The age-herald., 1899-01-18
COON SONG CRAZE
 SOON TO BE ENDED
From the Memphis soimetar.


 The beginning of the end of the craze for ''coon songs'' is in sight, and the sooner the end comes the better aNlong-suffering pulp lie will be satisfied.
 The success of this peculiar kind of music has been remarkable. "Coon songs" are now sung in nearly every civilized country. London and Paris music halls have coon singers today, and in America they are heard on every hand And all the while the. writers of popular songs are grinding out more of the things, all of which have catchy music and nonsensieal words.
 The basis of the success of the coon songs Is the catchy music to which they are sung. The first coon songs sung on the stage were really coon or negro songs. The music and some of the words were composed by ne- groes and sung by them, not in parlors and theaters, but as these natural minstrels worked. Some smart song writers began adopting the tunes sung by the negroes. and many of the words as could be used in polite company. The success of the songs was instantaneous May Irwin was made famous in night by "Mr. Johnson, Turn Me Loose" and she still retains firm hold on a certain class of the theater-gong pub lie of the east by singing coon songs. The songs have created new line of "business' for vaudeville people. "Coon shouter" is as explicit term now as is "song and dance artist" Nearly every vaudeville programme introduces Miss So-and-So, the greatest living lady coon shouter," or Mr. So-and So, whose claim to distinction is based on his ability to sing impossible negro dialect in a manner as thoroughly unlike a negro would sing it as is possible.
 When the demand for coon songs became steady and great the negroes did not turn them out rapidly enough, so the song writ CTS composed music of the kind fancied by negroes and with it words which were gen. orally disgusting and always foolish. It was another case of the white man beating the negro He made money from the sale of the songs, but the spontaneous coon songs of the negro are better than the wrltten-to-supply- ly-the- demand coon songs of the white man, for all that.
 Analyze the words of the average coon song and you soon find the quintessence of nonsense. Nearly all of them have something about "the line in them Down 
 walks down the line, there'll be a hot time." I'm going down the line, looking for trouble"-these are some bits from popular coon songs. Now, where is the line? What is it? If any southern negro, or northern negro, for that matter, ever heard of it or ever used 1t as a term then Bob Ingersoll is a Presbyterian But cultured people listen to such rot and applaud it.
 The coon songs are becoming more dis gusting as the craze ages. They have brought the word 'wench' into much more fequent use than has been made of it for many, many years It is of the words which was formerly commonly used and was a "good' word, but which has sunk into disuse except as term of opprobium. Today it is used on ''coon' songs, but not by the negroes. When a negro wishes to insult a negress he calls her "a wench," and then there is trouble. If a negro beau calls his sweetheart a wench, as the writer's of coon songs seem to think they do, the sweetheart lands on the beau's neck or goes down into her sock after a razor.
 coon song which is sung to catchy music and is both disgusting and foolish is entitled My Honolulu Lou" This song is sung in the south and applauded, though tnlS line appears Tn the chorus, Sne ndS distanced all the white girls and the wenches." There's a literary bon mot which should be heard only on the other side of the place where the Mason and Dixon line was before the Hispano-Ameri- > can war.
 For rank nonsense the song about the ram jam easily wins all the money. It wins, gets the place and shows in the Damphool Stakes The man who wrote this song could think of nothing else to rhyme with what had gone before, so he slapped a couple of lines of "ram-a-jam, jam, jam" into the chorus. These are the actual words. There's intellectual food for a cultured audience.
 Aonther evil of the coon song is that they have been the creation of a ridiculous mode of stage walking. When a woman "coon shouter" walks to the center of the stage to do her turn she does not walk like an ordinary person. The music has begun and keeping time to it she walks about as if one leg was shorter than the other. Just why groeS do not walk this way, but coon shout CTS do. Male coon shouterS sometimes adopt the plan of walking as if they had a f1at-wheel, but the lady brand seems to fancy the movement more than the gen. tlemen breed to.
 Coon shouting, and it's kindred evil the cakewalk, have had their run it is hoped.
 The negroes are ashamed of their alleged imitatOrS and they have good reason for