“Cotton-Eyed Joe” is a traditional American song of obscure and probably pre-Civil War origin, long tied to the dance music of the rural South. By the 1880s it was already the name of a heel-and-toe dance in Texas, and it turns up in print references decades before the recording era.
The earliest known commercial recording was made in 1927 by Dykes’ Magic City Trio, a string band, in Birmingham, Alabama. Their version carries the song’s familiar comic lament — the singer would have married long ago if not for old Cotton-Eyed Joe — and the tune spread fast as a square-dance staple across the South.
“Cotton-Eyed Joe” settled easily into bluegrass as a fast instrumental and song. Don Reno, Red Smiley and the Tennessee Cutups recorded it in 1957, one of countless versions a tune this old and this danceable has gathered.
