User's Audio | Free Songs For Kids

User's Audio

3:04 minutes (4.11 MB)

Artist's Name (As you would like it to appear on this page.):

Dale Cockrell

Lyrics:

Went to town the other night,
I hear the noise, then saw the fight,
The watchman was a-running round,
Crying “Old Dan Tucker’s come to town.”
Old Dan Tucker’s back in town,
Swinging the ladies, all around;
First to the right, and then to the left;
Then kiss the gal that he loves best.

(chorus)
Get out of the way! Get out of the way!
Get out of the way! Old Dan Tucker,
You’re too late to come to supper.

Dan began early in his life,
To play the banjo to win a wife,
But every time he’d company keep,
He’d play himself fast asleep.
Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man,
He washed his face in the frying pan,
He combed his hair with a wagon wheel,
And died of a toothache in his heel.

(chorus)

Old Dan Tucker came to town,
A-riding a goat, and leading a hound,
The hound gave a howl, and the goat gave a jump,
And threw Dan Tucker a-top a stump.
I went to meetin’ the other day,
To hear old Tucker preach and pray,
They all got the spirit, but me alone,
I make ole Tucker walk jawbone.

(chorus)

When old Dan Tucker passed away,
They missed the music he used to play,
They carried him on his last long ride,
And buried his banjo at his side.

(chorus)

Description:

This song, with its jaunty melody and sprightly verses, has been sung and enjoyed up to the very present. “Old Dan Tucker” is attributed to Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904), a New York-based performer from Ohio. The lyrics are certainly Emmett’s while the tune, which has a folk-like quality, has been thought by some to come from the oral tradition (although no record of it exists before the publication of this song in 1843).
Mr. Edwards, who helped the Ingalls build their log cabin on the prairie, is showered in appreciation with food and music. As he reluctantly leaves to return to his own cabin, he invites Pa to “Play me down the Road!” “Old Dan Tucker” was just the tune to put lilt in a working man’s tired feet, and “faintly from the creek bottoms came a last whoop from Mr. Edwards.” (“House on the Prairie” chapter)

The Blue Juniata

2:05 minutes (3.02 MB)

Artist's Name (As you would like it to appear on this page.):

Dale Cockrell

Lyrics:

Wild rov’d an Indian girl, bright Alfarata,
Where sweep the waters of the blue Juniata.
Swift as an antelope, through the forest going,
Loose were her jetty locks in wavy tresses flowing.

Gay was the mountain song of bright Alfarata,
Where sweep the waters of the blue Juniata.
Strong and true my arrows are in my painted quiver,
Swift goes my light canoe on down the rapid river.

Bold is my warrior good, the love of Alfarata,
Proud waves his snowy plume along the Juniata.
Soft and low he speaks to me, then his war-cry sounding,
Rings his voice in thunder loud, from height to height resounding.

So sang the Indian girl, bright Alfarata,
Where sweep the waters of the blue Juniata.
Fleeting years have borne away the voice of Alfarata,
Still sweeps the river on, the blue Juniata.

Description:

About this song:
Marion Dix Sullivan composed the lyrics and melody to “The Blue Juniata,” which was then arranged by Edward L. White and published in 1844. The song appeared during a time when many Americans were becoming more concerned about the plight of the American Indian, as its sympathetic narrative suggests.

The song’s placement in Little House on the Prairie points up an important moral dilemma. In a dramatic chapter (“The Tall Indian”), Ma and her daughters manage to hold off two Osage men who were attempting to steal the family’s cache of furs, virtually their entire capital. (In a telling parallel, the Ingalls family was then, in 1870, living on land that was officially “Indian territory,” virtually all that still “belonged” to a whole nation of people.) As the Ingalls children prepare for bed, they hear Ma sing “The Blue Juniata,” a deeply poignant expression of loss. Laura, who is clearly moved by the sympathetic portrayal of the song’s protagonist, asks, “Where did the voice of Alfarata go, Ma?” She is told that Alfarata probably went west because that is what “the government makes [the Indians do].” She wonders if the Osage will have to go west. “Yes,” Pa said. “When white settlers come into a country, the Indians have to move on.” “But, Pa, I thought this was Indian Territory. Won’t it make the Indians mad to have to—” “No more questions, Laura,” Pa said, firmly. “Go to sleep.” And the chapter ends, but the question, underscored by the song, lingers.

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