"The Phrenologist Coon" is a 1901 song written by African-American entertainer Ernest Hogan with music by Will Accooe.[1][2][3] Bert Williams recorded it[4] on Victor Records and sheet music was published for it.[5][6] It was produced by Williams and Walker Co. and published by Jos. W. Stern & Co. in New York City.[7]

The song's lyrics describe a "conjureman" ironically engaging in phrenology – the pseudoscientific study of human characteristics according to the shape of the skull.[8] "In what is at first glance a demeaning stereotype, 'The Phrenologist's Coon' might, indeed, be something much more involved, because it suggests that black artists were self-consciously dialoging with political context prior to the modernist explorations of affirmative black identity by the Harlem Renaissance writers," suggests Paula J. Massood in Making a Promised Land: Harlem in Twentieth-Century Photography and Film (2013).[9]

The tune as a schottische was used for the 1902 song "Maiden with the Dreamy Eyes" by Cole and Johnson.[10]

References

  1. Wonham, Henry B. (June 17, 2004). Playing the Races: Ethnic Caricature and American Literary Realism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-803664-7 via Google Books.
  2. Covey, Herbert C.; Eisnach, Dwight (November 24, 2020). Daily Life of African Americans in Primary Documents [2 volumes]. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781440866654 via Google Books.
  3. Rowland, Mabel (January 13, 1923). "Bert Williams, Son of Laughter: A Symposium of Tribute to the Man and to His Work". English Crafters via Google Books.
  4. Hoffmann, Frank; Cooper, B. Lee; Gracyk, Tim (November 12, 2012). Popular American Recording Pioneers: 1895-1925. Routledge. ISBN 9781136592294 via Google Books.
  5. "The phrenologist coon". NYPL Digital Collections. Archived from the original on July 11, 2021. Retrieved August 7, 2021.
  6. Ernest Hogan (lyricist); Will Accooe (composer) (August 7, 1901). "The Phrenologist Coon". jscholarship.library.jhu.edu. Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries.
  7. Performing Arts Encyclopedia. August 7, 1901 via memory.loc.gov.
  8. "Lyrics The Phrenologist Coon by Bert Williams | LyricsLand". www.lyrics.land. Archived from the original on August 7, 2021. Retrieved August 7, 2021.
  9. Massood, Paula J. (2013). Making a Promised Land: Harlem in Twentieth-Century Photography and Film. Rutgers University Press. p. 13.
  10. "Maiden with the dreamy eyes". Library of Congress. January 1, 1902.


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