Sugarfoot Gaffney

While frequently lumped in mainly because a kind of particles from the initial times of the blues genre, the so-called “coon tunes” performed in minstrel displays by blackface performers such as for example Sugarfoot Gaffney certainly are a starkly contrasting kind of music without technical link with any kind of acknowledged blues form. This Gaffney is in fact suspected to be a devotee of Irish music and may also be confused using the banjo designer Michael Gaffney. That’s not the case, nonetheless it is worth directing out that the current presence of multiple musicians using the Gaffney surname around the historical recording picture of NEW YORK in the first ’20s was certainly due to the Irish immigration as well as the nationwide commitment to overpopulation. The blackface vocalist who created an excellent edition of Jimmy Durante’s “I’m on My Method to New Orleans” may more than likely have already been of Irish descent. Among at least a half-dozen music artists whose nickname celebrates a sweetness of tootsies, this “Sugarfoot” was significantly affected by Bert Williams recordings such as for example “I Ain’t Scared of Nuthin’ Dat’s Alive.” Gaffney toured and documented the Durante track with Neil O’Brien’s Minstrels, a roving troupe whose handbills are in the assortment of several university archives.