The origins of this song are unclear, although it pre-dates the 1861 -- 1865 American Civil War. American folklorist Dorothy Scarborough (1878 -- 1935) noted in her 1925 book On the Trail of Negro Folk - songs, that several people remember hearing the song before the war. Scarborough 's account of the song came from her sister, Mrs. George Scarborough, who learned the song from "the Negroes on a plantation in Texas, and other parts from a man in Louisiana. '' The man in Louisiana knew the song from his earliest childhood and heard slaves singing it on plantations. Both the dance and the song had many variants. The first printed one dates from 1882. American publishing house Harper and Brothers published a version in 1882, heard by author Louise Clarke Pyrnelle (born 1850) on the Alabama plantation of her father when she was a child, that was later republished in 1910:
who sang the original cotton eye joe song
unclear