The REAL History Of The Song "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" (Partial Time Line From the 1930s to 1979)

Edited by Azizi Powell

Latest Update- September 13, 2023 [This Update includes some additional content including three comments from a 2006 dailykos diary about that song. Those comments are given near the end of this post.]

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This pancocojams post is provides a time line with citations and comments about the song "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" (PABOC) up to 1950. Lyrics for some examples of that song are also given in this post. A number of comments are given in the Addendum to this post below.

Notice that the familiar phrase "Oh Lordy" which introduces the line "pick a ball of cotton" in this song's chorus appears to have been introduced by Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter) in 1945.

The content of this post is presented for folkloric, historical, cultural, and educational purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to the unknown composer/s of this song. Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and all those who featured in these YouTube examples. Thanks also to all those who published these examples on YouTube.
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Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/02/what-breakdowns-mean-in-context-of-19th.html for the pancocojams post entitled "What "Breakdowns" Mean In The Context Of 19th Century/ Early 20th Century Old Time Music/Fiddle Music". [Read the dailykos comments that are given below in the 9/13/2023 Update that indicates that Black Americans performed "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" a a breakdown song and dance.  

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PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S COMMENT
"Pick A Bale Of Cotton" (PABOC) is a song of African American origin whose lyrics have become quite controversial since at least the last part of the 20th century.

Hyperlinks to some online discussions about the controversial nature of "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" [since at least the late 20th century] are provided in this post. However, unlike most online blogs & articles about "Pick A Bale Of Cotton", this post focuses on the history of that song, with particular attention to documentation of pre-Lead Belly citations & performances of this song.

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"PICK A BALE OF COTTON" SONG TIME LINE
DISCLAIMER: This time doesn't purport to document all of the recordings of "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" or the use of this song in movies or television etc.

No documentation of the song "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" has been found prior to the 1930s.

December 1933 - "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" recorded by James 'Iron Head] Baker, a prisoner at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_%22Iron_Head%22_Baker_and_Moses_%22Clear_Rock%22_Platt

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1934 - Verses of "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" are included in American Ballads and Folk Songs, edited by John Avery Lomax
From http://books.google.com/books?id=Dn0cSe2ecuoC&pg=PA231&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false [Google Books], pp. 231-233
My comment:
In that book John Lomax wrote that "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" was "a Negro work song that was sung in prison by “Clear Rock" [Moses Platt], who Lomax described as "a 70 year old 'water boy'” at Central State Farm, near Sugarland, Texas” [state farm = prison]. Lomax wrote that the song survived the Civil War and slavery as per its references to “massa”. [Read the comments in the Addendum below about Lomax's speculation that "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" was a Black American slavery work song.]

In that book, John Lomax includes two verses for PABOC:
"Dat n___r* from Shiloh kin pick a bale of cotton" etc.

and

"O massa told de n___rs*
Pick a bale of cotton
O massa told de n___rs*
Pick a bale a day"
-snip-
Here's an excerpt from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_a_Bale_of_Cotton

"Later versions of the folk song had amended the lyrics ["Dat n___r* from Shiloh kin pick a bale of cotton" etc.] to  :

 Gonna jump down, turn around
Pick a bale of cotton
Gonna jump down, turn around
Pick a bale a day
Oh lordy, pick a bale of cotton
Oh lordy, pick a bale a day

The song is sung with increasing speed as it progresses, with ensuing verses having references to "me and my wife" replaced with the likes of "me and my gal", "me and my papa", "me and my friend".[3]

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1936 - John and Alan Lomax write about "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" in their book "Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Leadbelly," Macmillan Company, 1936, page 92:
"In other versions of this song (see same title in "American Ballads and Folksongs") such lines as "Ol' massa tol' de n___rs*, Pick a bale o' cotton," and "Massa gimme one dram to Pick a bale o' cotton," are frequent. We are led to believe, [my italics] therefore, that "Pick a Bale o' Cotton" is a slave song, another of the old Negro tunes the Texas prison system has kept alive, while the prisoners died... The tune...is well known, especially among older prisoners, throughout the Texas penitentiary system."
-snip-
This is an excerpt of a comment that was posted by Guest, Autoharper [Adam Miller] on http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=90399
"Origins: Pick a Bale of Cotton" [hereafter given as Mudcat: Origins PABOC; 18 Apr 13 - 08:31 AM
*This word is fully spelled out in this book.

