Buffalo Gals

"Buffalo Gals" is a traditional American song, written and published as "Lubly Fan" in 1844 by the blackface minstrel John Hodges, who performed as "Cool White." The song was widely popular throughout the United States. Because of its popularity, minstrels altered the lyrics to suit the local audience, so it might be performed as "New York Gals" in New York City or "Boston Gals" in Boston or "Alabama Girls" in Alabama (as in the version recorded by Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins on a field recording trip in 1959). The best-known version is named after Buffalo, New York.

The chorus is:

The song is featured prominently in the 1946 Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life and heard in saloon scenes in the 1952 film High Noon (starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly). Edgar Buchanan performs a version in the 1941 film Texas, starring William Holden and Glenn Ford. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.

Adaptations

Buffalo Gals (Malcolm McLaren song)

"Buffalo Gals" is a 1982 hip-hop single released by Malcolm McLaren and the World's Famous Supreme Team, from McLaren's 1983 album Duck Rock. The song is composed of extensive scratching with calls from square dancing. The music video prominently features the Rock Steady Crew.

History

While in New York City looking for a support act for Bow Wow Wow, McLaren got the idea for the song when he went to an outdoor concert (known as a "Block Party") by Afrika Bambaataa and Universal Zulu Nation. This is where he was exposed to Hip-Hop for the first time and discovered the scratching technique he would use on this song. Most of the scratching and the beat of the song were composed by Trevor Horn.

In the liner notes for Duck Rock, McLaren wrote that this track was "recorded with the World's Famous Supreme Team and Zulu singers backing them up with the words 'she's looking like a hobo.' The performance by the Supreme Team may require some explaining, but suffice to say they are DJs from New York City who have developed a technique using record players like instruments, replacing the power chord of the guitar with the needle of a gramophone, moving it manually backwards and forwards across the surface of a record. We call it scratching."