American musician, noted as the author and composer of Dixie, the war-song of the South; born in Mount Vernon, OH, on the 29th of October 1815. His grandfather, an Irishman, served as chaplain and surgeon in the Revolutionary War. His father shouldered a musket in 1812 under General Hull, and later acted as an Indian scout in northern Ohio. Learning to play the violin and other instruments, Daniel Emmett, in 1843, organized the first minstrel troupe in the United States. His Dixie Land, which was to the gray-clad soldier what John Brown’s Body was to his brother from the North, was written in 1859, when the author was a member of the then famous Bryant’s Minstrels in New York. Emmett was asked one Saturday evening to compose a “hooray” chorus for the Monday performance. Sound and noise were the two desiderata, and from the first Dixie was a success. The keynote was love and longing for the Southland, and one bar of music set the key for the whole. Adopted as a march and war-song in New Orleans, it was taken up by the populace and transferred to the battlefield. Dixie is as lively and popular an air to-day as when it was written, nor is its reputation confined to the American continent. It ranks with the finest of the world’s simpler airs in touching the emotions.