**
1939 - John & Alan Lomax record James 'Ironhead' Baker (and Moses 'Clear Rocks' Platt?) singing "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" [Rounder Records]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_%22Iron_Head%22_Baker_and_Moses_%22Clear_Rock%22_Platt
"James "Iron Head" Baker and Moses "Clear Rock" Platt were African American traditional folk singers imprisoned in the Central State Prison Farm in Sugar Land, Texas. They are notable for a number of field recordings of work songs and other material made by John Lomax for the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Music in the 1930s."
-snip-
The first entry in the Addendum below includes an excerpt from a book Prison Writing in 20th-century America edited by Howard Bruce Franklin that comments about picking cotton in Texas prison farms and also includes a brief version of a pre-Leadbelly version of "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" that is sung as a lament by Texas inmates.

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From Mudcat: Origins PABOC, posted by Q 14 Nov 05 - 08:16 PM
"...Just listened to the Rev. Mose Platt sing this perky little work song on the Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip (American Memory, Library of Congress). He used the phrase "jump down turn around, pick a bale a day.

The version is quite different from the one ascribed to 'Clear Rock' (Platt) in Lomax, ABFS 1934 [recorded in December 1933?], which has the Shiloh verse, but not the 'jump around' phrase. I can't find a recording listed for Platt before 1939. Platt could have changed his lyrics, or those in Lomax could be a 'combined' version put together by Lomax- which has happened before. His recording of the song in his "Deep River of Song" collection lists an "unknown axe-cutting group" as singing the song."
-snip-
My assumption is that Rev. Mose Platt & Moses 'Clear Rocks' Platt are the same person.

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Between 1941 and 1947 - Lead Belly recorded "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" for Folkways Records [now Smithsonian Folkways Recordings]. SFW40044_102 http://www.folkways.si.edu/TrackDetails.aspx?itemid=34149

One of the recordings was "Lead Belly Sings for Children"
Lead Belly SFW45047"
From http://www.folkways.si.edu/lead-belly-sings-for-children/african-american-music-folk-blues/album/smithsonian
"Originally recorded in children's concerts and studios for Moses Asch and Folkways Records in the 1940s".

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1945 - Lead Belly - Pick A Bale Of Cotton



mokmok8080 Published on Feb 26, 2013
-snip-
Lead Belly also gave these comments in the beginning of that film clip. (also shown at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChYeb8ACjqw)

"And this is another work song. When we pick cotton, you got to jump down to pick a bale of cotton a day. You can't fool around. And we sing:

Lyrics:
Great God almighty
Gonna pick a bale of cotton
Great God almighty
Gonna pick a bale a day.

Chorus:
Ah Lawd, I can pick a bale of cotton.
Ah Lawd, I can pick a bale a day.
Ah Lawd, I can pick a bale of cotton.
Ah Lawd, I can pick a bale a day.
Ah Lawd, I can pick a bale of cotton.
Ah Lawd, I can pick a bale a day.

Oh, me and my wife, can pick a bale of cotton etc.

Chorus

Gotta jump down, turn around and pick a bale of cotton etc.

Chorus

Me and my buddy can pick a bale of cotton etc.

Chorus

Me and my papa can pick a bale of cotton etc.

Chorus

Me and my sister can pick a bale of cotton etc.

I can pick a bale, pick a bale of cotton etc.

Chorus

I'm gonna jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton etc.
-snip-
The tempo that Lead Belly used for "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" (as documented in the embedded sound file) is somewhat slower than the tempo that appears to be used for many contemporary renditions of that song.

