Old Fashioned Ice Cream Truck Song Mp3 Download

With the U.Southward. Capitol as a backdrop, tourists look in line to get ice cream from a food truck on the National Mall in Washington. Jacquelyn Martin/AP hide explanation

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Jacquelyn Martin/AP

With the U.S. Capitol as a backdrop, tourists wait in line to go ice cream from a food truck on the National Mall in Washington.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Back in June, Good Humor ice cream's Instagram account made an unusual departure from the normal items well-nigh new frozen treats. Instead, viewers saw a post virtually the racist history of popular ice cream truck jingles. Notably, "Turkey in the Straw," a melody that — despite a long, racist past — has piped through the speakers of ice cream trucks and into American neighborhoods for decades.

And, Good Sense of humour said, it wanted to do something about it.

That "something" has taken the class of a collaboration between Good Sense of humor and Wu-Tang Clan'due south vocalizer, musician and producer RZA to create a new jingle. The brand, owned by Unilever, fabricated the announcement on Thursday that information technology's helping drivers learn nigh the racist roots of "Turkey in the Straw" and how to replace the music box in the truck that plays it.

Good Sense of humor hasn't actually operated any trucks since 1976, explains Russell Lilly, a senior managing director at the company, but wanted to exist "part of the solution."

Code Switch pigeon into the song'southward racist history in a blog post by Theodore R. Johnson III dorsum in 2014. As he explained, "Turkey in the Straw" is a 19th century folk song that riffs on an Irish dabble vocal, "The (Old) Rose Tree." Depending on the version you listen to, the lyrics change a little chip every time, but are generally nonsensical.

But information technology wasn't until the appearance of traveling minstrel shows that the melody actually lodged itself into American pop civilisation — and the tune caused racist lyrics. In the 1830s, the minstrel performer George Washington Dixon popularized a song chosen "Zip C**due north," gear up to the familiar tune and referencing a blackface character who, equally Johnson wrote, was "the urban center-slicker counterpart to the dimwitted, rural blackface graphic symbol whose name became infamous in 20th century America: Jim Crow."

And as those lyrics make articulate, information technology'south a vicious caricature of a free Blackness human being trying to bring together white order by "dressing in fine clothes and using big words," Johnson wrote. (Nosotros won't write out the exact lyrics; you can notice them for yourself here.)

In 1916, Columbia Records released an even more racist version, called "N*gger Love A Watermelon Ha! Ha! Ha!," written by vaudeville role player Harry C. Browne. You tin can mind to information technology here, if you must, but be warned — it uses the n-word a lot.)

The "Zero C**n" version, as Johnson detailed in a follow-up piece, became a popular song in ice foam parlors in the 1890s. And equally ice cream trucks became ubiquitous post-obit Earth War II, the jingle followed along.

RZA's new jingle is a marked departure from the 19th-century fiddle song. There are no lyrics — instead, bells chime over trap-esque pulsate beats. Good Humour says it's available to drivers starting this month, so stay tuned: Your next ice cream sandwich might be accompanied by some unexpected RZA beats.