 Dorothy Scarborough and Ola Lee Gulledge, in their book "On the Trail of Negro Folk-songs", included two versions, collected from two different states, and in his book "American Negro Folk-Songs" (1928), Newman White includes four different variations.Folklorist Alan Lomax recorded folk versions from at least two different sources, one in 1933 from a black prisoner named Moses Platt, and another in 1937 from a white fiddler named W. H. Stepp.Commercial recordings of the song began in the 1920s, many by white singers.