Additional comments -including mine - about Lead Belly's performance of "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" are found in the Addendum below.

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1956 Harry Belafonte

Jump Down Spin Around by Harry Belafonte on 1956 RCA Victor LP.



lrh1966, Published on Jul 4, 2011

RCA Victor record# LPM-1150. Album title: "Belafonte".
-snip-
Belafonte's version "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" doesn't include the "Oh Lordy" ("Oh Lawdy") phrase.

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1958 Pete Seeger and Sonny Terry at Carnegie Hall



nemobose04, Published on Sep 21, 2015
-snip-
This version includes the phrase "Oh Lordy".

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1959 Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee- Pick A Bale Of Cotton (live) at Newport Folk Festival

Pick A Bale Of Cotton




Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee - Topic

Published on Nov 8, 2014
-snip-
This version includes the phrase "Oh Lordy"

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1962 Lonnie Donegan

Pick a Bale of Cotton - Lonnie Donegan



Malcalum, Published on Mar 22, 2007

Lonnie Donegan's version of this Leadbelly classic.

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1979 -Pick a bale of Cotton by Sonny & Brownie from the Jerk 1979



Fortune Hunter, Published on Sep 8, 2015
-snip-
This is the same version that was recorded in 1959.
-snip-
This scene from The Jerk encapsulates why "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" is generally viewed negatively among Black Americans.

The Jerk is a American comedy movie that focuses on a story which is highly unlikely to occur in the United States*. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jerk "Navin R. Johnson, a homeless man, directly addresses the camera and tells his story. He is the adopted white son of African American sharecroppers, who grows to adulthood naïvely unaware of his obvious adoption. He stands out in his family not just because of his skin color but because of his utter lack of rhythm when his adopted family plays spirited blues music"
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Having worked in the adoption/child welfare system in the United States for more than fifteen years, I know that it's far more likely than non-White people can adopt Black children and other children of color than it is for Black people to adopt (or foster) White children.
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Notice the "Black sounding" first name and the use of the last name "Johnson" for this character, a last name that appears to be considered more common among Black Americans than non-Black Americans, although it had the same ranking (#2) in both populations in the 2000 US Census.
http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/05/100-most-common-black-american-surnames.html

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ADDENDUM
From Prison Writing in 20th-century America edited by Howard Bruce Franklin, Penguin, 1998 [Google Book], p. 29-30
"Chapter: Songs Of The Prison Plantation
"The work songs of African American convicts constitute the most poignant evidence of the continuity from Pre-Civil War chattel slavery to the twentieth century prison. The songs have served much the same function for modern prison slaves as the work songs of their slave ancestors. They pace collective labor such as picking cotton under the boiling sun on prison plantations, precisely time dangerous joint activities like chopping down trees, and provide an assertion of people’s creativity and a defense of their humanity. The songs thus made it possible to survive under the most brutal and degrading condition, conditions designed to reduce them to work animals.

Some of the old slave songs actually persisted well into the second half of the 20th century. For example, these lines were sung by modern convicts picking cotton on a Texas prison plantation:

Well old marster told old mistress I could pick a bale of cotton
Well old marster told old mistress I could pick a bale a day.
You big enough and black enough to pick a bale of cotton.
You big enough and black enough to pick a bale a day.
Chorus

But never will I pick a bale of cotton
How in the world will I pick a bale a day."
-snip-
From http://www.cotton.org/edu/faq/
"How much does a bale of cotton weigh?

A bale of cotton weighs about 500 pounds."

