- Style
- Old-time
- Tradition
- American old-time
- Form
- Breakdown
- Keys
- A and G
- Level
- 2
- Played on
- Fiddle
In the public domain. Source
Music
90bpm
Click any note to start from there
Chord chart
History
Charles Wolfe called it a Texas dance hall anthem, but versions turn up all over the country and share little more than the chorus. Nobody agrees on what "cotton-eyed" means. Guesses include drunk on moonshine, eyes clouded by trachoma, cataracts or bad liquor, and very pale eyes, and the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang traces a sense of prominent eye whites back to 1905.
Thomas Talley, an African American collector, wrote down a folk tale called "Cotton-Eyed Joe, or the Origin of the Weeping Willow" that includes a verse of the song. Pope's Arkansas Mountaineers recorded it with words in 1927.
Where did you come from, where will you go? Where did you come from Cotton-Eyed Joe.
Want to go to church and couldn't get to go, I had to stay home with Cotton-Eyed Joe.