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Here is one of my web log entries, perhaps from my Yakkity Yak page, What's New page, or one of my Astounding Adventures from my Geocaching section: The Dixie Song
Wednesday, 31 August 2005 4:15 PM MDT
Yakkity Yak
While at the City of St. George's web site, I came across this little gem:
The Dixie Song sung by Daniel D. McArthur, the mayor of St. George, Utah Give it a listen. It left me grinning from ear to ear.
What a great place to live! Where besides St. George will you find a city mayor willing to share like this? (Dare I mention that I'm related to Mayor Dan? He's my dad's first cousin, so I guess that means we're first cousins, once removed.) Thanks, Cousin Mayor! I enjoyed the song and had a good chuckle. I must admit, I've heard Roene DiFiore's The Dixie Song before, when my mother has sung it. From Mayor Dan's web page, the lyrics are: Are you from Dixie?
Roene DiFiore (if you follow the web link, look down near the lower part of the page) and her Program Bureau at Dixie College had a lasting impact on many people, as my mother has said.
I said from Dixie! Where the fields of cotton beckon to me. We're glad to see ya To say "How be ya?" And the friends we're longin' to see If you're from Santa Clara, Washington, or St. George fine, Anywhere below the Iron County line. Then you're from Dixie Hurrah for Dixie, 'Cause I'm from Dixie, too! [UPDATE 18 Jan. 2010: None of the links here work any more, sadly. If I ever find a copy of the audio or video, I'll try to host a copy on my server directly. Also, I fixed the spelling of Roene DiFiore's name (I'd had it wrong: "de Fiore")] [UPDATE 04 Jul. 2020: First, a CORRECTION: The song is actually a slightly modified version of "Are You from Dixie ('Cause I'm from Dixie Too)" written Jack Yellen (lyrics) and George L. Cobb (music) and originally recorded in 1916 by Billy Murray. (See this Wikipedia article about it.) I always associated it with "Mrs. D" (a.k.a. Roene DiFiore) because that's how I first recall encountering the song. Perhaps "Mrs. D" was responsible for the southwestern Utah modifications to the song. Though I cannot find the old 2005 recording of former Mayor Dan McArthur singing, I did run across this YouTube video of current Mayor John Pike singing it at the 2019 Utah League of Cities and Towns convention, posted by the Utah League of Cities and Towns (ULCT) YouTube user, which user introduced the video thus: You want to hear a man with passion along with pipes? Check out Mayor Jon Pike as he sings the St. George song to members of the Utah League of Cities and Towns. How many cities have a song... and if we do, how many of us know it? Kudos to this musical mayor for his community pride! I did find an Archive.org archived version of the City of St. George page from August of 2005, but unfortunately they did not archive the audio file linked. Here is the archived page.
 Snapshot taken 04 July 2020 of Archive.org's August 13, 2005 archived copy of the web page with Mayor Dan's song link.
From that archived page I see that perhaps my mistaken spelling of the name DiFiore as "de Fiore" and my misattribution of the song might to some degree have originated from the information from St. George's 2005 web page.] | |