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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Belly : for information about, including the fact that "In 1930 Ledbetter [Huddie William Ledbetter (January 20, 1888 – December 6, 1949)] was in Louisiana's Angola Prison Farm after a summary trial for attempted homicide, charged with knifing a white man in a fight. It was there he was "discovered" three years later during a visit by folklorists John Lomax and his then 18-year-old son Alan Lomax.[12] Deeply impressed by Ledbetter's vibrant tenor and extensive repertoire, the Lomaxes recorded him on portable aluminum disc recording equipment for the Library of Congress. They returned with new and better equipment in July of the following year (1934), recording hundreds of his songs all in all. On August 1, Ledbetter was released after having again served almost all of his minimum sentence following a petition the Lomaxes had taken to Louisiana Governor Oscar K. Allen at his urgent request. It was on the other side of a recording of his signature song, "Goodnight Irene."
-snip-
I'm including this information although there's no documentation that "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" was among the "hundreds of songs" that the Lomaxes recorded of Lead Belly in 1934 while he was in Louisiana's Angola State Farm. [as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Belly]

Notice that in "Negro Folk Songs As Sung By Leadbelly" [which is quoted above], the Lomaxes write that "Pick a Bale o' Cotton" is a slave song, another of the old Negro tunes the Texas prison system has kept alive"...
-snip-
Italics added by me to highlight that portion of the sentence.

Furthermore, I believe that it's also likely that many of Lead Belly's Black audiences who heard his comments prefacing his performances of "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" and heard his version of that song were aware that he was "lying" [telling tall tales, boasting, funnin'] when he said that he [and others] "picked a bale of cotton [in] a day. Those Black audiences, and others familiar with picking cotton knew that it wasn't humanly possible to pick a bale of cotton in one day.

Part of the problem was "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" nowadays is that many people don't understand the "lyin" tradition that Lead Belly is reflecting. African American writer/folklorist Zora Neale Hurston wrote about that same lying tradition in her book Mules To Men. The fact that "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" that was standardized and popularized by Lead Belly is a bragging song escapes most people since the 20th century because we're not familiar with those bragging/"lying" customs.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e4qwOQzmnc
Excerpt of the video summary statement published by raymondcrooke
"Pick a Bale of Cotton (Traditional American)", Uploaded on Mar 12, 2011
"First collected by Alan Lomax from prison farms in Texas, this is a boastful song about picking an impossibly large quantity of cotton (a bale is about a quarter of a ton). One version (1934) sung by Moses Clear Rock Platt, an African-American singer (and prisoner) has led to some controversy as it used the word "n____r"*. In fact, many people now consider it politically incorrect to sing this song at all because of its associations with slavery. There is a fascinating thread on the Mudcat site about a school that was pressured into withdrawing the song from a choral concert after complaints from parents. **

Pete Seeger has argued that it would have been sung fairly slowly as a work song if it was actually sung by the slaves on the cotton fields, so it is quite likely that it does not actually go back to those times. The version that we know today comes mainly from the singing of Lead Belly, who called it a "play-party" song, and has been carried on by singers such as Harry Belafonte, Odetta and the great blues duo, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee."

**Click http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=86330
"Where is thy sting?-'Pick a Bale of Cotton' Ban" [hereafter given as "Mudcat: Sting PABOC" for this Mudcat discussion. Full disclosure, I participated in that discussion as well as the Mudcat discussion on the origin of "Pick A Bale Of Cotton".

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Mudcat: Sting PABOC", posted by Q, 14 Nov 05 - 02:05 PM
"First collected from prison farms in Texas, a boastful song about picking an impossibly large quantity of cotton (it has never been done). The version with the lines about the "n___r* from Shiloh" was sung by Moses Clear Rock Platt, African-American singer, story teller and sometime prisoner on prison farms in Texas. His material was first recorded by Lomax (printed in Lomax and Lomax, 1934, "American Ballads and Folk Songs," pp. 231-233).

Pete Seeger picked it up, and along with the printed version in Silber, "Folksinger's Wordbook," p. 123 (with chords), it became a standard among folk singers."...
-snip-
*This word is fully spelled out.

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From "Mudcat: Sting PABOC", posted by Q, 14 Nov 05 - 09:33 PM
..."It ["Pick A Bale Of Cotton"] may never have been used by cotton-pickers. "Pick a Bale" has not been found in any collection before the 1930s, it may well have been just a handy line, much as 'pick a peck of pickles' in the kid's tongue-twister. The rhythm is wrong for picking cotton."

