if Avery and crew were being deliberately ironic, or they just thought it “sounded right”:
I’d just like to say that this thread represents what I feel is the coolest part of what the internet can do.
A totally obscure question that has little relevance other than a brain niggle, and yet the answers are found, examples are unearthed, and the facts are set straight!
Cool!
Since the song question has been answered so thoroughly, I’ll do a little cleanup and answer the second question.
No, the wolf did not have a name. In “Billy Boy” (1954), the cartoon you described, he’s just credited as “Farmer”; in “Three Little Pups” (1953), he’s known as guard. The voice was indeed provided by Daws Butler, who also voiced Chilly Willy, Nasty Canasta, Loopy de Loop, and Huckleberry Hound, among other.
The other Avery wolf, known just as “Wolf”, was voiced by Billy Bletcher. Bletcher was a midget with a very deep voice, and also provided the voices of Sleepy LaGoon, Pa Bear, and dubbed the voice of the Mayor of Munchkin City in “The Wizard of Oz.”
Oh, and to as why that song was picked, I doubt there’s any deeper meanin than it sounded “Southern.” Scott Allen, like Carl Stalling at Warner Brothers, used songs that either (a) sounded appropriate, or (b) had appropriate sounding titles. That why Stalling used “The Lady in Red” anytime a character wore read, or “A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich, and You” when someone was eating, or “Arkansas Traveller” (a.k.a. “I’m Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee”) whenever a hayseed character appeared on screen.
Now I’m going to be whistling those songs all day…
Guy: You sure you’re not confusing Billy Bletcher with Billy Barty? Billy Barty was a midget performer; from what I can see of Billy Bletcher he was of normal size.
As for Carl Stalling, it should be noted here that he owes a lot to the composer Raymond Scott, whose works he used extensively during his tenure at WB. Anyone who’s seen a Rube Goldberg-style contraption wreak havoc in trapping mice or cleaning up a house in a WB cartoon knows Scott’s “Powerhouse”. (Spike Jones, apparently, did a cover of that song as well. One of these days I’ll get the CD and listen to it.)
Just a 2¢ offering as a hijack, since the questions have been answered.
I agree…I was so excited by the result of this that I linked my brother to it. (He always loved that wolf too, lol.)
As for the lyrics – well I guess I hit the nail on the head with guessing it sounded like something a slave would sing. But agree with Guy when he says it was probably chosen for it’s purely southern sound. I don’t remember enough about the cartoon itself to remember what sort of social status the wolf had.
Olentzero—I’m positive it wasn’t Barty. You can check the IMDb to confirm.
Stalling used Raymond Scott a lot because he was able to convince Warner Bros. to buy the rights to the songs, but he didn’t limit himself to the Scott oevure. All the other songs he used were copyrighted by the WB publishing arm. In fact, this is the real reason “cartunes” started, as a way of publicising studio music. Early WB cartoons were all centered around song titles.
I’m listening to “The Stalling Project” CD right now. Great liner notes.
Guy– I knew I phrased that awkwardly. 
What I was asking was not whether you were misattributing Barty’s work to Bletcher (I came up with several links on Bletcher’s activities) but whether Bletcher was a midget. That I couldn’t tell, only because the only photo I found of Bletcher was a head shot. Hence the question.
Yep, Bletcher and Barty were (or still is, in Barty’s case) midgets. As I mentioned, Bletcher had an oddly deep voice for a man his size. Barty, if you’ve heard him, has that helium-like voice we stereotypically associate with the little people.
I left out Bletcher’s other wolf voice; he was the Big Bad Wolf in Disney’s “Three Little Pigs.”