I never knew. Interesting wiki article here.
I prefer the Wiggles version.
No, really.
I’m not the only one with an obsessive two-year-old?
I like the Bruce Springsteen version.
They seem to know verses my grandma did not teach us.
I always imagined Dan Tucker looking like Grizzly Adams.
I always imagined him as some backwoods dweller or country bumpkin, maybe not Grizzly Adams, but definitely someone who does not understand (or care about) urban social conventions. The second or third verse (as I learned it) starts, "Old Dan Tucker come to town, riding a billy goat, leading a hound… " Maybe he’s a farmer, too broke or too crazy to ride a horse or drive a wagon to town.
It doesn’t matter if Dan Tucker’s a slave, and it doesn’t matter if he’s free; doesn’t matter if he’s black or white, doesn’t matter if he’s drunk or sober. What matters is Old Dan Tucker is coming, and if Old Dan Tucker is coming, you get out of the way.
I remember learning that one as a child in kindergarten or first grade, and have one of those weirdly clear childhood memories of listening to the radio in the car and asking my mom why all the songs are about love or about Jesus, and then thinking for a moment and exclaiming “I thought of one that isn’t! Old Dan Tucker!”