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Editor's comment:
It appears that John Lomax considered the inclusion of the word "massa" in 'Iron Head' Baker's and 'Clear Rocks' Platts' version of "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" to be enough evidence to support his assertion that "PABOC" was sung by Black people during slavery while they were picking cotton or at other times. However, no folklorist has found documentation of "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" being sung during United States slavery. I wonder if Iron Head Baker & Clear Rocks Platt used the word "massa" in their rendition of "Pick A Bale Of Cotton" to veil the fact that they were actually referring to their prison overseers when they used the word "massa" or "master and "mistress".
[I used italic font to highlight this sentence.]

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From http://www.allmusic.com/song/pick-a-bale-of-cotton-mt0011917299 Song Review by Barry Weber
..."Ledbetter took old folk ballads and reworked them into songs that would prove to pave the way for not only folk and blues, but for rock and roll as well. One of the greatest examples of this is "Pick a Bale of Cotton," an old work song that will forever be known as a Leadbelly tune. Though the original is most remembered as a working man's lament, Ledbetter transformed "Pick a Bale of Cotton" into a fast-paced, out-and-out dance number obviously influenced by his youthful "sookie jump" days. And while the early anonymous recordings of this song sadly reflect, "Never will I/pick a bale-a-day," Leadbelly's lyrics boast "I jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton/I jump down, turn around, pick a bale a day." Never mind that picking a bale of cotton in one day is unthinkable--the fact is Leadbelly took a song of hopeless anguish and turned it into a song of fantasy, of proving the impossible possible. This was a message that proved to resonate with the working class--particularly the southern blacks--and "Pick a Bale of Cotton" is a testament to Leadbelly's talent for completely transforming an old song in both performance and message. It is easy to listen to the unrestrained ecstasy in Ledbetter's performance and realize just why so many people refer to this song, despite it's [sic] traditional roots, as a Leadbelly original."
-snip-
Italics added to highlight these sentences.

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PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S COMMENT
"Pick A Bale Of Cotton" was probably not a real 19th century work song - as no documentation of that song can be found until the 1930s. Lead Belly transformed the earlier lament to its uptempo danceable form.

In spite of its uptempo tune, it's important to recognize that many people, and particularly many African Americans, have negative perceptions of this song.

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UPDATE: September 13, 2023
From https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2006/3/9/192849/ "Racist song in my kid's music class, Part 2"
posted by leftilicious

Thursday, March 09, 2006 at 2:51:01p EST

[These comments are numbered for referencing purposes only. The bold font was used in the original comments.]

1. john culpepper, Mar 09, 2006 at 03:15:10 PM
"JUMPING to wrong conclusions I still think you are dead wrong and are doing a disservice to your child yourself and the cause of education, poetry, and music. The song is the context. When the child learns history (later when he is developmentally ready) he will have a context to put that history in. That is why it is good to teach songs, especially work songs, in early childhood. Though as it happens, this is not a work song.

If you are going to teach the history -- the context, you should take the trouble to inform yourselves so that you can teach it correctly. I explained on the previous thread that this is a dance song, not a work song. It was not sung by happy slaves or workers while picking cotton -- so many of the posters assume and to be offended by the fact that it is a lively energetic song, that in their minds conjures up the myth of the happy slave" -- BUT THIS IS SOMETHING IN THEIR MINDS -- not in the song. Yes, cotton picking is back breaking labor. But other aspects of growing cotton were even worse -- namely picking the weeds out of the cotton fields by hand. At least when you picked the cotton the end of the labor was in sight. Are you ashamed of the fact that black people knew how to celebrate when the work was done? Because that is what you seem to be saying.

The fact is that this is a dance song or "jump" that was sung after the harvest and after the workers were paid. As in so many African American songs, the verses are ironic -- IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PICK A BALE OF COTTON IN ONE DAY. The song expresses relief that the work is over.

