Zip Coon (George Washington Dixon)

Anonymous. Zip Coon (George Washington Dixon). C. 1835.

The only rival to the black impersonator, Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice ("Jim Crow"), was another white man, George Washington Dixon. Dixon began his stage career in Albany, New York in the circus. The next year he participated in a Negro burlesque in New York City and his career took off. Dixon's greatest success was as a black-faced character singing and dancing the song, "Zip Coon", first introduced about 1829. The song's verse included: "O ole Zip Coon he is a larned skoler, Sings posum up a gum tree an coony in a holler. Posum up a gum tree, coony on a stump, Den over dubbler trubble, Sip coon will jump." The melody of the song is that of "Turkey in the Straw."
Description: Lithograph, published by Endicott Lith., 359 Broadway, New York City.
Location: Cover of sheet music published by J.L. Hewett & Co., New York City.
Source: Lester S. Levy. Picture the Songs: Lithographs from the Sheet Music of the Nineteenth-Century America, p. 23.