Dan Emmett

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Photograph of Dan Emmett in his later years, taken from the belongings of Ben and Lew Snowden of Clinton, Knox County, Ohio.

Daniel Decatur "Dan" Emmett (October 29, 1815 – June 28, 1904), was an American songwriter and entertainer. Of Irish ancestry, he was born at Mount Vernon, Ohio, then a frontier region.

After serving in the United States Army, Emmett joined a circus company in 1835. In 1842, in association with Billy Whitlock, Dick Pelham, and Frank Brower, he organized the Virginia Minstrels, which made their first appearance at the old Chatham Square Theatre in New York City on February 17, 1843.

Photograph of Dan Emmett in blackface, probably early 1860s.

Although blackface performance, in which white men painted their hands and faces black and impersonated caricatures of black men and women, was already an established performance mode at that time—Thomas D. Rice had created the character of Jim Crow nearly a decade earlier, and blackface had been widely popular ever since—Emmett's group are said to be the first to "black up" an entire band rather than one or two performers. The group's full-length blackface performance is generally considered to have performed the first true minstrel show: previous blackface acts were usually either an entr'acte for a play or one of many acts in a comic variety show.

Notable songs written by Dan Emmett include:

"Polly Wolly Doodle"
"Old Dan Tucker"
"Boatman's Dance"
"The Road to Richmond"
"Walk Along, John"
"Early in the Mornin'"

Dan Emmett is said to have composed the famous song "Dixie" in 1859, though another ballad writer named William Shakespeare Hays (1837-1907) (pen name: Will S. Hays), claimed to be its true author. Members of the Snowden Family of Knox County, Ohio, have also been named as writers of the song.

"Dixie" (file info) — play in browser (beta)
- 1916 rendition of "Dixie" by the Metropolitan Mixed Chorus, with Frank Stanley, Ada Jones, Billy Murray
- Problems listening to the file? See media help.

Daniel Decatur Emmett was inducted into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 1970