Jimmy Crack Corn is also an ironic song. It is a song against slavery. I don't see why you feel guilty singing an anti-slavery song -- or feel that it is somehow racist to remind people that this country was built by agricultural labor and there was a song to go with almost every task. I think this is a wonderful thing and something to be very proud of, not ashamed.

I think that people such as yourself use political correctness as an excuse for mental laziness, all-around anti-intellectualism, and for throwing their weight around needlessly. You are setting a very bad example of mob mentality for your child.

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2. john culpepper - leftilicious AUTHOR

Mar 09, 2006 at 05:08:16 PM
"The songs are the context I know that it was a reel because I recently listened to a taped interview with Bessie Jones, a black singer from the Georgia Sea Islands, whose grandfather was a slave, explaining how she and her husband used to celebrate by singing and dancing Pick a Bale of Cotton after the picking season was over when they went around the south picking crops when she was in her twenties -- I don't know that she actually picked cotton (a bale, by the way, is 500 pounds). Actually, she said that as a child, she refused to pick cotton. At any rate, she sang a version of that song and many many others. She did not learn them from Leadbelly -- they were sung in the nineteen teens and twenties by the laborers at parties and picnics.

As far as minstrel songs, I just looked that up. It seems that Jimmy Crack Corn was indeed originally a minstrel song, as were Old Dan Tucker, Buffalo Gals, Oh, Suzanna, and Turkey in the Straw. They were white imitations of black songs, and they were very good songs, so good, in fact that that they made the full circle and entered back into the oral tradition and were adopted as folk songs by black and white. They have a distinctive character that is quintessentially American. It would be a shame to censor them because of their minstrel origin. In fact, a case can be made that white entertainers were in awe of African American music and that's why they imitated it -- and still do today. 

Alan Lomax has this to say about "Blue Tail Fly," which he calls "an abolitionist song" and which was the favorite song of Abraham Lincoln. It was "frequently found among Negro folk singers" and "subtly reflects the repressed hostility of slave towards their master which was the undercurrent of Southern plantation society." --Folk Songs of North America (1961), p. 493."...

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3, narses - john culpepper

Mar 09, 2006 at 05:09:23 PM
"Right on, John! This song is a dance tune, a "breakdown" tune for dancers who would try to outdo each other with fancy and fasters steps until the winner was the only one left standing. Leadbelly'a version included the instrumental breakdown part between the verses.  He sang "Me and my wife gonna pick a bale of cotton," which underscores even more the impossibility of two people picking 1000 pounds of cotton in a day."
-snip-
Here's the link to Part I of that dailykos diary: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/03/03/191309/-Racist-song-in-my-kid-s-music-class.

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4. Silentspring

Mar 10, 2006 at 01:57:57 AM
"dancing and minstrel songs Pick A Bale of Cotton was not a minstrel song. It was an African-American dance song. I am sure that the teachert used movement in singing it for pedagogical purposes -- a) musically -- to emphasize the syncopation and b) because children especially young ones learn best when moving their large muscles. c) also it is a big relief to kids who have been sitting still all day to get to move around some. Songs for the youngest children often do  involve movement. It is the pedagogically appropriate thing to do. Children need to use all their senses.

As far as minstrel shows -- this has nothing to do with Pick a Bale of Cotton -- but I googled Dan Emmett -- originator of minstrel shows -- and credited with writing Polly Wolly Doodle as well as Dixie -- and I found that he was born in Ohio and was a very strong Union supporter in the Civil War. He was appalled that the South appropriated his song Dixie (which incidentally, Abe Lincoln thought was one of the best songs he ever heard and which he requested a few days before he was assassinated). Here is a good link http://www.pbs.org/...  -- and there are others.

Stephen Foster was also rather liberal and tried to reform the minstrel tradition by purging his minstrel songs of racist stereotypes. Suprisingly, at least to me, there was a bio-pic about Dan Emmett made in the 1940s and starring, of all people, Bing Crosby as Emmet. He would have certainly worn blackface, and he was no bigot."

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