And I believe this is officially the first time anyone’s ever said that.
The team used to be the Dukess, way back when I was a child, and it was a farm team for the LA Dodgers. The team was sold to Portland a few years ago (and renamed the “Beavers”), and Albuquerque was without a team until someone managed to buy the Calgary Cannons. There was a great deal of to-do about what to name the team (I’m not sure, but I believe “Dukes” may have been taken at that point). After a lot of public wrangling and newspaper polls, the team was named the “Isotopes” by popular demand.
It’s spelled Albuquerque, by the way, although there’s a long-winded story about that, too. We’ll take any accolades we can get, no matter how you spell it.
(asterion, this is the second Albuquerque reference I’ve seen you make. Are you actually here? We may have passed each other at the game.)
Michelle Shocked did a song called “Cotton-Eyed Joe” – I think it was on her Arkansas Traveler album – but it wasn’t a cover of the folk song, it was just loosely based on it.
Well, I’m currently in Maryland. I was in Albuquerque until yesterday. I’ll be back to school in Pennsylvania tomorrow. I was raised in Albuquerque, still have my parents’ house listed as my primary residence, and absentee vote. In other words, it’s still home until I find a job somewhere else.
To get back to the OP, I’ve done a bit of searching and found the earliest cite in print for the term(so far).
I found a story(fiction) in the Saturday Evening Post from 1875. The heroine, a young(18-22), white Southern? female named Dolly is singing the song while she helps her Black nursemaid cook. Dolly sings the words “Don’t you remember a long time ago, I dreamed that I ran away w/ Cotton-eyed Joe?” The nursemaid chides Dolly for singing the song, knowing that Dolly’s mother wouldn’t approve of it. Dolly asks “why did you teach it to me then?” Later in the story Dolly sings “Oh, I’d have been married twelve months ago, if it had not have been for Cotton-eyed Joe.”
So, who comes to the door but her blue-eyed cousin, Joe. (distant cousin )
Later in the story, a character describes Joe as a person with “great white eyes.”
But, still later in the story, Joe is described again as having BLUE eyes.
The story ends as all good Bodice-rippers should. The flirtatious/coquettish Dolly finally overcomes her need to play coy and says she loves him(when she thinks he’s dying). They get married. The end.
My analysis is, currently, that the song was originally put to words by African Americans, obviously prior to 1875. There’s no doubt it was a fiddle tune well before this time. But whites certainly knew the words by 1875. I can’t see any derogatory racial meanings here. The term could have reference to both persons with prominent whites of the eye, and also could refer to blue-eyed persons. Or both.
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